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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Coloradans Rally for Hunger Strikers in Detention; Protests Spread

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Tuesday, December 8, 2015   

DENVER - Advocates for immigrants' rights are gathering today outside the GEO Group detention center in Aurora in support of detainees whom they say have joined a hunger strike that now includes more than 100 people in six states.

Paromita Shah, an attorney and associate director of the National Lawyers Guild, said people who followed the rules and presented themselves at the border seeking asylum continue to be held captive, some for as long as two years.

"We're seeing the detention of families who are fleeing persecution from places where there's just such awful political violence that's occurring," she said, "and what I really hope America could stand behind is that people should not be subjected to indefinite detention."

She said the detainees want an end to deportation and indefinite detentions, improved conditions in detention and a rollback of Congress' mandate that ICE fill 34,000 beds each night. GEO issued a statement Monday denying that detainees are on strike and contending that the facility routinely scores high in inspections by the American Correctional Association.

Shah said asylum seekers who pass tests demonstrating a "credible fear" of returning to their home countries can end up in a holding pattern as they await their chance to appear before an immigration judge. Before ICE's bed quota, Shah said, applicants were released into the community, since people who want to remain in the country pose no flight risk. She said the new policy can leave taxpayers on the hook for as much as $250 a night per detainee.

"Detention is a $2 billion industry," she said. "I think what we find troubling on our end is that, when there's private prisons involved, prisons expect to make a buck over the number of people that are detained in the facility."

Shah said hunger strikes are taking place at some 10 facilities across Alabama, California, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas. Strikers in Orange County won a promise of release on Friday.

In Aurora, supporters planned to gather at 10 a.m. today outside the GEO center at 3130 N. Oakland St. in Aurora.


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