Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Carol Barrios and her family moved to the US from
Speaker 2: Honduras in the late nineties. Carol is a US citizen,
Speaker 2: her dad has a green card. Seven years ago, Carol's
Speaker 2: parents divorced and her dad went back to Honduras, but
Speaker 2: this winter he decided to return to the States to
Speaker 2: be closer to his grandkids.
Speaker 3: That was his trigger for him to want to come
Speaker 3: back to say, Okay, you know what he has been
Speaker 3: missing on.
Speaker 2: When Carol's dad landed in Miami in February, he was
Speaker 2: detained by immigration authorities. His green card wasn't set to
Speaker 2: expire until twenty twenty eight, but the agent said he
Speaker 2: hadn't filed the proper paperwork to re enter the country
Speaker 2: after those seven years abroad. The next few weeks were
Speaker 2: a blur. Carol desperately tried to track her dad's movements
Speaker 2: as he was transferred from one facility to another. And
Speaker 2: then Carol got a phone call. It was her dad.
Speaker 2: He didn't know where he was.
Speaker 3: He asked me if I knew where the call was
Speaker 3: coming from, and then I told him I will querque
Speaker 3: New Mexico.
Speaker 2: He had been flown to Albuquerque and then bussed about
Speaker 2: an hour to the small town of Estancia, New Mexico,
Speaker 2: and he was being held in the Torrance County Detention Facility,
Speaker 2: a private detention facility that's holding people in ICE custody
Speaker 2: from all over the country.
Speaker 4: Under prior administrations. This is also how things worked, right.
Speaker 4: What's different this time is that there are so many
Speaker 4: arrests and the Trump admintration is detaining so many people
Speaker 4: that it's using, in some cases more beds than it
Speaker 4: even has.
Speaker 2: ICE is finding those extra beds in private detention facilities
Speaker 2: like the one in Torrance County, and it's contracting with
Speaker 2: local governments to get access to them. Bloomberg reporters Fola
Speaker 2: at Kenneby and Rachel Adams heard have been reporting on
Speaker 2: this facility in rural New Mexico and on its relationship
Speaker 2: with ICE ever since Trump took office, because as the
Speaker 2: administration seeks to carry out mass deportations, these kinds of
Speaker 2: private detention contracts are becoming more central to its immigration agenda.
Speaker 5: For ICE to be able to quickly execute this type
Speaker 5: of detention strategy, it really is dependent on these agreements
Speaker 5: with counties.
Speaker 2: And that means convincing more towns like Estancia that ice
Speaker 2: can be their lifeblood. This is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder today on the show Inside
Speaker 2: a Town That Runs on Ice. How private detention facilities
Speaker 2: across America are becoming key to the federal government's immigration
Speaker 2: crackdown and the financial incentives making it harder for small
Speaker 2: communities to quit them. Astancia, New Mexico, is a town
Speaker 2: of about thirteen hundred residents. One hundred years ago, it
Speaker 2: was a lively agricultural hub.
Speaker 5: The railroad went straight through the town, so you had
Speaker 5: people in commerce stopping through. This in turn, brought a
Speaker 5: lot of business to the area.
Speaker 1: Back in the eighties when I graduated, there was a
Speaker 1: movie theater, a vehicle dealership, three or four bars.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the town's mayor, Nathan Dile. When Rachel
Speaker 2: and Fula visited in March, he gave them a tour.
Speaker 1: The footprint of Stanchees are basically one mile by one mile.
Speaker 4: You don't really have to drive far in Astancia. There's
Speaker 4: a bunch of churches, a lot of abandoned like storefronts,
Speaker 4: a lot of abandoned shops.
Speaker 2: Astoncia today is not the agricultural or commercial hub it
Speaker 2: once was. In the nineteen thirties, droughts decimated crops and
Speaker 2: sent property values plummeting. And then a few decades later,
Speaker 2: Interstate forty was built.
Speaker 5: And so all of the commerce that had kind of
Speaker 5: gone through the town because of the railroad, it's now
Speaker 5: going just north of town along I forty. And this
Speaker 5: is kind of what Nathan Dial likes to equate to
Speaker 5: the Pixar movie Cars.
Speaker 1: That's not a cartoon, it's a documentary in Cars.
Speaker 5: Radiator Springs the town, it's on the historic Route sixty six.
Speaker 5: Interstate forty is built, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 5: town just kind of falls into disrepair. And it's of
Speaker 5: course saved when Lightning McQueen moves his racing headquarters there.
Speaker 5: For Astoncia, their revitalization came through Corrections Corporation of America
Speaker 5: now Corcivic.
Speaker 2: Corcivic is the company that runs the Torrence County Detention Facility.
Speaker 2: It provided the Lightning McQueen boost. Astancia was looking for
Speaker 2: as the War on drugs and the expansion of pre
Speaker 2: trial detention sent incarceration rates up.
Speaker 5: That's all really good for Corcivic's main business. But then
Speaker 5: kind of during the Obama era when we have sentencing reform,
Speaker 5: those numbers start to drop.
Speaker 2: By twenty seventeen, the number of people Corcivic was holding
Speaker 2: on behalf of the federal government had dropped so sharply
Speaker 2: that the company decided to close the facility down. But
Speaker 2: then just two years later, in twenty nineteen, ICE swooped in.
Speaker 2: They wanted to use some of the beds in the
Speaker 2: new Mexico facility to detain immigrants. So ICE inked a
Speaker 2: deal not with Corcivic, but with Torrence County itself.
Speaker 4: So essentially for Torrence County their party to what's called
Speaker 4: an intergovernmental service agreement. It says that ICE or the
Speaker 4: US Marshals will pay the county as like an administrator
Speaker 4: of this deal, and they'll be able to use the
Speaker 4: beds in the facility, and so they pay like a
Speaker 4: per person, per day rate.
Speaker 2: ICE started paying Torrence County about two million dollars a
Speaker 2: month to use around seven hundred beds in the facility,
Speaker 2: and cor Civic was back in business in Estancia. Now,
Speaker 2: under President Trump's second term, ICE is sending people at
Speaker 2: arrests hundreds of miles away to this facility. Because as
Speaker 2: ICE pursues the administration's mass deportation agenda, the agency has
Speaker 2: widened its enforcement priorities, targeting people with green carts, people
Speaker 2: who've lived in the US for years, people like Carol
Speaker 2: Barrios's dad, And while past administrations have used discretion to
Speaker 2: release people ahead of their immigration hearings, Trump's policy has
Speaker 2: been to detain them. ICE now needs a lot more
Speaker 2: detention space, So the federal government is finding new counties
Speaker 2: to sign the same types of agreements as the one
Speaker 2: in Torrance County.
Speaker 4: It's happening all over the country. There are like well
Speaker 4: over one hundred of these agreements. Like this is how
Speaker 4: ICE like gets medspace. There are not very many ICE
Speaker 4: owned facilities, and so this is how they are able
Speaker 4: to quickly get and fill beds.
Speaker 2: And the numbers are only growing. Since Trump retook office
Speaker 2: in January, the federal government has arranged new agreements with
Speaker 2: about thirty US counties to use their jails to detain immigrants,
Speaker 2: and ICE wants to spend up to forty five billion
Speaker 2: dollars more on these detention contracts for ICE, the arrangement
Speaker 2: in Torrance County makes its job easier. Cour Civic handles staffing,
Speaker 2: and working directly with county governments helps ICE move faster.
Speaker 2: The agency doesn't have to enter a competitive bidding process
Speaker 2: to decide who gets the contract or do all the
Speaker 2: paperwork that comes with that process.
Speaker 4: The county government is sort of smoothing this process for
Speaker 4: both the federal government and for the private prison company.
Speaker 2: The county has a reason to sign these detention deals too.
Speaker 4: They pay taxes, they provide jobs to some of these deals.
Speaker 4: There's an administrative fee that they pay the county as well,
Speaker 4: and in the case of Torrens County, they also get
Speaker 4: beds for their local detainees. And they say that without
Speaker 4: this they would have to take people to Santa Fe,
Speaker 4: which is like an hour and a half or two
Speaker 4: hours away. It's a long drive.
Speaker 2: ICE is now paying Torrents County two point three million
Speaker 2: dollars a month to use five hundred and five bets,
Speaker 2: and course Civic gets paid more if the agency uses
Speaker 2: more than that. The facility employs about one hundred people
Speaker 2: county wide.
Speaker 1: My sisters worked out there, my son's worked out there,
Speaker 1: my daughter's worked out there, my nephews have worked out there.
Speaker 2: That's the mayor of Astancia again, and I.
Speaker 6: Will admit me, Nathan Dial, I fought them having a
Speaker 6: private prison because of all the things that government should
Speaker 6: be running, it should be prisoned. That's my personal opinion.
Speaker 6: But as mayor, I understand it's the lifeblood of the town.
Speaker 5: He views it as a financial necessity for the town
Speaker 5: and his residence. And we looked at the town's tax
Speaker 5: revenue and it does make up a significant portion of
Speaker 5: what's called the grocer seats tax, which is kind of
Speaker 5: like New Mexico's version of a sales tax.
Speaker 2: Almost when Rachel and Fola were in Estancia, they drove
Speaker 2: up to the facility to see it from the outside.
Speaker 5: Of course, a Victorren's County detention facility.
Speaker 4: If it's fifteen feet yeah, the facility isn't sort of
Speaker 4: within that small mile by mile like city limit. Instead,
Speaker 4: it's like off like a side road. And then you
Speaker 4: just see this huge complex that's surrounded by razor wire
Speaker 4: and huge fences and there's nothing else really around it.
Speaker 2: And inside the facility, I want to make sure we
Speaker 2: talk about the conditions inside. What are unblematic stories you
Speaker 2: heard from people being detained there.
Speaker 5: Some common complaints I've heard are it's kept excessively cold,
Speaker 5: that the food is undercooked, sometimes inedible, that there isn't
Speaker 5: enough of it at times, pretty constant complaints about understaffing,
Speaker 5: that there aren't enough people working at the detention facility.
Speaker 5: And this is something that federal and have found several
Speaker 5: times in the past as well.
Speaker 2: In March of twenty twenty two, the Inspector General for
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security urged all people in ICE
Speaker 2: custody to be removed from the facility due to critical
Speaker 2: staffing shortages. Corcivic disputed the inspector's findings, and ICE largely
Speaker 2: sided with Corcivic.
Speaker 5: So it's an interesting situation where you do have these
Speaker 5: federal inspections and audits that have pinpointed issues, but there
Speaker 5: really hasn't been punishment. The punishment that was recommended did
Speaker 5: not actually end up happening.
Speaker 2: ICE didn't evacuate the facility, but later that year it
Speaker 2: did agree to a series of other recommendations from the
Speaker 2: Inspector General. Corcivic says it's quote committed to providing safe, humane,
Speaker 2: and appropriate care for the people in its facilities. It
Speaker 2: says all detainees have access to health care services and
Speaker 2: disputes allegations of staffing shortages. It also pointed to recent
Speaker 2: audits by the ICE Office of Detention Oversight, which gave
Speaker 2: the Torrens County Detention Facility good ratings in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four fiscal year and superior ratings in the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five fiscal year.
Speaker 4: I just quickly add that the Trump administration has recently
Speaker 4: significantly rolled back some of these oversight functions. In March,
Speaker 4: the administration eliminated the two bodies that are responsible for
Speaker 4: doing some of the site visits and inspections of these facilities.
Speaker 2: The conditions of the detention facility have also gotten the
Speaker 2: attention of local advocates. New Mexico is a blue state
Speaker 2: and its role in advancing deportation policy makes many residents uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: So some are now pushing the county to envision an
Speaker 2: economic future beyond immigration detention and end its contract with ICE.
Speaker 2: Every few months, the Torrence County Commissioners have to vote
Speaker 2: on whether to extend the agreement. The last vote happened
Speaker 2: in March.
Speaker 5: Are y'all here for the county commission meeting?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fulla and Rachel were in the room.
Speaker 4: Being at the meeting, we saw more than a dozen
Speaker 4: people read testimony from inside the facility, Folks talking about
Speaker 4: the conditions, talking about their feelings of hopelessness. They have
Speaker 4: treated me like a prisoner, not like a migrant, the
Speaker 4: lack of food, the lack of communication with ICE officials,
Speaker 4: the lack of communication about their cases, and second thirty.
Speaker 2: Three birds which there is no adequate medical.
Speaker 4: Carrier though I had to wait three and a half.
Speaker 7: Hours, almost four hours for an ambulance to arrive so
Speaker 7: they could take me outside.
Speaker 5: You all are in the extraordinary position where you have
Speaker 5: the opportunity to intervene in the system of harm. I
Speaker 5: urge you all to vote against the extension of the
Speaker 5: contract with ICE. Thank you.
Speaker 2: After the break, Torrance County's leaders vote on its contract
Speaker 2: with ICE, and we meet one of the County commissioners
Speaker 2: who's weighing in on the facility's fate. Linda Haramio is
Speaker 2: the newest member of the Torrence County Commission as a Republican,
Speaker 2: the only woman and the only Spanish speaker on the commission.
Speaker 2: Back in March, at the County Commission meeting, she was
Speaker 2: preparing to cast her vote on whether to extend the
Speaker 2: county's contract with Ice through October first.
Speaker 4: Approval of Montaians the inter government wal room in Florence
Speaker 4: County the United States to part.
Speaker 5: The immigration of Preston.
Speaker 4: She before her votes, took some time to say, like, look,
Speaker 4: I hear you guys.
Speaker 5: So I've been.
Speaker 7: Listening to these accounts of restreatment at the prison.
Speaker 4: She said, I need to go see this myself, like
Speaker 4: I'm not sure this is true or if this is
Speaker 4: actually what's.
Speaker 3: Happening, and I want is it okay if I visit
Speaker 3: the prison.
Speaker 2: So she visited, and then she voted no, she did
Speaker 2: not visit.
Speaker 4: She said she would like to visit, but in the
Speaker 4: meantime she'll vote yes.
Speaker 5: So I'm going to vote for this today.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to do it, but I'd like to
Speaker 7: have more interaction with these teams.
Speaker 4: And so she voted for the extension, and so it
Speaker 4: passed three zero.
Speaker 2: Unanousley, Rachel and Fulla spoke to Harameo at after the vote.
Speaker 2: They wanted to know how she came to her decision.
Speaker 5: We were sitting on the porch with her. It was
Speaker 5: a breezy day. You can kind of hear the wind.
Speaker 5: Chimes was the decision on the ice contract hard today.
Speaker 7: Yes, but I know we had to vote on it.
Speaker 7: I don't want anybody to be treated cruelly, and I
Speaker 7: don't even know if that's true or not.
Speaker 5: Do you think that the detainees that you've heard from
Speaker 5: are making it up?
Speaker 7: No, I don't think they're making it up, but they
Speaker 7: I just can't imagine that anybody would be treating somebody
Speaker 7: like that. I'm not saying they're liars or anything, but
Speaker 7: I know the people that work there, I mean, what
Speaker 7: happens from.
Speaker 2: In the time since her vote, Haramia told Rachel she
Speaker 2: did visit the facility to see things for herself.
Speaker 5: This wasn't a surprise visit. They had a couple of
Speaker 5: days heads up and the warden was with her during
Speaker 5: the tour. She said that in general things look clean.
Speaker 5: She said the detainees complained about food, and one person
Speaker 5: said that he had a headache that he needed treatment for,
Speaker 5: but in general she felt like things were run efficiently.
Speaker 2: In a few months, Haramio will have the chance to
Speaker 2: vote on the contract extension again.
Speaker 5: I asked her if she was thinking any differently about
Speaker 5: the October vote, and she said, you know, I'm very torn.
Speaker 5: I'm really really torn. So I think we'll see what
Speaker 5: she decides. The next time she'll have the opportunity to
Speaker 5: vote on this. Even if she votes no, they would
Speaker 5: need another commissioner to vote no for the contract between
Speaker 5: the county and ICE to be terminated.
Speaker 2: That's never happened before. Every time they vote, the county
Speaker 2: chooses to maintain its relationship with ICE.
Speaker 5: There is this financial dependence on Courcivic right now and
Speaker 5: on the ICE contract by extension.
Speaker 2: Research shows that prison construction can actually impede economic growth
Speaker 2: in rural areas. One study from twenty ten, looking at
Speaker 2: the economic impact of prison economies over nearly thirty year period,
Speaker 2: found that these facilities can divert resources away from other
Speaker 2: community services, making these areas less attractive for other economic development.
Speaker 2: But Rachel says it's hard for communities like Estancia to
Speaker 2: imagine untethering their economies from incarceration once they're hooked.
Speaker 5: Most of the people we spoke with seem to accept
Speaker 5: that this was just the way it was going to be.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of local communities all across the
Speaker 5: country that do have a tremendous amount of power when
Speaker 5: it comes to how immigrants in ICE custody are treated
Speaker 5: where they are taken, and I think that role is
Speaker 5: vastly overlooked in this debate.
Speaker 4: We asked, like, administrations change and policies change, and there
Speaker 4: could be a scenario where a new administration or even
Speaker 4: this administration decides that they don't need this facility, and
Speaker 4: if it closes, do you have a plan for or
Speaker 4: what's next? And I don't think at any point we
Speaker 4: got a serious answer. I don't think it was something
Speaker 4: that folks had considered there.
Speaker 2: For people like Carol Barrios's father. The latest ICE contract
Speaker 2: extension means continuation of the status quo, and advocates and
Speaker 2: people inside the detention facility say conditions there deteriorated a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, when water supply issues reportedly left toilets
Speaker 2: overflowing and feces on the ground and led to limits
Speaker 2: on people's access to drinking water.
Speaker 5: People in detention were told that they were limited to
Speaker 5: two water bottles a day at times, and we heard
Speaker 5: that people were going days without showers.
Speaker 2: In emails, Corsevic said there were no sewage or plumbing
Speaker 2: issues at the facility, and that water pressure fluctuations had
Speaker 2: caused some toilets to overflow in quote a few rare occasions.
Speaker 2: They also said showers were placed on a schedule, but
Speaker 2: were still available to everyone. After Fola and Rachel published
Speaker 2: their story, an ICE spokeswoman at it in a statement
Speaker 2: that the agency acknowledges the concerns raised about the facility
Speaker 2: and remains quote committed to addressing them in a timely
Speaker 2: and transparent manner. Carol's been emailing ICE and coercivic to
Speaker 2: raise the alarm about conditions in the facility. She even
Speaker 2: flew to New Mexico to visit her father. He told
Speaker 2: her the facility smells awful and that he'd gone days
Speaker 2: without showering, and now they're hundreds of miles apart, again
Speaker 2: anxiously awaiting his next court date.
Speaker 4: This is example of who is being targeted in and
Speaker 4: how widespread and how sort of blanket the administration's efforts
Speaker 4: to detain and the poor people are.
Speaker 5: It's a tremendous amount of money that's changing hands through
Speaker 5: these local governments to private prison companies a lot of time,
Speaker 5: and there's a lot less scrutiny of it because of
Speaker 5: the way that these contracts are done.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: To see photographs from on the ground in Ancia and
Speaker 2: view maps showing how many people ICE is now sending
Speaker 2: to New Mexico. Read the full story on Bloomberg dot
Speaker 2: com or at the link in our show notes. This
Speaker 2: episode was produced by Julia Press and David Fox. It
Speaker 2: was edited by Aaron Edwards and Flynn McRoberts. Additional reporting
Speaker 2: by Polly Masson's special thanks to Kayla sha The episode
Speaker 2: was fact checked by Rachel Lewis Kriskey and mixed in
Speaker 2: sound designed by Alex Suguia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven.
Speaker 2: Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our deputy executive producer
Speaker 2: is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked
Speaker 2: this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big
Speaker 2: Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find
Speaker 2: the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.