After a chaotic 2025 escape from Aurora's privately run ICE jail, city police say they have quietly torn up their old playbook and written a new one. In a briefing to the city council on Monday, Chief Todd Chamberlain said Aurora police have rewritten how officers respond to calls from the GEO-run immigration detention center, aiming to clear up confusion about when cops roll out and to put public safety, not immigration enforcement, at the center of every decision. The shift comes after months of public back and forth between local officials and federal immigration authorities over who knew what and when after the March 18, 2025 escape.
Timeline from police records
According to an internal timeline released by the Aurora Police Department, the GEO facility at 3130 Oakland St. lost power at about 9:30 p.m. on March 18, 2025. That outage triggered an emergency head count, which allegedly showed two people missing at around 12:35 a.m. The department says ICE did not contact Aurora dispatch until roughly 2:30 a.m., a delay that meant the incident no longer met the existing memorandum of understanding definition of a “hot” escape. Instead of a full perimeter response, the escape was handled through standard follow-up procedures.
Federal account and fallout
Federal Homeland Security officials initially told reporters that local authorities had been alerted right away and chose not to help, a claim that quickly drew public criticism and amped up an already heated political debate, according to The Colorado Sun. As the search unfolded, state and federal leaders traded public statements over who dropped the ball, while community groups seized on the moment to demand tougher oversight of the privately run GEO facility.
Agreement rewritten to prioritize public safety
At a March 23 study session, Chamberlain told council the department had revised its memorandum of understanding with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, stripping out rigid “hot” and “cold” escape labels and instead requiring supervisors to size up each incident in real time, a shift detailed by Sentinel Colorado. The updated language is meant to spell out that Aurora officers will respond based on immediate risk to the public, not on a detainee’s immigration status or the civil nature of federal custody.
Legal limits on local cooperation
City officials noted that Colorado law already limits how local police can hold people on civil immigration detainers, a legal backdrop that helped drive the push to clarify the MOU, according to The Colorado Sun. Even when federal partners ask for help, municipal departments are required to balance state law with any immediate public safety concerns before committing officers or other resources.
APD's message: safety, not immigration
“The Aurora Police Department is available to assist our federal partners with active public safety emergencies,” officials said, underscoring that “as a municipal law enforcement agency, we do not enforce federal immigration law,” in comments reported by Denver7. Chamberlain told the council the revised language is designed to avoid the confusion that swirled around last year’s escape and to give supervisors more flexibility to react to fast-changing information from the detention center.
What residents should know
City leaders say the new MOU keeps Aurora officers out of federal immigration enforcement while locking in a clear, rapid response any time an incident at the detention facility presents an immediate danger to the public. The update grew directly out of the March 18, 2025, escape during a power outage at the GEO-run jail on Oakland Street and mirrors wider statewide tensions over how much local agencies should cooperate with federal immigration authorities, as reported by Sentinel Colorado.
Officials told the council they plan to release documentation and response timelines whenever they can, so future disputes over who was notified and when are settled with records instead of headlines. They also pressed federal partners to stick to agreed-upon reporting protocols. City materials state that the Aurora Police Department’s written statement and related records, already posted by the city, formed the backbone of the council’s public discussion of the escape and the new agreement.
