Health & Medicine · The Record
Six weeks after Adams County's tuberculosis order, Colorado calls a state health order an option
Adams County says the facility has not provided the information its investigation needs, and CDPHE says it still has not received access. The only exposure count in circulation - 61 people - came from the operator's own contact investigation.
Community advocates gathered at the Colorado Capitol on Monday, steps from Gov. Jared Polis' office, and issued what they called a people's public health order - a symbolic document stating that the governor's office and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have lost the signers' trust through inaction and a lack of urgency, Colorado Newsline reported. Maureen Daly, a retired pediatrician who spoke at the rally, said the demand was that the state health department and the governor's office use every power they have, including issuing a state public health order, to hold the GEO Group to account.
The record underneath that demand is short and dated. The Adams County Health Department issued a Public Health Order on June 25, 2026, requiring compliance with Colorado public health laws, according to the department's tuberculosis questions-and-answers page. The same document says the department is aware of one laboratory-confirmed case of active TB disease at the immigration detention center in Aurora, and that it has not been able to do the work the order was meant to enable: "We have been unable to complete an investigation because the facility has not provided the information."
What the state says
Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of CDPHE, listened to speakers and spoke with rally attendees for about 15 minutes, Newsline reported. Ryan said the department once had a cooperative relationship with the company that runs the facility and could enter it to inspect and to help with disease control, and that about six months ago the company stopped working with the state. "It's an unprecedented situation to have a federal contractor not respond to a public health order," she said.
Ryan also said a CDPHE-issued public health order would carry the same authority and that she is unsure it would force compliance, though it would have the enforcement weight of the attorney general's office behind it, according to Newsline. The account does not state what authority the comparison is being drawn against.
In a statement, Polis spokesperson Ally Sullivan said the governor's office is actively monitoring the situation and has repeatedly requested information from the company. "The state is considering next steps including the option of a public health order should it be necessary," she wrote. In the same statement, Sullivan said GEO asserts there is no active case or outbreak at the facility, that the state hopes that is true, that it lacks critical information needed to be sure, and that it is asking the company to work with Adams County Health or CDPHE to resolve the matter promptly. She did not answer a question about whether the state worries about possible litigation over a second public health order, Newsline reported.
What the record shows
Six weeks after the county order, Newsline reported that the private company that runs the facility had still not allowed health officials the access needed to complete an investigation required by law. A July 17 deadline for CDPHE to receive facility access and required information passed without either, Newsline reported in a separate account. Sentinel Colorado reported that the state department still lacks entry to the facility and the full information it would need to work out who may have been exposed and to see that those people are tested and treated.
The only count of exposure in public circulation did not come from a health department. Staff from Rep. Jason Crow's office, along with Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, visited the facility on July 15; according to their report as relayed by Newsline, GEO and ICE stated the facility had "no active tuberculosis cases" with one person under monitoring, and a contact investigation run by GEO had identified 61 people exposed to the initial case, placed in a precautionary cohort. Sentinel Colorado reported the same figure. In statements to reporters, ICE has said the infected person was treated, cleared and removed from the country and that there are no other cases in the detention center, Newsline reported. The company is also suing the state over a new law that gives it increased health and safety inspection authority, Newsline reported; this piece describes noncompliance with the county's order and takes no position on whether that order binds a federal contractor.
Analysis: what the numbers can and cannot show
What follows is analysis, grounded in the sources cited above.
What is confirmed is narrow. Adams County reports one laboratory-confirmed case of active TB disease. One case is not an outbreak, and the department states plainly: "With what we know now, the risk to visitors remains low." The department also states that prolonged contact with a person who has TB is what carries the greatest risk of exposure - which is precisely why a contact investigation carried out by health officials, rather than described secondhand, is the thing that would settle who needs testing.
The people's order states that people recently released from the facility have reported that people are testing positive for tuberculosis through a skin test, Newsline reported. A positive skin test is not a diagnosis of active disease, and Newsline also reported that people who were recently infected may test negative at first. So the reported positives are not a case count, and the assurances relayed by GEO and ICE are not a clearance; only a completed investigation resolves either.
Note where the one exposure figure comes from. The 61 people exposed to the initial case were identified by GEO's own contact investigation, and the number reached the public through a congressional staff visit rather than through a health authority. The sole source of the exposure number is therefore the entity that has not provided access. That is not evidence the figure is wrong. It is a statement about what is checkable: nothing in the public record independently confirms it, and the investigation that would has not been completed.
One test, with a date. Prediction: as of Sept. 30, 2026, CDPHE will not have issued its own public health order covering the Aurora facility. The basis is the record above - a county order that has not produced access since June 25, a deadline that passed on July 17, and the state's own description of an order as an option should it be necessary. Readers can check the prediction against CDPHE announcements and Adams County's updates; if a state order issues before that date, the prediction is wrong.
What this piece did not do
This article was assembled from published records and reporting. The GEO Group's position appears here only through statements the company and ICE made to other outlets, and the state's position only through Ryan's remarks at the rally and Sullivan's written statement. Daily Pol has not put questions to the GEO Group, CDPHE or the governor's office for this article; comment requests are required before publication under this outlet's policy, and any response will be recorded and added.