Authorities are searching for three men who escaped from the Immigrant Detention Facility in Aurora on Sunday.
“They scaled a 15-foot chain link fence and overcame a wall in the recreation area and escaped from there,” said Alethea Smock, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.
One of the escapees is 23-year-old Amilcar Aguilar-Hernandez from El Salvador. He is a suspect in a rape case in Fort Carson and has a criminal conviction for felony trespassing.
The other two men, Douglas Amaya-Arriaga and Carlos Perez-Rodriguez, are both 18 and from Honduras. They have no prior criminal history in the United States.
Now all three men are wanted on federal criminal warrants related to the case, and mugshots have been released.
“Typically we don’t release mugshots, so this is kind of a first for us,” Smock said adding that in her eight-month tenure there had been no escapes. “This is unusual.”
Smock said that details on how the men were able to escape from the facility are unknown, but the investigation is ongoing. Aurora and Denver police departments assisted in the initial search of the surrounding neighborhood.
In recent months, the detention facility in Aurora has been under scrutiny after mumps and chickenpox outbreaks were reported, and Rep. Jason Crow attempted to visit the facility unannounced and was turned away.
Most recently, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General made an unannounced visit to the ICE processing center in Aurora and reported multiple violations.
The facility is run by a private prison company GEO Group and is home to more than 1,000 ICE detainees. The detention center can house up to 1,532 people.
