Small Towns Are Getting Hooked on ICE Detention

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Carol Barrios and her family moved to the US from Honduras in the late nineties. Carol is a US citizen, her dad has a green card. Seven years ago, Carol's parents divorced and her dad went back to Honduras, but this winter he decided to return to the States to be closer to his grandkids.

That was his trigger for him to want to come back to say, Okay, you know what he has been missing on.

When Carol's dad landed in Miami in February, he was detained by immigration authorities. His green card wasn't set to expire until twenty twenty eight, but the agent said he hadn't filed the proper paperwork to re enter the country after those seven years abroad. The next few weeks were a blur. Carol desperately tried to track her dad's movements as he was transferred from one facility to another. And then Carol got a phone call. It was her dad. He didn't know where he was.

He asked me if I knew where the call was coming from, and then I told him I will querque New Mexico.

He had been flown to Albuquerque and then bussed about an hour to the small town of Estancia, New Mexico, and he was being held in the Torrance County Detention Facility, a private detention facility that's holding people in ICE custody from all over the country.

Under prior administrations. This is also how things worked, right. What's different this time is that there are so many arrests and the Trump admintration is detaining so many people that it's using, in some cases more beds than it even has.

ICE is finding those extra beds in private detention facilities like the one in Torrance County, and it's contracting with

For ICE to be able to quickly execute this type of detention strategy, it really is dependent on these agreements with counties.

And that means convincing more towns like Estancia that ice can be their lifeblood. This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder today on the show Inside a Town That Runs on Ice. How private detention facilities across America are becoming key to the federal government's immigration crackdown and the financial incentives making it harder for small communities to quit them. Astancia, New Mexico, is a town

The railroad went straight through the town, so you had people in commerce stopping through. This in turn, brought a lot of business to the area.

Back in the eighties when I graduated, there was a movie theater, a vehicle dealership, three or four bars.

I mean that's the town's mayor, Nathan Dile. When Rachel and Fula visited in March, he gave them a tour.

The footprint of Stanchees are basically one mile by one mile.

You don't really have to drive far in Astancia. There's a bunch of churches, a lot of abandoned like storefronts, a lot of abandoned shops.

Astoncia today is not the agricultural or commercial hub it once was. In the nineteen thirties, droughts decimated crops and sent property values plummeting. And then a few decades later, Interstate forty was built.

And so all of the commerce that had kind of gone through the town because of the railroad, it's now going just north of town along I forty. And this is kind of what Nathan Dial likes to equate to the Pixar movie Cars.

That's not a cartoon, it's a documentary in Cars.

Radiator Springs the town, it's on the historic Route sixty six. Interstate forty is built, and all of a sudden, the town just kind of falls into disrepair. And it's of course saved when Lightning McQueen moves his racing headquarters there. For Astoncia, their revitalization came through Corrections Corporation of America now Corcivic.

Corcivic is the company that runs the Torrence County Detention Facility. It provided the Lightning McQueen boost. Astancia was looking for as the War on drugs and the expansion of pre trial detention sent incarceration rates up.

That's all really good for Corcivic's main business. But then kind of during the Obama era when we have sentencing reform, those numbers start to drop.

By twenty seventeen, the number of people Corcivic was holding on behalf of the federal government had dropped so sharply that the company decided to close the facility down. But then just two years later, in twenty nineteen, ICE swooped in. They wanted to use some of the beds in the new Mexico facility to detain immigrants. So ICE inked a deal not with Corcivic, but with Torrence County itself.

So essentially for Torrence County their party to what's called an intergovernmental service agreement. It says that ICE or the US Marshals will pay the county as like an administrator of this deal, and they'll be able to use the beds in the facility, and so they pay like a per person, per day rate.

ICE started paying Torrence County about two million dollars a month to use around seven hundred beds in the facility, and cor Civic was back in business in Estancia. Now, under President Trump's second term, ICE is sending people at

It's happening all over the country. There are like well over one hundred of these agreements. Like this is how ICE like gets medspace. There are not very many ICE owned facilities, and so this is how they are able to quickly get and fill beds.

And the numbers are only growing. Since Trump retook office in January, the federal government has arranged new agreements with about thirty US counties to use their jails to detain immigrants, and ICE wants to spend up to forty five billion dollars more on these detention contracts for ICE, the arrangement in Torrance County makes its job easier. Cour Civic handles staffing, and working directly with county governments helps ICE move faster.

The county government is sort of smoothing this process for both the federal government and for the private prison company.

The county has a reason to sign these detention deals too.

They pay taxes, they provide jobs to some of these deals. There's an administrative fee that they pay the county as well, and in the case of Torrens County, they also get beds for their local detainees. And they say that without this they would have to take people to Santa Fe, which is like an hour and a half or two hours away. It's a long drive.

ICE is now paying Torrents County two point three million dollars a month to use five hundred and five bets, and course Civic gets paid more if the agency uses more than that. The facility employs about one hundred people county wide.

My sisters worked out there, my son's worked out there, my daughter's worked out there, my nephews have worked out there.

That's the mayor of Astancia again, and I.

Will admit me, Nathan Dial, I fought them having a private prison because of all the things that government should be running, it should be prisoned. That's my personal opinion. But as mayor, I understand it's the lifeblood of the town.

He views it as a financial necessity for the town and his residence. And we looked at the town's tax revenue and it does make up a significant portion of what's called the grocer seats tax, which is kind of like New Mexico's version of a sales tax.

Almost when Rachel and Fola were in Estancia, they drove up to the facility to see it from the outside.

Of course, a Victorren's County detention facility.

If it's fifteen feet yeah, the facility isn't sort of within that small mile by mile like city limit. Instead, it's like off like a side road. And then you just see this huge complex that's surrounded by razor wire and huge fences and there's nothing else really around it.

And inside the facility, I want to make sure we talk about the conditions inside. What are unblematic stories you heard from people being detained there.

Some common complaints I've heard are it's kept excessively cold, that the food is undercooked, sometimes inedible, that there isn't enough of it at times, pretty constant complaints about understaffing, that there aren't enough people working at the detention facility. And this is something that federal and have found several times in the past as well.

In March of twenty twenty two, the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security urged all people in ICE custody to be removed from the facility due to critical staffing shortages. Corcivic disputed the inspector's findings, and ICE largely sided with Corcivic.

So it's an interesting situation where you do have these federal inspections and audits that have pinpointed issues, but there really hasn't been punishment. The punishment that was recommended did not actually end up happening.

ICE didn't evacuate the facility, but later that year it did agree to a series of other recommendations from the Inspector General. Corcivic says it's quote committed to providing safe, humane, and appropriate care for the people in its facilities. It says all detainees have access to health care services and

I just quickly add that the Trump administration has recently significantly rolled back some of these oversight functions. In March, the administration eliminated the two bodies that are responsible for doing some of the site visits and inspections of these facilities.

The conditions of the detention facility have also gotten the attention of local advocates. New Mexico is a blue state and its role in advancing deportation policy makes many residents uncomfortable. So some are now pushing the county to envision an economic future beyond immigration detention and end its contract with ICE. Every few months, the Torrence County Commissioners have to vote on whether to extend the agreement. The last vote happened in March.

Are y'all here for the county commission meeting?

Yeah, Fulla and Rachel were in the room.

Being at the meeting, we saw more than a dozen people read testimony from inside the facility, Folks talking about the conditions, talking about their feelings of hopelessness. They have treated me like a prisoner, not like a migrant, the lack of food, the lack of communication with ICE officials, the lack of communication about their cases, and second thirty.

Three birds which there is no adequate medical.

Carrier though I had to wait three and a half.

Hours, almost four hours for an ambulance to arrive so they could take me outside.

You all are in the extraordinary position where you have the opportunity to intervene in the system of harm. I urge you all to vote against the extension of the contract with ICE. Thank you.

After the break, Torrance County's leaders vote on its contract with ICE, and we meet one of the County commissioners who's weighing in on the facility's fate. Linda Haramio is the newest member of the Torrence County Commission as a Republican, the only woman and the only Spanish speaker on the commission. Back in March, at the County Commission meeting, she was preparing to cast her vote on whether to extend the county's contract with Ice through October first.

Approval of Montaians the inter government wal room in Florence County the United States to part.

The immigration of Preston.

She before her votes, took some time to say, like, look, I hear you guys.

So I've been.

Listening to these accounts of restreatment at the prison.

She said, I need to go see this myself, like I'm not sure this is true or if this is actually what's.

Happening, and I want is it okay if I visit the prison.

So she visited, and then she voted no, she did not visit.

She said she would like to visit, but in the meantime she'll vote yes.

So I'm going to vote for this today.

I'm not going to do it, but I'd like to have more interaction with these teams.

And so she voted for the extension, and so it passed three zero.

Unanousley, Rachel and Fulla spoke to Harameo at after the vote. They wanted to know how she came to her decision.

We were sitting on the porch with her. It was a breezy day. You can kind of hear the wind. Chimes was the decision on the ice contract hard today.

Yes, but I know we had to vote on it. I don't want anybody to be treated cruelly, and I don't even know if that's true or not.

Do you think that the detainees that you've heard from are making it up?

No, I don't think they're making it up, but they I just can't imagine that anybody would be treating somebody like that. I'm not saying they're liars or anything, but I know the people that work there, I mean, what happens from.

In the time since her vote, Haramia told Rachel she did visit the facility to see things for herself.

This wasn't a surprise visit. They had a couple of days heads up and the warden was with her during the tour. She said that in general things look clean. She said the detainees complained about food, and one person said that he had a headache that he needed treatment for, but in general she felt like things were run efficiently.

In a few months, Haramio will have the chance to vote on the contract extension again.

I asked her if she was thinking any differently about the October vote, and she said, you know, I'm very torn. I'm really really torn. So I think we'll see what she decides. The next time she'll have the opportunity to vote on this. Even if she votes no, they would need another commissioner to vote no for the contract between the county and ICE to be terminated.

That's never happened before. Every time they vote, the county chooses to maintain its relationship with ICE.

There is this financial dependence on Courcivic right now and on the ICE contract by extension.

Research shows that prison construction can actually impede economic growth in rural areas. One study from twenty ten, looking at the economic impact of prison economies over nearly thirty year period, found that these facilities can divert resources away from other community services, making these areas less attractive for other economic development. But Rachel says it's hard for communities like Estancia to imagine untethering their economies from incarceration once they're hooked.

Most of the people we spoke with seem to accept that this was just the way it was going to be. There are a lot of local communities all across the country that do have a tremendous amount of power when it comes to how immigrants in ICE custody are treated where they are taken, and I think that role is vastly overlooked in this debate.

We asked, like, administrations change and policies change, and there could be a scenario where a new administration or even this administration decides that they don't need this facility, and if it closes, do you have a plan for or what's next? And I don't think at any point we got a serious answer. I don't think it was something that folks had considered there.

For people like Carol Barrios's father. The latest ICE contract extension means continuation of the status quo, and advocates and people inside the detention facility say conditions there deteriorated a few weeks ago, when water supply issues reportedly left toilets overflowing and feces on the ground and led to limits on people's access to drinking water.

People in detention were told that they were limited to two water bottles a day at times, and we heard that people were going days without showers.

In emails, Corsevic said there were no sewage or plumbing issues at the facility, and that water pressure fluctuations had caused some toilets to overflow in quote a few rare occasions. They also said showers were placed on a schedule, but were still available to everyone. After Fola and Rachel published their story, an ICE spokeswoman at it in a statement that the agency acknowledges the concerns raised about the facility and remains quote committed to addressing them in a timely

This is example of who is being targeted in and how widespread and how sort of blanket the administration's efforts to detain and the poor people are.

It's a tremendous amount of money that's changing hands through these local governments to private prison companies a lot of time, and there's a lot less scrutiny of it because of the way that these contracts are done.

This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. To see photographs from on the ground in Ancia and view maps showing how many people ICE is now sending to New Mexico. Read the full story on Bloomberg dot com or at the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Julia Press and David Fox. It was edited by Aaron Edwards and Flynn McRoberts. Additional reporting by Polly Masson's special thanks to Kayla sha The episode was fact checked by Rachel Lewis Kriskey and mixed in