{"id":597340,"date":"2018-06-28T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=597340"},"modified":"2018-06-28T14:48:58","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T20:48:58","slug":"nm-may-become-among-first-states-to-seek-oversight-on-immigration-detention-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/06\/nm-may-become-among-first-states-to-seek-oversight-on-immigration-detention-centers\/","title":{"rendered":"NM may become among first states to seek oversight on immigration detention centers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_597343\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-597343\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/NM-Dream-Team-Roxsana-Hernandez-action-courtesy-NM-Dream-Team-1170x780-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"New Mexico Dream Team\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/NM-Dream-Team-Roxsana-Hernandez-action-courtesy-NM-Dream-Team-1170x780-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/NM-Dream-Team-Roxsana-Hernandez-action-courtesy-NM-Dream-Team-1170x780-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/NM-Dream-Team-Roxsana-Hernandez-action-courtesy-NM-Dream-Team-1170x780-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/NM-Dream-Team-Roxsana-Hernandez-action-courtesy-NM-Dream-Team-1170x780.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">New Mexico Dream Team<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Members of the New Mexico Dream Team protest after the death of Roxsana Hernandez at Cibola County Correctional Center.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>After spending five months locked up inside two different Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons in New Mexico, Manuel Gonzalez will soon be among the first ICE detainees in the country to have state legislators formally learn about his experience.<\/p>\n<p>On July 16, members of the Legislature\u2019s Courts, Corrections and Justice committee will have the chance to hear from former detainees like Gonzalez, as well as immigrant communities and their advocates.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.com\/2018\/06\/27\/nm-may-become-among-first-states-to-seek-oversight-on-immigration-detention-centers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Mexico In Depth<\/a>. Sign up for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmindepth.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=1d2ab093d81b992e50978b363&amp;id=9294743d38\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their newsletter<\/a>. It was produced in partnership with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfreporter.com\/news\/2018\/06\/27\/legislators-on-ice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Santa Fe Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>The legislative hearing<\/h3>\n<p>The hearing will take place July 16 from 1-4 p.m. in Room 307 at the State Capitol building in Santa Fe. A full agenda will be posted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nmlegis.gov\/Committee\/Interim_Committee?CommitteeCode=CCJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on the committee\u2019s\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0two weeks prior.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The committee hearing at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe, which will include an hour for public comment, is intended to educate lawmakers, some of whom hope to start a conversation about whether to exert more state oversight on private prisons in New Mexico that incarcerate immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>A 51-year-old father of six, Gonzalez has lived in the United States for 38 years \u2014 decades he\u2019s spent working in New Mexico\u2019s oil and construction industries. As for what compelled plainclothes ICE agents to show up at his home in Roswell and arrest him in June 2017, Gonzalez says he still has no idea. According to his lawyer, Adriel Orozco of the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, Gonzalez\u2019s detention should never have taken place, given his long languishing application for residency.<\/p>\n<p>By the time Orozco could secure Gonzalez\u2019s release in November 2017, he had been sent to the Cibola County Correctional Center, owned by private prison giant CoreCivic, and then transferred to the Otero County ICE Processing Center, operated by another for-profit contractor, Management and Training Corporation (MTC).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like being locked up like a dog in a pound,\u201d Gonzalez tells SFR and New Mexico In Depth through an interpreter. \u201cLife here in New Mexico outside of those centers is really calm,\u201d he continues. \u201cBut inside those centers, life is really ugly. Nothing you would ever wish on anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Between his time at both lock-ups, Gonzalez says guards wouldn\u2019t give detainees water or access to basic medical care; allow them to socialize or use blankets during the day; the cells were kept frigid. For a time, he says, he slept with 22 others in a space meant for 17. He rarely saw the sun, he says. And the nutrition was so poor that, with his diabetes, his hair began to fall out, his legs swelled and his feet went numb.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll of that is what they should see,\u201d Gonzalez says of New Mexico politicians. \u201cI understand that it\u2019s a prison, or whatever you want to call it. But, one should still be treated as a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_597344\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-597344\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/B152E89E-4E3D-456F-9319-BF287B2ABBE2-336x448-336x448.jpg\" alt=\"Manuel Gonzalez\" width=\"336\" height=\"448\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Manuel Gonzalez<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manuel Gonzalez spent five months incarcerated in two different Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons in New Mexico.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At the upcoming hearing, legislators will focus on the two ICE prisons in New Mexico where immigrants charged with civil violations, like Gonzalez, are detained.<\/p>\n<p>The discussion could broaden at the July hearing and after, particularly given the ever-shifting landscape of the Trump administration\u2019s new \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy and how it may impact New Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>With people attempting to cross the border recently charged criminally, a number of migrants are being held in other private federal prisons in the state, under the custody of U.S. Marshals Service \u2014 including mothers who\u2019ve been separated from their children, as detailed in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/dispatch\/mothers-in-a-new-mexico-prison-do-not-know-how-to-find-their-children\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>The New Yorker<\/i><\/a>. Meanwhile, it\u2019s unknown whether new family detention centers could open in New Mexico, where ICE\u2019s Artesia Family Residential Center closed in 2014 amid widespread reports of women and children facing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/02\/08\/magazine\/the-shame-of-americas-family-detention-camps.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">horrendous conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Spearheaded by state Rep. Antonio \u201cMoe\u201d Maestas, an Albuquerque Democrat, the hearing represents a rare move among politicians at the state level, anywhere in the country, to try to start a discussion about monitoring federal operations in their communities.<\/p>\n<p>In providing a forum at the state level for public comment on local immigrant detention centers and a Q&amp;A between legislators and representatives from CoreCivic, MTC and ICE who are willing to show, the hearing sets a new precedent nationally. What specific oversight measures may come from it are anyone\u2019s guess, but the intent of the Courts, Corrections and Justice interim meetings are to prepare policymakers for upcoming legislative sessions.<\/p>\n<p>The closest analogue comes from California, whose lawyers were recently in court, battling the federal government to maintain the recently-won right of the California Attorney General\u2019s Office to review conditions at all ICE lock-ups in that state.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast in New Mexico, Attorney General Hector Balderas signed off on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revealnews.org\/article\/inside-the-billion-dollar-industry-of-locking-up-immigrants\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$150 million deal<\/a>\u00a0that brought CoreCivic\u2019s Cibola prison online as an ICE detention center in late 2016 despite a revelation months earlier that a series of in-custody deaths had occurred there under a previous contract between CoreCivic and the federal Bureau of Prisons. A spokesman for Balderas&#8217; office, David Carl, said the attorney general now &#8220;looks forward to working with the legislature in creating legislation similar to the California law.&#8221;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Maestas has been working to get the hearing on the books for months after reading reports on the Cibola deal and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lcsun-news.com\/story\/news\/local\/new-mexico\/2017\/12\/23\/problems-otero-county-ice-prison-found-audit\/978394001\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">conditions<\/a>\u00a0at the Otero County ICE Processing Center.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo have hundreds or thousands of persons housed within the state of New Mexico that are not under the transparency of local elected officials: That\u2019s not right,\u201d Maestas says. \u201cThe chances of human rights violations increase because of the lack of accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The frontrunner in New Mexico\u2019s race for governor, U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, agrees that state officials should not be hands-off when it comes to what she described as ICE\u2019s \u201cdraconian enforcement\u201d and \u201cirresponsible governance\u201d that has \u201cincited terror and led to real harm.\u201d The chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has co-sponsored bills to reunite families and demanded ICE publish its data and that Congress reign in the agency\u2019s funds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStates can also take decisive measures to hold ICE accountable,\u201d Lujan Grisham writes in an email to the SFR and NMID, citing a range of possible oversight measures. They include legislation limiting the ability of county governments and law enforcement agencies to enter or renew immigrant detention contracts and the creation of a state group to monitor the incarceration of immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven though we\u2019re not federal officials,\u201d says Maestas, \u201cwe have the ability to regulate all business within the State of New Mexico. And, we need to know: Who is in what facilities and whether these persons have access to basic human essentials.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_594659\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-594659\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878-771x579.jpg\" alt=\"Cibola County Correctional Center\" width=\"771\" height=\"579\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878-771x579.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878-336x252.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/IMG_5334-1170x878-800x600.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Sarah Macaraeg<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The for-profit Cibola County Correctional Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center owned and operated by private prison giant CoreCivic, in rural Milan, New Mexico.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The hearing announcement comes as New Mexico politicians have begun donating\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/1189247\/nm-democrats-to-give-up-prison-firms-donations.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">campaign contributions<\/a>\u00a0from private prison contractors to charitable causes and amid an ongoing scandal surrounding medical care at Cibola.<\/p>\n<p>The American Civil Liberties Union and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center have just filed a petition seeking the release of an unnamed asylum seeker from the Congo. The man\u2019s lawyers say he\u2019s been detained a year without adequate treatment of his tuberculosis. And in May, news of the death of Roxsana Hernandez, a 33-year-old trans woman who died of HIV-related complications soon after her transfer to Cibola, swept the nation.<\/p>\n<p>Spokespeople for both CoreCivic and MTC emailed that the companies work closely with ICE monitors, whom they say work in full-time, onsite oversight roles at their respective prisons. Regional ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa did not answer questions about how many monitors are at each site; if those monitors are accessible to detainees and whether they speak Spanish.<\/p>\n<p>However, two immigration lawyers from separate organizations, who each visit Cibola regularly, say that aside from one to two officials who are dedicated to the transgender pod, there is no regular ICE presence, in a monitoring capacity or otherwise. Guards are employed by CoreCivic, as are the wardens.<\/p>\n<p>CoreCivic, a company valued at $4 billion, did not answer whether it would welcome state oversight. MTC asserted it would \u201cwelcome the opportunity to show how we accomplish our mission\u201d \u2014 via site visits scheduled with ICE.<\/p>\n<p>In an unscheduled audit of the Otero ICE lock-up in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Office of Inspector General\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oig.dhs.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/assets\/2017-12\/OIG-18-32-Dec17.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found<\/a>\u00a0unsanitary conditions and the unjustified use of solitary confinement. The findings overlap with broader patterns of abuse allegations dating back to a 2011 ACLU\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu-nm.org\/sites\/default\/files\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OCPC-Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">report<\/a>, entailing mistreatment by guards and deficient food and medical care. Two Otero detainees are among a list of 172 deaths in custody between 2003 and 2017 that have been disclosed by ICE.<\/p>\n<p>The separation of families, newly riveting the nation, is another hallmark of ICE\u2019s longstanding New Mexico operations, says Orozco, the lawyer who represented Manuel Gonzalez.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe system has already been set up to separate families,\u201d he says. Over the last year, Orozco says, children of incarcerated undocumented immigrants have submitted letters to judges, distraught at the disappearance of their parents. A 3-year-old child wrote one.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to its human cost, immigrant detention has become a multi-million dollar business in New Mexico. At Otero, documents from the first quarter of 2017 show that MTC charges $77 per detainee per day, ringing up between $1.8 and $2.1 million monthly. And, according to a review of Cibola contracting documents from January 2017, the federal government pays CoreCivic $2.5 million per month to house anywhere between zero and 848 detainees at the prison \u2014 after the county takes a 50 cent cut per detainee per day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s simply an inhumane industry that is profiting off of people who are looking for safety,\u201d says Isaac De Luna, political director of the NM Dream Team, a local chapter of the national United We Dream organization of young immigrants. \u201cThere\u2019s a better way of stimulating our economy than through the suffering of others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>De Luna thinks the upcoming hearing on private immigrant detention will be an important first step. \u201cIt\u2019s long overdue,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is going to be a key moment where our families are going to be able to tell elected officials in our state: This is not a national security issue. This is directly attacking families.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Paula Bui contributed interpretation for this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At a hearing in July, Manuel Gonzalez will be among the first ICE detainees in the country to have state legislators formally learn about his experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":597343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,234,107],"class_list":["post-597340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}