ICE transfers 100 people to abusive New Mexico facility that sat nearly empty just one month ago

Gabe Ortiz

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday January 10, 2023 · 1:17 PM PST

2023/01/10 · 13:17

MESA, AZ - FEBRUARY 28: A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), security contractor carries chains for Honduran immigration detainees before their deportation flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on February 28, 2013 in Mesa, Arizona. ICE operates 4-5 flights per week from Mesa to Central America, deporting hundreds of undocumented immigrants detained in western states of the U.S. With the possibility of federal budget sequestration, ICE released 303 immigration detainees in the last week from detention centers throughout Arizona. More than 2,000 immigration detainees remain in ICE custody in the state. Most detainees typically remain in custody for several weeks before they are deported to their home country, while others remain for longer periods while their immigration cases work through the courts. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) — "A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), security contractor carries chains for Honduran immigration detainees before their deportation flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on February 28, 2013 in Mesa, Arizona."

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There was a recent window of time when the federal contract for a privately operated immigration detention facility in New Mexico could have been more easily terminated. With capacity to detain hundreds, just 11 people were still at Core Civic’s Torrance County Detention Facility as of the beginning of last month, making it an optimal time to move forward with termination.

Logistically, moving or releasing 11 people compared to 500 is a hell of a lot easier for officials. But there’s also been wide consensus from lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates alike that Torrance, with its long history of abuses against detained immigrants, needs to be out of business. But groups said this week that officials shockingly transferred more than 100 people to the site beginning shortly before Christmas.

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A coalition of advocacy groups said Monday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred approximately 100 people to Torrance between Dec. 23 and Jan. 3. Earlier in December, groups had reported just 11 people at the facility. But that number dropped even lower as the end of the month approached, groups said. “Prior to the recent transfers, the number of people held in ICE custody at the detention center had dropped to just six.” Just six.

The move right before the holidays certainly feels intentional, because people are largely tuning out of news they may have paid attention to during any other time of the year. Now, the population at Torrance has skyrocketed as advocates have been warning of an “acute and ongoing medical and mental health crisis” at the facility, among several major issues.

“ICE detention at TCDF has caused a worsening mental health crisis; one person died in custody in August and this crisis has threatened that of many others,” organizations said. (Click here for the full list.) “People detained at TCDF have described the mistreatment they face at facility as ‘torture,’ while human rights advocates, mental health experts, members of Congress and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General have all documented serious violations at TCDF and called on ICE to stop holding immigrants there.”

Think about that: The DHS watchdog said the site was such a shit hole (my own words) that it urged all detainees be removed from the site. Instead, the population numbers are going in the wrong direction.

“Internal ICE and CoreCivic records obtained by the immigrant rights organization Innovation Law Lab through FOIA litigation have further confirmed the dangerous conditions at the facility,” the groups continued. They said that the remaining detained immigrants who were still there earlier in December had heard rumors of mass transfers to the site. Calling themselves “Los Últimos Guerreros,” or “The Last Warriors,” they urged officials to reconsider the plans. But they also asked for their own freedom.

“We are the migrants of Torrance,” they wrote in a Dec. 8 letter. “Since we are few migrants left in this place, we write this letter to be heard; there are 11 of us here. We are not bad people. We are here to ask for help because we’ve been persecuted in our countries, and each one of us is here for a reason—we’re asking for our freedom. Some of us have already been here for five months, others eight months or three months. We’re deprived of our freedom only for asking for help.”

“It’s been almost a year since DHS’s own Office of the Inspector General called for the ‘immediate removal’ of all detainees from Torrance due to the horrifying conditions at the facility,” Santa Fe Dreamers Project Executive Director Emma O’Sullivan said. “The fact that ICE is still actively sending more individuals to Torrance despite the well-documented, life-threatening conditions is a serious cause for alarm, showing a reckless and callous indifference to the human lives at stake.”

”It is unconscionable for ICE to send people seeking safety and refuge in the US into harm’s way at the Torrance detention center,” the ACLU of New Mexico tweeted. “ICE needs to end this contract immediately.”

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ICE transfers 100 people to abusive New Mexico facility that sat nearly empty just one month ago

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