The Denver area's immigration detention center has added 432 new beds to the facility and expects to have them nearly filled by the end of the week.
The Denver Post reports that the private company that runs the Aurora facility, The GEO Group, opened a remodeled annex to house the new beds last month.
In a statement, the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Denver field office, Jeffrey Lynch, said there were 256 people housed in the annex as of Jan. 31. He said another 128 were expected to arrive within the following week.
The facility can now house up to 1,532 people.
The expansion, first reported by Westword, follows a 20 percent increase in the number of immigration arrests in the Denver region, which includes Colorado and Wyoming.
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