May 14, 2025 • 19 mins
Like a growing number of US communities, Torrance County, New Mexico, is convinced its financial survival depends on locking immigrants up. A lucrative ICE contract keeps a private detention facility open that local politicians say the area needs.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg reporters Rachel Adams-Heard and Fola Akinnibi examine how these private facilities are becoming key to the US government’s immigration crackdown – and the financial incentives making it harder for small communities to quit them.
Read more: Addicted to ICE
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That was his trigger for him to want to come
back to say, Okay, you know what he has been
missing on.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
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
(00:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
He asked me if I knew where the call was
coming from, and then I told him I will querque
New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
ICE is finding those extra beds in private detention facilities
like the one in Torrance County, and it's contracting with
local governments to get access to them. Bloomberg reporters Fola
at Kenneby and Rachel Adams heard have been reporting on
this facility in rural New Mexico and on its relationship
with ICE ever since Trump took office, because as the
(02:05):
administration seeks to carry out mass deportations, these kinds of
private detention contracts are becoming more central to its immigration agenda.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
For ICE to be able to quickly execute this type
of detention strategy, it really is dependent on these agreements
with counties.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
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
(02:48):
crackdown and the financial incentives making it harder for small
communities to quit them. Astancia, New Mexico, is a town
of about thirteen hundred residents. One hundred years ago, it
was a lively agricultural hub.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Back in the eighties when I graduated, there was a
movie theater, a vehicle dealership, three or four bars.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I mean that's the town's mayor, Nathan Dile. When Rachel
and Fula visited in March, he gave them a tour.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The footprint of Stanchees are basically one mile by one mile.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
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.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's not a cartoon, it's a documentary in Cars.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
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
(04:38):
now Corcivic.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
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
(05:26):
deal not with Corcivic, but with Torrence County itself.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
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
(05:52):
per person, per day rate.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
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
arrests hundreds of miles away to this facility. Because as
ICE pursues the administration's mass deportation agenda, the agency has
(06:18):
widened its enforcement priorities, targeting people with green carts, people
who've lived in the US for years, people like Carol
Barrios's dad, And while past administrations have used discretion to
release people ahead of their immigration hearings, Trump's policy has
been to detain them. ICE now needs a lot more
detention space, So the federal government is finding new counties
(06:42):
to sign the same types of agreements as the one
in Torrance County.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
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,
(07:24):
and working directly with county governments helps ICE move faster.
The agency doesn't have to enter a competitive bidding process
to decide who gets the contract or do all the
paperwork that comes with that process.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
The county government is sort of smoothing this process for
both the federal government and for the private prison company.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The county has a reason to sign these detention deals too.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
My sisters worked out there, my son's worked out there,
my daughter's worked out there, my nephews have worked out there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's the mayor of Astancia again, and I.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Almost when Rachel and Fola were in Estancia, they drove
up to the facility to see it from the outside.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Of course, a Victorren's County detention facility.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
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
(10:01):
times in the past as well.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
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.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
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
disputes allegations of staffing shortages. It also pointed to recent
(10:55):
audits by the ICE Office of Detention Oversight, which gave
the Torrens County Detention Facility good ratings in the twenty
twenty four fiscal year and superior ratings in the twenty
twenty five fiscal year.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
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.
(11:43):
Every few months, the Torrence County Commissioners have to vote
on whether to extend the agreement. The last vote happened
in March.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Are y'all here for the county commission meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, Fulla and Rachel were in the room.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Three birds which there is no adequate medical.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Carrier though I had to wait three and a half.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Hours, almost four hours for an ambulance to arrive so
they could take me outside.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
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,
(13:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Approval of Montaians the inter government wal room in Florence
County the United States to part.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
The immigration of Preston.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
She before her votes, took some time to say, like, look,
I hear you guys.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
So I've been.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Listening to these accounts of restreatment at the prison.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
She said, I need to go see this myself, like
I'm not sure this is true or if this is
actually what's.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Happening, and I want is it okay if I visit
the prison.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So she visited, and then she voted no, she did
not visit.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
She said she would like to visit, but in the
meantime she'll vote yes.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
So I'm going to vote for this today.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I'm not going to do it, but I'd like to
have more interaction with these teams.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
And so she voted for the extension, and so it
passed three zero.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Unanousley, Rachel and Fulla spoke to Harameo at after the vote.
They wanted to know how she came to her decision.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
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.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
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.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Do you think that the detainees that you've heard from
are making it up?
Speaker 7 (14:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
In the time since her vote, Haramia told Rachel she
did visit the facility to see things for herself.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
In a few months, Haramio will have the chance to
vote on the contract extension again.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
That's never happened before. Every time they vote, the county
chooses to maintain its relationship with ICE.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
There is this financial dependence on Courcivic right now and
on the ICE contract by extension.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
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.
(16:13):
But Rachel says it's hard for communities like Estancia to
imagine untethering their economies from incarceration once they're hooked.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
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
(16:46):
vastly overlooked in this debate.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
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
(18:00):
that the agency acknowledges the concerns raised about the facility
and remains quote committed to addressing them in a timely
and transparent manner. Carol's been emailing ICE and coercivic to
raise the alarm about conditions in the facility. She even
flew to New Mexico to visit her father. He told
her the facility smells awful and that he'd gone days
(18:22):
without showering, and now they're hundreds of miles apart, again
anxiously awaiting his next court date.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
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
(19:16):
by Polly Masson's special thanks to Kayla sha The episode
was fact checked by Rachel Lewis Kriskey and mixed in
sound designed by Alex Suguia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our deputy executive producer
is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked
(19:38):
this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big
Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
That was his trigger for him to want to come
back to say, Okay, you know what he has been
missing on.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
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
(00:56):
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.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
He asked me if I knew where the call was
coming from, and then I told him I will querque
New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
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.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
ICE is finding those extra beds in private detention facilities
like the one in Torrance County, and it's contracting with
local governments to get access to them. Bloomberg reporters Fola
at Kenneby and Rachel Adams heard have been reporting on
this facility in rural New Mexico and on its relationship
with ICE ever since Trump took office, because as the
(02:05):
administration seeks to carry out mass deportations, these kinds of
private detention contracts are becoming more central to its immigration agenda.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
For ICE to be able to quickly execute this type
of detention strategy, it really is dependent on these agreements
with counties.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
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
(02:48):
crackdown and the financial incentives making it harder for small
communities to quit them. Astancia, New Mexico, is a town
of about thirteen hundred residents. One hundred years ago, it
was a lively agricultural hub.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Back in the eighties when I graduated, there was a
movie theater, a vehicle dealership, three or four bars.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I mean that's the town's mayor, Nathan Dile. When Rachel
and Fula visited in March, he gave them a tour.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The footprint of Stanchees are basically one mile by one mile.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
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.
Speaker 5 (03:55):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
That's not a cartoon, it's a documentary in Cars.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
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
(04:38):
now Corcivic.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
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
(05:26):
deal not with Corcivic, but with Torrence County itself.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
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
(05:52):
per person, per day rate.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
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
arrests hundreds of miles away to this facility. Because as
ICE pursues the administration's mass deportation agenda, the agency has
(06:18):
widened its enforcement priorities, targeting people with green carts, people
who've lived in the US for years, people like Carol
Barrios's dad, And while past administrations have used discretion to
release people ahead of their immigration hearings, Trump's policy has
been to detain them. ICE now needs a lot more
detention space, So the federal government is finding new counties
(06:42):
to sign the same types of agreements as the one
in Torrance County.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
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,
(07:24):
and working directly with county governments helps ICE move faster.
The agency doesn't have to enter a competitive bidding process
to decide who gets the contract or do all the
paperwork that comes with that process.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
The county government is sort of smoothing this process for
both the federal government and for the private prison company.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The county has a reason to sign these detention deals too.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
My sisters worked out there, my son's worked out there,
my daughter's worked out there, my nephews have worked out there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's the mayor of Astancia again, and I.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
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.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Almost when Rachel and Fola were in Estancia, they drove
up to the facility to see it from the outside.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Of course, a Victorren's County detention facility.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
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
(10:01):
times in the past as well.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
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.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
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
disputes allegations of staffing shortages. It also pointed to recent
(10:55):
audits by the ICE Office of Detention Oversight, which gave
the Torrens County Detention Facility good ratings in the twenty
twenty four fiscal year and superior ratings in the twenty
twenty five fiscal year.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
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.
(11:43):
Every few months, the Torrence County Commissioners have to vote
on whether to extend the agreement. The last vote happened
in March.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Are y'all here for the county commission meeting?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, Fulla and Rachel were in the room.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Three birds which there is no adequate medical.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Carrier though I had to wait three and a half.
Speaker 7 (12:21):
Hours, almost four hours for an ambulance to arrive so
they could take me outside.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
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,
(13:00):
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.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Approval of Montaians the inter government wal room in Florence
County the United States to part.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
The immigration of Preston.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
She before her votes, took some time to say, like, look,
I hear you guys.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
So I've been.
Speaker 7 (13:24):
Listening to these accounts of restreatment at the prison.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
She said, I need to go see this myself, like
I'm not sure this is true or if this is
actually what's.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Happening, and I want is it okay if I visit
the prison.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So she visited, and then she voted no, she did
not visit.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
She said she would like to visit, but in the
meantime she'll vote yes.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
So I'm going to vote for this today.
Speaker 7 (13:48):
I'm not going to do it, but I'd like to
have more interaction with these teams.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
And so she voted for the extension, and so it
passed three zero.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Unanousley, Rachel and Fulla spoke to Harameo at after the vote.
They wanted to know how she came to her decision.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
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.
Speaker 7 (14:12):
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.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Do you think that the detainees that you've heard from
are making it up?
Speaker 7 (14:31):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
In the time since her vote, Haramia told Rachel she
did visit the facility to see things for herself.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
In a few months, Haramio will have the chance to
vote on the contract extension again.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
That's never happened before. Every time they vote, the county
chooses to maintain its relationship with ICE.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
There is this financial dependence on Courcivic right now and
on the ICE contract by extension.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
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.
(16:13):
But Rachel says it's hard for communities like Estancia to
imagine untethering their economies from incarceration once they're hooked.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
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
(16:46):
vastly overlooked in this debate.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
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.
Speaker 5 (17:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
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
(18:00):
that the agency acknowledges the concerns raised about the facility
and remains quote committed to addressing them in a timely
and transparent manner. Carol's been emailing ICE and coercivic to
raise the alarm about conditions in the facility. She even
flew to New Mexico to visit her father. He told
her the facility smells awful and that he'd gone days
(18:22):
without showering, and now they're hundreds of miles apart, again
anxiously awaiting his next court date.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
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.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
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
(19:16):
by Polly Masson's special thanks to Kayla sha The episode
was fact checked by Rachel Lewis Kriskey and mixed in
sound designed by Alex Suguia. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Our deputy executive producer
is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked
(19:38):
this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big
Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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