Thirty miles northeast of downtown Denver — where the Front Range loosens its grip, subdivisions give way to open fields and pickups outnumber Teslas — is the town of Hudson.

Population 1,652.

Hudson still feels like the kind of place where everybody knows the restaurant they’ll meet at for dinner.

But it’s not at the Pepper Pod anymore.

The restaurant closed earlier this year after 114 years in business, leaving behind more than an empty building.

Locals describe the Pepper Pod as the town’s living room — a place where friends and family gathered over work lunches and celebrated birthdays, weddings and retirements. The community’s memories linger there, like the weathered green-and-yellow sign that still greets travelers on Interstate 76.

The changes in the town have only accelerated in the six months since.

Plans are in the works for a new Bandimere Speedway on the outskirts of town, continuing the 300 miles-per-hour drag racing tradition the family built in Morrison.

Hudson’s police department has seen calls for service nearly triple since 2019 as it responds to the community’s growing needs with the same number of patrol officers it’s had since then: six.

And now, the Hudson Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison that closed more than a decade ago, is poised to reopen as a federal immigration facility named Big Horn Detention Center that could double the state’s detention capacity.

In the two weeks since a contract was announced, the Big Horn Detention Center has drawn protesters and sparked a lawsuit against the Town of Hudson, alleging the proposed facility violates the municipality’s zoning laws.

Hudson Mayor Pro-Tem Matt Cole dismissed the lawsuit as a distraction.

“It’s wasting taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Locals appeared caught off guard by the fuss over the detention facility.

Alea Swank, a junior at Weld Central High School in Keenesburg, said she didn’t believe the new detention center would generate much attention.

“I just don’t think it’ll be a big deal here like Denver would be,” Swank said.

Just a few tables away at Ben’s Brick Oven Pizza — about 4 miles from the detention facility — Amber Stacks had much the same reaction.

“I don’t think there will be protests,” Stacks said. “You’ve got a lot of simple folks that are trying to farm and live their life out here.”

Hours later, nearly 200 protesters — largely from the Denver metro area — descended on Hudson, turning the detention center into the town’s biggest story and bringing a level of attention few residents appeared to expect.

From the local chamber of commerce to the town manager, the messaging has been similar: Hudson has no control over federal operations.

“Talk to your congressman if you want to fix federal law,” said state Rep. Carlos Barron, R-Weld County.

Elected in 2024, Barron immigrated to the United States from Mexico as a child and describes himself as a supporter of legal immigration. He said he hasn’t received calls from constituents about the detention center — only from people outside the district.

Hudson Town Manager Bryce Lange and Interim Police Chief Kevin Jamison declined to speak to The Denver Gazette.

But, in emails, Lange previously acknowledged the controversy.

“We understand that immigration enforcement policies are a topic of national debate, but the Town’s role is not to determine immigration enforcement,” Lange has said.

Will new detention center boost local economy?

Hudson and Denver are separated by about 30 miles, but they’re also miles apart politically, economically and, to a lesser extent, demographically.

“Once you get out of Denver, you kinda cross colors,” Stacks said.

The numbers bear that out.

Denver reliably votes blue. Hudson, red.

Yet Hudson is also more Latino than one might expect. About 35% of the town’s residents are Hispanic, compared with 28% in Denver.

Hudson’s economy is anchored by construction, manufacturing and educational services, according to Upstate Colorado Economic Development. Denver’s economy, by comparison, is driven by healthcare, aerospace and technology.

The median household income is $88,623 in Hudson, compared with $94,718 in Denver.

It’s difficult to gauge what reopening the prison will mean for Hudson economically after sitting vacant for more than a decade.

Residents said that once the detention center opens, employees and visitors will contribute to the local economy, pumping gas in their vehicles or stopping at a restaurant for lunch — if the former prison were any indication.

“I guarantee you that there was some type of revenue coming in,” Cole said of the prison, anticipating that detention center would generate local spending, too.

When the prison shut its doors in 2013, then Town Administrator Joe Racine told The Greeley Tribune that about 20 Hudson residents had worked there.

A lot has changed since then.

Hudson didn’t have a police department when the prison was operating.

Cole argues the town itself is in a stronger position now.

“We’re in better condition than we were then,” he said, citing the new police department, a full-time paid fire department and additional water sources.

Whether those improvements translate into broader economic gains is less clear.

Research on the economic impact of detention centers is not decisive.

Studies have found that state-run prisons in rural counties have a limited effect on local economies, with unemployment rates between prison and non-prison towns essentially identical. There is little evidence in the research to suggest that U.S. prisons contribute to job growth.

“The consensus is that the facilities have no ‘boomtown effect,’” Chloe East, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in an email. “While the facility itself does create some additional jobs, there is no increase in employment in any other sector in the local area.”

East has studied the economic impact of mass deportations for more than a decade.

She does expect — based on her previous research — that removing immigrant workers through detention and deportation will negatively impact the local labor market.

That’s what keeps Maria Alma Gandara up at night.

“I hope it doesn’t affect my business,” Gandara said. “I’m so nervous.”

Gandara owns Carniceria La Mexicana on Main Street, which opened nearly 25 years ago.

With about 80% of her clientele Latino, Gandara worries the detention center will curtail business because customers will be too afraid to shop there.

Not everyone shares that worry.

Ben Skoglund doesn’t like seeing empty buildings around town.

He still counts the town’s only grocery store closing a couple of years back as a “big disappointment.”

But Skoglund is quick to rattle off the businesses that have recently set up shop — or soon will. When he built his business, Ben’s Oven Fired Pizza, just off I-76 more than a decade ago, nothing else was there.

Skoglund said he doesn’t know if the detention center will result in more sales.

“For me, I’m happy to have the foot traffic,” Skoglund said.

‘There ain’t nothin’ we can do’

Protesters have made a ritual of attending town meetings since the Hudson Correctional Facility made the candidate list for a new detention center last year. A handful have attended every meeting.

Most are out-of-towners, said Cole, the mayor pro-tem, noting in all that time he’s only recognized two people as being from Hudson.

Cole said many residents have stayed away because protesters have treated them poorly, including calling them “Nazis.”

“There ain’t nothin’ we can do about it. So, quit bugging us about it,” Cole said.

The detention center will be operated by the Geo Group, a company that runs more than a dozen detention facilities across the United States, including one in Aurora. Announced earlier this month, the five-year deal between GEO and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hudson is worth up to $528.6 million.

Once opened, the facility would expand Colorado’s immigration detention capacity to about 2,700 beds.

GEO has faced a string of allegations and lawsuits from advocacy groups involving medical care, detainee treatment, staffing, use of force and compliance with detention standards at facilities across the country. The company has denied these allegations. Litigation is still pending in some cases.

Earlier this month, a Geo employee in Aurora who shot a protester in the foot was charged with first-degree assault. Geo has denied public health officials access to the detention facility for a tuberculosis investigation that has hindered efforts to limit exposure, local officials said.

The old prison, called Hudson Correctional Facility, itself had seen a riot, an inmate attack on the warden, a prisoner’s drug overdose death and a female guard’s conviction for the sexual assault of a male inmate, according to reporting by The Greeley Tribune.

Geo officials have declined to comment about the Hudson facility.

U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who has long expressed worries about detention facility conditions, oversight and transparency, questioned the remoteness of the Big Horn Detention Center in a letter earlier this year to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The Hudson location lacks comparable access to public transportation, is farther from legal service providers and advocacy organizations, and would impose added travel time and costs on attorneys and family members seeking to visit or meet with those detained,” Hickenlooper wrote on Feb. 24.

“These obstacles risk delaying legal proceedings, limiting access to counsel, and undermining detainees’ ability to maintain communication with family members,” he said.

The Hudson Correctional Facility was a privately owned medium-security prison that housed Alaska inmates from 2009 to 2013. It has sat vacant for more than a decade on the eastern edge of Hudson in U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s district.

The Windsor Republican declined to comment.

A spokesperson said that Boebert is still trying to gather information on the timing and staffing of the facility. She wrote a letter to ICE officials, who have not yet responded.

During his presidential campaign, President Donald Trump promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. The expansion comes as the Trump administration has sought to dramatically increase the number of deportations under an ambitious crackdown on illegal immigration.

Administration officials have set a goal of 3,000 arrests per day and they are expanding the nation’s detention capacity to support that effort.