GEO Group has operated Aurora’s ICE detention center since 1986. For four decades, this corporation has expanded its capacity, filled its beds, and profited from the people locked inside: our neighbors and community members.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously refused to let GEO Group hide behind federal contractor immunity. The case was brought by Alejandro Menocal and fellow Aurora detainees who were forced to perform janitorial work for free or face 72 hours of solitary confinement. Others were paid $1 a day. The forced labor they endured began in 2014.
GEO Group’s defense: They were just following orders from ICE.
That lawsuit has been working its way through the courts for over a decade. During every one of those years — during the protests, the wrongful death lawsuits, the ACLU’s 2019 report exposing Aurora’s facility for “cashing in on cruelty,” the COVID-19 mismanagement that trapped sick people inside without masks or tests — Jamie Jackson was on GEO Group’s payroll.
Rep. Jamie Jackson was a GEO Group manager in Denver from 2014 through 2021. She started the same year Menocal was being forced to scrub floors for free in Aurora.
She was still there when TIME Magazine and the ACLU covered their abuses. She was still there when Aurora activists set up an encampment outside the facility.
She left in 2021; one year after the City of Denver ended its re-entry contracts with GEO Group.
READ REP. JAMIE JACKSON’S RESPONSE TO THIS COLUMN.
Her Democratic primary challenger this year, Aly DeWills-Marcano, is a community organizer and disability rights advocate who has spent the past decade fighting for the rights of Aurora’s detained immigrants. While Jackson was moving up GEO’s ranks, DeWills-Marcano was on Congressman Jason Crow’s team demanding oversight and inspections of GEO’s Aurora facility.
Jackson was appointed to the Colorado House of Representatives last year by a vacancy committee, not elected by voters. She was presented to House District 41 Democrats as a criminal justice activist. GEO Group’s lobbyists have since contributed to her 2026 campaign.
The primary election on June 30 is House District 41’s first real vote on this question: should a former GEO Group regional manager represent a community still fighting GEO Group in federal court?
Jackson now says she didn’t know how bad GEO was. Seven years as a rising regional manager, and she didn’t know. The forced labor lawsuit that started on her watch? She didn’t know. The wrongful deaths, the protest encampments, the national news coverage? She didn’t know. That claim isn’t credible. At best, it describes willful ignorance of the corporation she was helping run.
The Supreme Court just cleared the way for the case against GEO to proceed. The people who were harmed deserve a representative who was on their side, not on the payroll.
Alison Coombs is an at-large Aurora city council member.
Alison Coombs and Juan Marcano campaigned side by side wearing the red rose of the Democratic Socialists of America. Now Coombs is attacking another Democrat just to make Marcano’s wife, Aly DeWills-Marcano, look reasonable — something anyone who’s heard her at an Aurora Council meeting knows isn’t true. This editorial reads less like Coombs’ work and more like Marcano’s usual political spin. It’s a cheap shot and a reminder of how little integrity this political circle actually shows.
I watch her on Aurora TV at City Council and she seems incredibly reasonable to me. Wheel chairs need ramps and homeless people need homes. What isn’t unreasonable about that?
Councilman Juan was the best City Councilman I’ve ever had, so if his wife is half as good as him, count me in!
Also WOW it’s so sexist to assume a very capable and eloquent woman is being controlled by a man. If you watched Councilwoman Coombs on Aurora TV at Council meetings you would know that she’s very passionate and sheds light on important things like ICE terrorizing our neighborhoods all the time. This is her work and its good work.
I can’t believe that a Rep did this and that the Democrats are supporting her even though she did this. It makes me want to leave the Democrats. Can somebody explain to me WHY they appointed someone with this history? Especially RIGHT NOW, when ICE is terrorizing our streets and Trump is paying them?
Thanks to Allison Coombs for shining a light on this. I wouldn’t have known if not for her.
Establishment Dems don’t like to have folks who actually rock the boat in office. When the appointment last year happened, an establishment dem the local precinct officers really liked put their thumb on the scale. And the precinct officers never thought of Aly DeWills-Marcano as a whole person and not just Juan Marcano’s wife.
A lot of folks don’t see how far to the right the overton window has moved. But with what’s going on in our nation now, we need people who won’t just play nice – we need people who will speak out against injustice, who will make the waves that need waving, and will be able to work with a diverse group of people. People who won’t just talk about changing things, but will actually do the work to make it happen. That’s Aly DeWills-Marcano.
Interesting — the Sentinel deleted my earlier comment criticizing Alison Coombs’ op-ed. For those who missed it: Coombs and Juan Marcano ran together under the Democratic Socialists of America banner. Now she’s publishing an attack piece that conveniently makes Marcano’s wife, Aly DeWills-Marcano, look reasonable — though anyone who’s seen her behavior at Aurora Council meetings knows better.
Aurora deserves open debate, not selective censorship of viewpoints that question political insiders. If the Sentinel can’t tolerate fair criticism, that says more about their bias than about the message they’re hiding.
Your comment wasn’t deleted, it was under review – most news sources have to do that if they allow commenting at all. And I’m grateful the Sentinel does. you can see your original comment is up and see that “Susan B” responded to it.
Your comment is still there, friend. It’s now there twice. It just takes a couple hours for all comments to post. You’re not persecuted, you’re making up a victim complex. Chill out.
It continues to amaze me how any Aurora citizen can believe in any opinions of this young, self centered, lesbian Marxist who has an outspoken opinion on anything and everything that has to do with Denver, the USA and even her home in Aurora.
If you want an opinion on Mrs. Marcano, make up your own mind by watching the Public Wants to be Heard section of the City Council Meetings both before and after the Council business. For months both she and her husband speak every meeting at least twice. You can learn the Socialist way of doing business, if you are so inclined. She’s campaigning. See if she deserves your vote.
The hateful, hysterical Aly Marcano may be the only one who makes me feel sympathy for the egomaniacal, always-picked-last doughboy Juan Antonio Marcano.
Whoa, what did she do that was hateful and hysterical?
Go back to the recorded City Council meetings while her husband was in office — and see for yourself the rhetoric that got her hoisted on her own petard from a cushy job in Jason Crow’s office. I’m not your research department.
Whoa, what did she do that was hateful and hysterical?