Colorado Public Radio reports that Colorado health officials are demanding immediate access to the GEO Group’s Aurora ICE Processing Center after at least one confirmed case of active tuberculosis. The state says local public-health investigators have encountered barriers while trying to identify possible exposure, review records, test people and begin treatment.
This is not complicated. TB is airborne, serious and potentially fatal without treatment. It is also preventable and curable when officials can move quickly. That means detainees, guards, contractors, visitors, transferred inmates and the surrounding community all need the same thing: competent adults doing disease control instead of institutional hide-and-seek.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado’s health department asked GEO for immediate cooperation, including records, information and access to the facility by July 17.
- Adams County Health Department and the Denver Health Tuberculosis Clinic reportedly encountered barriers while investigating the case. That is a problem, not a scheduling inconvenience.
- The state says GEO’s failure to provide complete and timely access is impeding a legally required public-health investigation. Every delay makes contact tracing, testing and treatment harder.
- GEO referred CPR’s questions to ICE, which had not responded at the time of the report. The bureaucratic hot potato remains undefeated.
- Gov. Jared Polis and Rep. Jason Crow both called for GEO and ICE to let health officials inside. Fine. Now skip the quote package and make sure it actually happens.
My Bottom Line
Border enforcement and humane medical care are not opposites. Conservatives should have no patience for open-borders fantasy, and we should have equally little patience for a private contractor stonewalling a tuberculosis investigation.
GEO takes taxpayer money to operate a detention facility. That means public-health access is not a courtesy mint on the pillow. When officials need records, testing access and cooperation during an active TB case, the answer is not “please circle back through ICE communications.” The answer is “come in.”
This also does not need to become another lazy morality play about whether ICE is good or evil. TB does not care about your ideology, your activist slogan or your vendor contract. It spreads through the air. The job is to identify exposure, test people, treat people and stop transmission.
Law and order includes sanitation, transparency and disease control. Handle the case. Protect everyone inside and outside the facility. Spare Colorado the performance art.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
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