At Least ICE’s Prison Guards Get Charged for Assaulting Protesters

Much has rightfully been made of how hard it is to charge federal immigration agents from the likes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Border Patrol in state courts with crimes when they violate the rights of (or outright assault or kill) Americans. Thanks to the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which affirms federal law as the “supreme” law of the land, and empowers federal agents upholding those laws as a result, it makes it easy for the federal government to stonewall attempts to punish these agents for misdeeds, and generally slows everything down—look at the ICE agent in Minnesota, for instance, who spent a month as a fugitive with an interstate warrant for his arrest (and no state assistance from the feds) before he was finally apprehended. Given what we now know about the number of ICE and CBP agents with serious criminal histories of sexual and violent crimes, their insistence that they have bulletproof status is especially infuriating.

But contractors who are merely working for federal agencies? They might playact as invincible gestapo as well, but they don’t seem to be afforded the same “we can do anything we want to U.S. citizens and laugh about it” privileges, and some of them have been satisfyingly paying the price recently with criminal charges in response to their assaults on Americans. Today, a guard at an ICE prison/detention facility in Aurora, Colorado became the latest important piece of precedent: Brandon Booth was charged by the district attorney’s office with multiple felonies (first-degree assault and attempted assault in the first degree) for discharging his gun at anti-ICE protesters outside his facility and injuring a woman. His charges carry potential sentences of 10 to 32 years in prison.

More details emerge from the latest ICE (contractor) attempted homicide against a protestor outside of the Aurora concentration camp. www.denverpost.com/2026/07/23/a…

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— Scott Horton (@robertscotthorton.bsky.social) 12:23 PM · Jul 23, 2026

The 42-year-old Brandon Booth is an employee of GEO Group, a private prison operator that is contracted by ICE to run immigrant detention facilities in several states. The incident he decided to throw his life away over last week, meanwhile, reportedly began with a “verbal confrontation” or jeering between GEO employees who were entering the grounds of the Aurora ICE facility, and protesters who were taking photos of the workers’ vehicles. Booth apparently decided what this situation needed was a little deadly escalation, so he exited his vehicle and fired a single shot from his personally owned handgun, according to the Aurora police. One woman, 22-year-old Emma Landis, was hit in the foot and went to the hospital for treatment. Booth scuttled from the scene but was–to the credit of local police–arrested shortly thereafter. Landis was thankfully not seemingly hurt badly, and was back protesting at the facility days later with her foot in a cast. She said the following: “We were on the sidewalk protesting, and they were mocking us and threatening us. And as we were crossing the street, that was when he shot me. Never in a million years did I think that would happen.”

GEO Group, meanwhile, promptly seemed to be throwing its employee under the bus, with the following statement: “We are aware that an off-duty Aurora ICE Processing Center employee was involved in a shooting incident. This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

If the name “GEO Group” sounds familiar, however, it might be because Brandon Booth isn’t the only one of their employees to recently find himself charged after getting annoyed at protesters and lashing out at them with deadly force. Just a few weeks ago, on June 21, a group of anti-ICE protesters were marching and chanting outside of New Jersey’s infamous Delaney Hall ICE detention facility, the place where Haitian immigrant Jean Wilson Brutus died only five hours after he arrived, when a GEO Group employee decided to run down one of the flag-waving protesters—again a woman—with his cherry red muscle car. Warning in advance that this clip is rather shocking to watch.

ICE runs over woman — today.

Delaney Hall in NJ.

Word is she is ok. — FUCK ICE!

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— Outspoken™️ (@out5p0ken.bsky.social) 3:18 PM · Jun 21, 2026

As in Colorado, however, the GEO Group employee, Thomas K. Brown, was soon arrested by local police and charged with assault. The woman struck by the car, meanwhile, Alex James, has said that she intends to sue both the federal government and GEO Group for the employee’s actions in intentionally striking her with his car. The GEO Group certainly has money to spend–our federal government is paying the company $1 billion to operate Delaney Hall alone for a 15-year period.

“Rather than [tell us] to get out of the way, that person decided that pushing me out of the way with their red sports car was the better idea,” James told The Jersey Vindicator. “Then it got to the gate and they let it through, despite everyone trying to stop the car and ask questions about why the driver decided to hit a woman waving a flag.”

I know my knee-jerk response probably shouldn’t be to give all that much credit for local police and state attorneys general doing their literal jobs as written in charging people who have clearly assaulted American citizens, but it’s still a refreshingly direct contrast to how much full-fledged ICE and CBP agents have gotten away with, without facing formal charges. The killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, for instance, remain uncharged, although we hope that will eventually change once Minnesota’s state prosecutors overcome federal stonewalling and access/process all the crime scene evidence. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if you could simply see a crime and charge it, like seemingly happened here? That’s the United States I want to live in; the one where sure, you might get shot in the foot by an immigration prison guard because he’s annoyed you’re making noise outside his workplace, but he at least ruins his own life in the process for absolutely no reason! Excuse me while I wipe a patriotic tear from my eye.