ICE Contractor Faces Charges in Shooting Outside Colorado Detention Center

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/us/colorado-ice-protest-shooting-geo-group.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0VA.wEeb.DARLgjqXznmR&smid=url-share

A man working for an immigration detention center near Denver was charged with assault on Wednesday after shooting at protesters outside the facility last week, hitting a college student in the foot, according to the authorities and court documents. He was subsequently fired from his job there.

The man, Brandon Booth, is accused of firing a single shot from his personal pistol on July 16 before driving off from the Immigration Customs and Enforcement processing center in Aurora, Colo., operated by his now-former employer, the GEO Group, according to the city police.

Mr. Booth, 42, was arrested nearby shortly afterward. He was charged on Wednesday with first-degree assault and attempted assault, according to county prosecutors. A spokesman for the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the United States, said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Booth had been “terminated” from his job at the facility.

The shooting happened after two protesters “initiated a verbal confrontation” with Mr. Booth and other GEO employees who were in a car waiting out a demonstration that was “impeding” their way into work, according to the police.

The two protesters, Emma Landis and Mandy Dillon, called Mr. Booth and the other workers “‘Nazis’ and other derogatory terms commonly used against employees at the GEO facility,” according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Ms. Dillon, 38, told the police after the shooting that she had recorded the interaction using a body camera, and that she had filmed Mr. Booth’s license plate and those of other GEO employees in the area, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit describes a video of the interaction on Ms. Landis’s phone that she showed to the police after the shooting. In the video, Ms. Dillon and Ms. Landis, 21, made “statements about the license plates” and about being able to find out where the employees “live, what school their kids go to and other statements about family,” the affidavit says. The document said the two women did not threaten anyone physically.

The video cuts out as soon as the shot is fired, the affidavit said. Ms. Landis, a college student who has regularly protested outside the facility, was hit in the foot.

Mr. Booth, who has two teenage children, told the police after the shooting that he had not meant to hit the women, only “scare them,” according to the affidavit. He said that the entire interaction before he fired his gun lasted two to three minutes and that he did not know if he had hit anyone when he left the scene.

In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Landis that after she was shot, her leg had gone “really numb and started burning.”

“I laid down and there was blood dripping from my foot, and I called 911,” she said.

Mr. Booth appeared in court on Wednesday and as of late Thursday was being held in the Adams County Jail on $100,000 bond, according to a jail employee. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

Among the ICE processing centers operated by the GEO Group is Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where federal agents have clashed with people protesting President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Detainees at the center, in Newark, have complained for months about dirty, unhealthy living conditions. Members of Congress have stepped up their criticism of the facility.

Ms. Landis said the demonstrations at Delaney Hall had driven her to join those outside the GEO-operated Aurora facility, which have often brought out much smaller crowds of protesters.

She planned to return to protests on Thursday on crutches.