A Colorado man who works for the private company that runs a federal immigration detention facility near Denver is now facing felony assault charges after shooting a woman who was protesting outside the facility last week, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
Brandon Booth, 42, an employee of GEO Group, is accused of pulling out his personal handgun and firing at two women who were demonstrating outside a GEO-operated ICE processing center in Aurora, Colorado, last Thursday.
According to Aurora police, the two protesters had started a verbal argument with GEO employees who were waiting to enter the facility and were photographing the workers’ vehicles. That’s when Booth reportedly stepped out of his vehicle and fired a single shot, striking one of the women in the foot.
After the shooting, Booth drove away from the scene but was taken into custody by police a short time later in the surrounding area.
The District Attorney’s Office of the 17th Judicial District of Colorado announced Booth faces one count of first-degree assault and one count of attempted first-degree assault, both felony offenses. The assault charge could result in a prison sentence of 10 to 32 years, while the attempted assault charge carries a possible sentence of five to 16 years.
GEO Group released a statement on Friday acknowledging the incident. “We are aware that an off-duty Aurora ICE Processing Center employee was involved in a shooting incident,” a company spokesperson wrote. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”
The Aurora shooting comes after a string of other incidents involving ICE operations across the country. Earlier this month, ICE agents conducting vehicle stops in Houston, Texas, and Biddeford, Maine, fatally shot two men — one a Mexican citizen and the other a Colombian national — both of whom federal authorities later acknowledged were not the intended targets of those immigration enforcement actions. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with either of those shootings.
Additionally, two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by immigration officials during protests against ICE operations in Minneapolis in January. No criminal charges have been filed in those cases either.
GEO Group operates a number of ICE detention and processing centers under contract with the federal agency. Many such facilities have drawn criticism from migrant rights groups and civil liberties advocates who allege detainees face unsafe and unsanitary conditions and inadequate medical care.
Colorado Public Radio News identified the woman who was wounded as 22-year-old Emma Landis. She was photographed on crutches with her lower-right leg bandaged, and she returned to an anti-ICE demonstration outside the Aurora facility on Sunday.
Landis described the moment she was shot. “We were on the sidewalk protesting, and they were mocking us and threatening us. And as we were crossing the street, that was when he shot me,” she told the news outlet. “Never in a million years did I think that would happen.”
