When Mind Springs Health, the largest mental health provider in western Colorado, considered contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January, some in the Grand Junction community were alarmed.

Former CEO Dr. Nicholas D. Torres said phone calls poured in.

“There were some of our vendors that were telling us they were not going to work with us,” Torres said. “There were some places that said they weren't going to renew leases with us.”

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains someone, the agency is legally required to provide certain services, including medical and mental health care.

ICE needs private contractors to meet those needs, which ballooned when President Donald Trump began pushing the agency to arrest more undocumented immigrants than ever.

Mind Springs was typically filling only 30 of its 48 beds at West Springs Hospital, its inpatient facility in Grand Junction. Since ICE lacks infrastructure in western Colorado, the partnership would have filled Mind Springs’ extra beds with immigrant detainees.

But some immigrant advocates worried that if private companies like Mind Springs provide food, shelter and medical care, it could make detaining and deporting people easier.

“That’s their opinion,” Torres said. “We have no say in the actual detention process. We're strictly providing those acute mental health services.”

Private contracts with ICE are common across the U.S. A private prison based in Florida operates detention centers, a tech company from Colorado provides data analytics software, and an air travel company from New Mexico charters planes for deportation flights.

But since the agency started challenging migrants’ right to due process and sending them to prisons overseas, private companies may worry that a partnership is not worth the hassle.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration law professor at Ohio State University, said if there’s no contractor available for the price ICE wants to pay, “they have to offer a higher price.”

While Trump’s administration is working to increase funding for ICE, García Hernández said there’s always a breaking point.

“The more it costs to detain one person, the sooner that the federal government will get to the end of the line.”

However, John Fabbricatore, a former ICE field office director, disagrees when it comes to mandatory detention. Even as costs rise, he said ICE will always arrest and detain people involved in serious crimes or a “crime involving moral turpitude.”

Fabbricatore criticized community members who didn’t want Mind Springs to contract with ICE.

“What they actually protested against was providing care that is needed for people that are in a detained setting,” he said, adding that he thought community concerns deprived the local economy of some serious cash.

“Somewhere else in the United States is going to provide that service, and those people are going to be moved to that location.”

It won’t, however, be Grand Junction. Mind Springs shut down its hospital in March.