NEWSSen. John Hickenlooper Says ICE's Treatment of Colorado Priest Is a 'Low-Rent Form of Terrorism' After Detainee's Release
Hickenlooper ripped ICE for its cruelty toward the released 78-year-old priest
Oct. 23 2026, Updated 3:38 p.m. ET
Senator John Hickenlooper called out ICE's treatment of a 78-year-old Ugandan priest after the man revealed he lost the ability to walk without assistance in the agency's custody.
"They want the misery of one person to be known by the others," Hickenlooper said. "It's like a low-rent form of terrorism to make people so scared that they will self-deport."
ICE Denies Released Detainee a Wheelchair
Hickenlooper accused the prison of failing to deliver on its promises.
Edward Nalwamba was recently released from ICE detention after 13 months on October 20. He said that he could walk and exercise when he entered a GEO-operated facility in 2025, but had to be carried out at his release because staff would not allow him to use a wheelchair.
Hickenlooper, a Democratic senator from Colorado, celebrated Nalwamba's release on X but emphasized ICE's cruelty in its treatment of the Ugandan man, who had not committed a crime.
"He fled persecution in Uganda for his pro-democracy beliefs and has spent decades living and preaching in America. ICE detained him for 13 months," Hickenlooper wrote. "Today, ahead of his release, our staff visited the detention facility and asked GEO staff to let him call his caretakers and provide a wheelchair to get him to his ride home. He cannot walk. GEO staff assured us they would do both. They failed to deliver on either."
Nalwamba Immediately Received Medical Attention
Nalwamba said his health was ignored in the prison.
Nalwamba alleges he received substandard medical care while in the prison facility. After he was released, he visited a medical facility in Denver, where he underwent bloodwork, a chest X-ray and testing for tuberculosis. The results of the tuberculosis tests were unknown when CBS spoke to him earlier this week.
"Sometimes I had to send messages everywhere to say, please, I need care, I need medication," he told the publication.
After Denver Health gave him extensive tests, he said, "They want to make sure that they have checked everything. I wish GEO would do the same."
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'A Certain Level of Cruelty Is Intentional'
Hickenlooper said ICE's 'cruelty' was 'intentional.'
Nalwamba further alleges that GEO staff would allow him to ride a wheelchair to the gates of the facility, but not to his ride, leaving him without a way to reach a car once he left the prison grounds. Fellow detainees had to carry him to a vehicle.
"I felt joy and relief that he's out, but I could not understand why there wasn't a wheelchair," Hickenlooper told CBS Colorado. "He's lost 30 pounds. He walked in. He can't walk now. The guy is almost 79 years old. It's hard to see how can we improve the situation there when it seems like a certain level of cruelty is intentional, that they want people to self-deport; therefore they want to make them miserable."
Tom Homan Recently Praised ICE's Standard of Detention
Tom Homan thinks ICE prisons are doing a great job.
Hickenlooper called for Congress to have greater control over conditions in ICE facilities.
"Congress has to take away that power from the president, has to be explicit that ICE no longer has the right to run these detention facilities the way they've been running them," he said.
His comments come weeks after Border Czar Tom Homan said ICE facilities had the "highest detention standards in industry," despite the death rate in ICE detention spiking under Donald Trump.
