BI Inc., a Boulder-based company that has operated Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternatives to Detention program for more than two decades, has recently expanded its services tied to federal immigration monitoring. The expansion comes during what has been a strong financial year for its parent company, the private prison corporation GEO Group.
The company’s growing role in federal immigration enforcement has drawn renewed attention locally.
On Feb. 28, local activists plan to protest again outside BI Inc.’s Gunbarrel headquarters, calling on the company to end its contracts with ICE and urging local governments, including Boulder County, to end their own agreements with the firm. The demonstration follows other recent protests in Boulder opposing ICE and companies seen by activists as connected to federal immigration enforcement, including campus activism at CU over its relationship with Key Lime Air, a regional airline that contracts with ICE for deportation flights.
BI Inc. employs more than 1,000 people nationwide and designs and manufactures its monitoring technology at its Boulder headquarters, according to its website.
“I live in Boulder County, and when I talk to people about BI, most people have no idea what I’m talking about,” said Gina McAfee, a statewide coordinator for Colorado Immigrant Protection Teams, which is helping organize the protest. “So the biggest goal for the protest is to raise general public awareness in the Boulder area that this company exists, what it does and how it supports ICE’s ‘brutal mission,'” she said.
Colorado Immigrant Protection Teams is organizing the demonstration alongside the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker nonprofit, and South Boulder County Indivisible, part of a national activist network.
BI Inc. did not respond to requests for comment about its federal contracts, monitoring programs or local criticism.
For 21 years, BI Inc. has held contracts with ICE to provide ankle monitors, case management and location monitoring via phone calls and apps for its Alternatives to Detention program. ICE detention data show the program monitors about 180,000 undocumented immigrants, many of whom enter it after being released from detention. Beyond immigration enforcement, BI Inc. also provides monitoring technology for federal, state and local criminal justice agencies, including Boulder County.
Last fall, BI Inc. secured a contract involving efforts to locate and verify the whereabouts of certain undocumented immigrants, including through in-person visits by plainclothes employees, under a service often referred to as “skip-tracing.” The $121 million deal is part of a broader set of contracts ICE has issued to at least 10 private companies, according to government records.
Growth tied to immigration enforcement
BI Inc. was founded in 1978 and initially developed electronic monitoring for cattle before shifting “from cows to cons” in the early 1980s, a BI Inc. spokesperson told The Washington Post in 1990.
The company is owned by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation that operates 50 detention facilities in the U.S., including nine ICE detention facilities, and invested $70 million in 2024 to expand “services to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal government,” according to a GEO Group year-end report.
As immigration detention levels rose over the past year — from roughly 41,000 to 68,000 people, according to ICE data — GEO Group reported nearly eight times as much income as in 2024.
“In 2025, we made significant progress towards meeting our financial and strategic objectives,” GEO CEO and founder George C. Zoley said in the report. “We entered into new or expanded contracts, which are expected to generate up to approximately $520 million in annualized revenues, making it the most successful year for new business wins in our Company’s history.”
Most of those contracts were with ICE.
Company investor materials also describe electronic monitoring services, including those operated by BI Inc., as a key area for future growth.
Last June, ICE began directing agents to place ankle monitors on people enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program “whenever possible,” according to an internal memo obtained by the The Washington Post. While overall enrollment has remained near 180,000 since 2023, the number wearing ankle monitors has risen to about 42,000 this month, the highest level since 2019.
Boulder County contract documents suggest replacement costs for individual monitors can exceed $1,500.
Local connections
Locally, the Boulder County Jail has contracted with BI Inc. since at least 2017 for ankle monitors, location tracking apps and home monitoring systems. The current contract, valued at up to about $15,000, runs through May 3, 2027. Activists have urged the county to end it.
County officials say the county’s use of the company’s technology is separate from federal immigration enforcement and that local law enforcement does not participate in such enforcement.
“At any given time, around 40 BI ankle monitors are in use by Boulder County Community Justice Services. Electronic monitoring is an essential part of the county’s commitment to alternatives to incarceration,” county spokesperson Deanna Byar said. “These services are managed entirely by county staff and are not connected to immigration enforcement or federal programs.”
In 2025, the county reviewed bids from three vendors and selected BI Inc. based on pricing and data accuracy, Byar said.
In 2019, activists also met with the Boulder Chamber to raise concerns that BI Inc.’s values did not align with the chamber’s. The company remains a member. Chamber CEO John Tayer told Boulder Reporting Lab the group had “a very productive conversation” with activists at the time and provided them with a contact at BI Inc. to share concerns.
That same year, following protests, the City of Boulder stopped allowing off-duty police to contract with BI Inc., according to Boulder Beat. The city has also said it does not invest in private prison groups, including GEO Group.
Criticism and concerns
ICE describes its Alternatives to Detention program as a cheaper option than holding people in detention facilities, saying it helps increase court appearance rates while allowing immigrants to remain in their communities. The program costs about $4.20 per person per day, compared with roughly $152 per day for detention.
A BI Inc. job listing describes the program as combining case management with supervision technology and connections to community partners that help meet participants’ basic needs.
Advocates and watchdog groups, however, argue the program is still punitive in practice and does not reduce detention. They say electronic monitoring is often unnecessary and inhumane, noting that most immigrants attend their court hearings without it and that most people placed in monitoring or detention programs have no criminal records.
Advocacy groups have also raised concerns about BI Inc.’s ankle monitors and case management practices. A 2016 civil rights complaint described medical issues linked to the devices, including bleeding and electric shocks. In other cases, doctors have struggled to get immigrants to remove their monitors for emergency surgeries because they were not permitted to do so.
Anonymous accounts gathered in Colorado by the American Friends Service Committee and partner groups, including research McAfee helped compile, say some immigrants reported trouble finding work or housing because of monitor noises, said they were threatened by BI Inc. caseworkers, and were barred from bringing advocates or lawyers to meetings.
McAfee said advocates want clearer medical guidance and broader reforms to the program.
“We should just be supporting these people, helping them to come into our communities and giving them support,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do from a moral standpoint.”