An employee at Aurora’s immigration detention center shot a woman in the foot Thursday night as she walked away from him after a “verbal confrontation” that followed a weekly protest outside the facility, police said.

Brandon Booth, 42, is facing an attempted-murder charge in connection with the shooting, which left the victim with wounds that police said were not life-threatening.

Booth is employed by private-prison operator Geo Group, which is contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run the 1,500-bed detention center. He told Aurora police he had worked there for three years, according to his arrest affidavit.

Geo Group issued a statement saying Booth was off duty at the time of the shooting, which took place just before 7:30 p.m. “This individual has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, and we will fully cooperate with law enforcement.”

Officers with the Aurora Police Department arrested Booth on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault, felony menacing and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon after he fled the shooting in the 3100 block of North Nome Street. He is being held on $500,000 bail.

Before the shooting, Booth was waiting outside of his vehicle along Nome Street, along with other Geo Group employees, because the demonstration had stopped them from getting into the detention facility to go to work, according to the affidavit.

Two women walked by the group and started yelling at them, calling them “race traitors, Nazis and other derogatory terms commonly used against employees at the Geo facility,” Aurora police wrote in the affidavit.

The women shouted that they would run the employees’ license plates to find out where they lived and where their children attended school, according to the affidavit. Booth told police the women said they would “have people at (his) kids’ school.”

“Booth stated this threat regarding his children caused his anger level to reach ‘a 15 out of 10,’” Aurora detectives wrote in the affidavit.

Booth told investigators that he did not think the threats were viable or that his children were in immediate danger. He said he acted impulsively.

Police said Booth withdrew a “personally owned” pistol he was carrying in a cross-body bag. He walked into the middle of the street and shot at the women because he wanted to scare them, not wound them, and he tried to aim between them, Booth told police.

“Booth stated he is ‘a better shot’ than demonstrated and that if he had intended to hit someone, he would have,” Aurora detectives wrote.

After he fired, Booth told police, he realized “he had done some dumb (expletive),” and got into his Chevrolet Tahoe and drove away.

Aurora police and SWAT officers were on scene to monitor the protest and saw the shooting. Officers tied a tourniquet around the victim’s leg and pursued Booth as he fled. Police pulled over Booth and detained him near East 37th Avenue and Havana Street, less than 2 miles from the detention facility.

He was arrested and booked into the Adams County jail.

The bullet hit the woman in the back of her foot, according to the arrest affidavit. On Thursday night, Aurora police spokeswoman Gabby Easterwood described the injury as not life-threatening. The second woman was not hurt.

‘Not a good person at all’

In a statement Friday, Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain called the shooting “a tragedy on all fronts” and pledged to investigate the case with the same transparency and integrity as all other shootings.

“Violence of any kind will not be tolerated in Aurora. Constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society — violence is not,” Chamberlain said.

Destiny Winter, Booth’s former sister-in-law, said in an interview Friday that Booth has long been a bully. She filed for a protection order against him in 2015 after she said he slammed her into a wall during an argument, giving her a concussion that temporarily erased three days of her memories, court records show.

“This is not a good person at all,” she said. “This is not a person who does the right thing or respects boundaries, especially of women and kids. This is not a person who is willing to hold himself accountable for mistakes. This is, ‘I am going to get you back.’ Retaliation, invoking fear so people don’t speak up.”

There is no record that Booth was charged with a crime in connection with the 2015 incident. He has a limited criminal history in Colorado, court records show. Booth pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired, a misdemeanor, in 2010 and again in 2012. He was charged with careless driving in 2023 and pleaded guilty to lesser traffic offenses.

Winter said she has long fought to keep the man away from herself and her children.

“Very disrespectful, especially to women,” she said. “He’ll make threats about, ‘I’ll crush you like a chip.’ … Belittling, high and mighty, high ego is the personality and characteristics that I see.”

‘Out there protesting the system’

The attack took place shortly after a weekly protest ended outside the facility, said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Casa de Paz, a nonprofit near the ICE detention facility that works with detainees.

Loya was not at the protest but said she had spoken with people who were present. She provided a photo and brief video of the scene after the shooting, showing law enforcement cordoning off a street outside the building.

Loya said one of her staff members learned of the shooting about 7:40 p.m. while on a call with other advocates. The staff member then heard screams, Loya said.

Protesters regularly gather outside the detention center. The facility has been a lightning rod for protests, and it drew additional scrutiny this week amid a standoff with state and local health officials seeking to investigate a tuberculosis infection identified in a detainee last month.

Thursday was the first time an act of violence marred the vigils outside the detention center, said Jennifer Piper, program director for the American Friends Service Committee.

The protesters generally aren’t hostile toward the guards — who are working long hours and without adequate protective equipment during a possible tuberculosis outbreak — but want to hold Geo Group accountable for harm caused by understaffing, she said.

“We’re not out there to protest the guards themselves,” she said. “We’re out there protesting the system.”

On Friday, after Booth’s arrest, Casa de Paz’s Loya said the shooting raises further concerns about ICE’s new contract with Geo Group to reopen a former prison in Hudson, northeast of Denver, for use as a second major immigrant detention center in Colorado.

“We are deeply concerned that people who clearly don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with potential conflict are handling human lives, and they will expand to Hudson,” she said.

“Human life is not valued by this corporation or its employees.”

Denver Post staff writers Seth Klamann, Meg Wingerter and Elizabeth Hernandez contributed to this report.