A Trump-appointed federal judge blocked key provisions of a new Colorado law targeting the state's only ICE detention facility, ruling the state likely violated the Constitution by singling out a federal contractor for special restrictions.
Chief U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico issued a preliminary injunction Thursday halting the most aggressive pieces of Colorado House Bill 26-1276, a law Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed on June 4 that expanded state and local oversight of immigration detention centers. The injunction specifically blocks a mandate for unannounced inspections of the GEO Group's Aurora ICE Processing Center at least once every three months, along with a penalty scheme that authorized fines of up to $50,000 for each refusal to permit an inspection. GEO would have been required to pay for the inspections itself.
Domenico's ruling rested heavily on the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, the principle that federal law and federal operations override conflicting state regulation. He cited Supreme Court precedent holding that federal government activities must generally remain free from state interference, and he extended that protection to private contractors carrying out federal operations.
The judge's written order made clear he viewed HB 26-1276 as a law designed to burden a single target. As of May, GEO's Aurora facility was the only detention center in Colorado subject to the law's additional regulations. Fox News Digital reported that Domenico wrote bluntly about the law's discriminatory structure.
"Here, GEO has shown that it is singled out for a special bill that applies to no other facility."
Colorado's defense argued that HB 26-1276 simply brought GEO into compliance with existing state regulations applied to other private detention facilities. Domenico rejected that framing. In his order, he wrote that the law "singles out this one category of facility for a separately defined set of restrictions and rulemaking." He added:
"That other facilities might have some similar regulatory burdens does not change the fact that none of them are required to comply with HB 1276. As GEO notes, the extent of the additional burden is irrelevant for purposes of this test."
The judge pointed to specific provisions he found unique to HB 26-1276. The requirement for a set number of unannounced visits "does not appear elsewhere," he wrote. And Colorado itself acknowledged the penalty scheme was not imposed on other facilities. That combination, Domenico concluded, "is sufficient to establish that HB 1276 discriminates against GEO based on its status as a federal contractor."
The ruling fits a broader pattern of federal courts stepping in when blue-state governments attempt to use regulatory power to obstruct immigration enforcement carried out under federal authority.
Domenico's injunction was targeted, not total. He did not block provisions addressing reporting requirements, staffing levels, health conditions, housing of minors, or the requirement for onsite medical and mental health professionals. His reason: Colorado told the court those provisions were not currently being enforced and would require a future rulemaking process, one the state said it had no immediate plans to begin.
The injunction itself has an expiration date. It runs until October 15, when GEO's existing federal contract to operate the Aurora facility is set to expire. What happens after that, whether the contract is renewed, the facility closes, or the legal landscape shifts, remains an open question.
Meanwhile, courts across the country continue to grapple with the boundaries of federal immigration authority. A divided Fifth Circuit panel recently ruled that ICE must offer bond hearings within 90 days, a decision that tested the limits of mandatory detention policy from a different direction.
Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser moved quickly to frame the ruling as a limited setback. In a statement Thursday, he characterized the injunction as a "narrow, temporary" win for GEO that left Colorado's existing public health and safety authority intact.
"Today's ruling granted the GEO Group a narrow, temporary injunction against one provision of a new 2026 law, not the broad relief it sought, and leaves Colorado's existing public health and safety authority intact."
But Weiser also used the moment to highlight a separate legal front. The day before Domenico's ruling, on Wednesday, Colorado filed a lawsuit against GEO seeking to force the company to comply with a public health order tied to a tuberculosis investigation at the Aurora center. Health officials confirmed an active TB case at the facility on June 22.
The state alleges GEO has failed to provide the records and cooperation needed to determine the extent of potential exposure. Weiser framed the TB lawsuit as independent of HB 26-1276, arguing the state's authority to investigate communicable diseases predates the new law entirely.
"Separately, our lawsuit filed yesterday seeks to enforce that existing authority and require GEO to cooperate with the state's investigation into tuberculosis at the Aurora facility, and we will continue using every available tool to protect the health and safety of Coloradans."
Fox News Digital reached out to both GEO and Gov. Polis's office for comment. No responses were included in the reporting.
The Aurora facility has become a flashpoint in the broader national fight over immigration enforcement. Conflicts surrounding ICE detention centers have escalated well beyond courtrooms in recent years, underscoring how deeply the politics of immigration enforcement have divided the country.
Colorado's strategy with HB 26-1276 followed a playbook that progressive state governments have used repeatedly: pass a law framed as health and safety regulation, but design it so narrowly that it functions as an obstacle to a specific federal operation. In this case, the operation was immigration detention, and the target was one private company running one facility under one federal contract.
Domenico saw through the framing. His order documented what the law actually did: it imposed a unique inspection regime on a single facility, backed by a penalty structure applied to no one else, and required that facility to fund its own regulatory burden. The judge did not need to speculate about legislative intent. The law's own structure told the story.
The TB investigation adds a genuine public health dimension that neither side can afford to ignore. One confirmed case at a detention facility raises legitimate questions about exposure, cooperation, and oversight. But that issue predates HB 26-1276 and does not depend on it, a point Weiser himself conceded when he stressed that Colorado's disease-investigation authority exists independently of the new law.
And that concession cuts against the argument for the law itself. If Colorado already had the tools to investigate health threats at the Aurora facility, the additional regulatory architecture of HB 26-1276 starts to look less like a public safety measure and more like a political instrument, one designed to make federal immigration enforcement more expensive, more burdensome, and harder to sustain inside Colorado's borders.
Several provisions of the law remain technically alive but functionally dormant. Colorado told the court it was not enforcing requirements on staffing, reporting, health conditions, housing of minors, or onsite medical professionals and had no immediate plans to begin the rulemaking process those provisions require. Whether the state revives those efforts before the October 15 contract expiration, or whether the injunction's logic would extend to block them too, is unclear.
Progressive leaders in Colorado and other blue states have repeatedly tested the boundaries of state power against federal immigration operations. Courts have repeatedly pushed back.
Gov. Polis signed this bill. His attorney general defended it. A federal judge found it likely unconstitutional in its most aggressive provisions. And the facility it targeted will keep operating, at least until October, under the same federal contract Colorado tried to regulate out of existence.
When a state writes a law that applies to exactly one company doing exactly one job for the federal government, the constitutional problem is not subtle. Progressive ambitions do not override the Supremacy Clause, no matter how many inspections and fines a legislature stacks on top.
If Colorado wanted to regulate detention conditions, it could have written a law that applied to all facilities equally. It chose not to. And a federal judge noticed.