A man who works for the private company operating a migrant-processing center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Colorado has been taken into custody after allegedly opening fire on a woman who was protesting outside the facility, Aurora police announced Friday.
The shooting took place Thursday evening at an ICE Processing Center run by GEO Group in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, according to a police statement posted on social media. The incident occurred just days after ICE agents fatally shot two motorists during separate traffic stops — one on July 7 in Texas and another on July 13 in Maine.
Brandon Booth, 42, a GEO Group employee, was arrested Thursday night and booked into jail. He faces charges including suspicion of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon.
The woman who was shot sustained a gunshot wound to her lower body. She was taken to a nearby hospital, and authorities said her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
According to police, the shooting happened while protesters were blocking the entrance to the ICE facility. Police say Booth fired a single round from his personal handgun toward two female protesters who had engaged GEO employees in a verbal confrontation and were photographing their vehicles before walking away. After the shot struck one of the women, Booth got back in his vehicle and left the scene. Officers pulled him over a short distance away and placed him under arrest.
Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain addressed the incident in a statement, saying, “We remain committed to ensuring an ethical, thorough, objective, and comprehensive review of this case. Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society – violence is not.”
ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and GEO Group had not responded to requests for comment as of Friday.
The shooting adds to growing scrutiny of ICE operations following two consecutive fatal shootings by ICE agents during vehicle stops in Houston and Biddeford, Maine. DHS has acknowledged that both men killed — one a Mexican citizen and the other a Colombian national — were not the intended targets of the enforcement operations taking place at the time.
GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the United States, manages a number of ICE detention and processing centers under government contract. Those facilities have faced ongoing criticism from immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers, who allege that detainees are held in unsafe and unsanitary conditions with inadequate medical care.
