Sherry Robinson
All She Wrote
New Mexico has three ICE detention centers in Otero, Torrance and Cibola counties. The governor is considering a bill to ban immigration detention facilities during an upcoming special legislative session.
Understandably, local governments want to protect these sources of jobs and revenue, but detention centers aren’t your regular, accessible employer. They receive our tax dollars to warehouse human beings, but if you expect responsibility and transparency you’d be disappointed.
And, of course, they’re politicized. Democrats see hellholes; Republicans see summer camps. What’s the public to make of this?
In recent reporting Patrick Lohmann of Source New Mexico dug beneath the rhetoric following a tour of the Otero County Processing Center by some members of the legislative Courts, Corrections and Criminal Justice Committee.
The August 25 tour was supposed to be a committee activity. Chairman Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, had worked for months with Otero County’s lobbyist, former Rep. Zach Cook, a Republican, to arrange a tour for the committee. Cook assured him a tour was in the works, but as the date approached Cook wasn’t hearing back from ICE. Cervantes canceled the tour.
Days later, Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, arranged a visit when U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was visiting the state. Brantley asked federal officials why the committee hadn’t received permission to visit the facility, and they said they had no request on record to visit the facility.
By this time, the committee schedule was finalized, and Brantley’s tour became “unofficial.”
Eight Republicans and one Democrat, Rep. Andrea Romero of Santa Fe, toured the state’s biggest immigration detention center. They weren’t allowed to speak to detainees. Republicans saw a clean, humane, safe facility with a law library, dental and mental health care, exercise equipment, and computers. They noted the potential loss of 300 jobs and gross receipts tax revenues.
In a news release Brantley said: “ICE will do their job no matter what. Our choice is simple: a clean, safe, and accountable facility here, or one where we have no say in how detained migrants are treated.”
Romero saw hundreds of inmates “who just look absolutely in despair,” sitting or lying on their beds. Recreation equipment was locked up. She was the only one asking about due process, legal representation, and how quickly detainees are deported.
Romero told Lohmann she hoped other elected officials “get an opportunity to really see these places, because it shouldn’t just be one person trying to decipher what’s actually happening. We need to have a lot of transparency around people’s rights, around who we detain, and for what reason.”
Both legislators make good points. Corrections facilities are often the best and sometimes the only job options in rural counties. And wouldn’t we rather have ICE facilities in a state that cares about conditions?
But the question of transparency looms over everything. Why should Cervantes and even Brantley have to go to such lengths for a tour? They are elected officials who want to lay eyes on a facility that receives massive amounts of taxpayer money. If the detention centers are as good as their supporters claim they should welcome the visits.
But it’s ICE we’re talking about here. Police wear uniforms but not masks, catch criminals, and are accountable for what they do. Masked ICE agents dressed in street clothes are supposed to be catching criminals, but instead they prey on moms and dads, restaurant and agricultural workers, students, Dreamers, U.S. citizens, green card holders, and pretty much anybody with brown skin. Arrests are often so violent that detainees are injured.
When U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez visited at the end of July, Otero’s average daily population was 843, and more than 80% had no criminal charges or convictions. This compares to 71% nationally, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Vasquez was not allowed to speak to detainees, and jailers wouldn’t answer questions about their treatment. He said their phones were broken, and toilets wouldn’t flush.
Staff members of U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich visited the Torrance County Detention Center, with 435 detainees, in late May and reported terrible conditions. Nobody has seen the Cibola County Detention Center, population 227, since January 2024.
New Mexico is not an outlier. The feds now have new guidelines that require advance notice for oversight visits and make some facilities off limits – even though the law says members of Congress are not required to provide advance notice. In July a dozen U.S. House Democrats sued. Vasquez has his own bill about ICE detention transparency and treatment.
When New Mexico legislators examine these detention centers, they will weigh jobs and revenue, but they must also assess the state’s role in this increasingly unpopular human roundup.
Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.
