Senator Martin Heinrich calls for Torrance County ICE detention facility to be closed
Jun. 9—New Mexico's senior senator is calling for a New Mexico-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility to be closed, after his congressional staff observed troubling conditions during a visit in late May.
"For years, detainees have been denied adequate access to legal services and medical care while being subjected to inhumane living conditions and continued instances of physical abuse," Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., wrote to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in a letter Thursday.
The Torrance County Detention Facility is owned and operated by CoreCivic in Estancia. Heinrich has repeatedly pushed for CoreCivic's contract to be terminated, including in a December 2023 letter during the Biden administration.
"CoreCivic is committed to providing safe, humane and appropriate care for the people in our facilities," CoreCivic spokesman Brian Todd said in a statement, pointing to the facility's overall "good" ratings in its 2024 and 2025 ICE Office of Detention Oversight audits.
As the Trump administration has been trying to increase deportations, members of Congress have been attempting to conduct oversight of ICE detention centers around the country. When New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver and other Democratic officials tried to do an oversight visit to a Newark ICE center in May, she was charged with two counts of assault after a confrontation with officers trying to arrest the Newark mayor.
On May 28, Heinrich's staff members were allowed to tour one housing unit at the Torrance County facility, but were denied access to two other housing units, after they heard at least 10 detainees file complaints of abuse, and lack of access to laundry and medical services.
According to Todd, detainees have daily access to sign up for medical and mental health services, there are clinics staffed with licensed health professionals and medical personnel on site at all hours.
"The agent claimed that a revised ICE visitation protocol prohibited congressional staff from visiting housing units with detainees present," the letter reads. "However, the document the agent cited made no mention of limiting congressional staff visitation to empty pods, and it in fact cited to a statutory authority explicitly forbidding ICE from denying congressional staff conducting oversight access."
Congressional staff members found backed-up sinks, a drain in the middle of a common area backed up with sewage water, and non-functioning tablet devices — devices that people detained by ICE use to access legal services, according to Heinrich's letter. The conditions match those described by detainees and advocates, the letter says.
Maintenance staff respond quickly to plumbing issues, Todd said in a statement, and the common area drain was backed up with water after debris collected in shower drains, not with sewage. CoreCivic is committed to providing detainees with access to counsel and courts, Todd said, although he did not respond to a question about the broken tablets.
TCDF Warden George Dedos confirmed that the detention facility had no water from Estancia for three days, the letter says, and was unable to answer questions about the capacity of the facilities' two back-up water tanks or describe the contingency plan for when there is another water outage, "short of the total relocation of all the detainees."
"He told my staff during their visit that the water shortage had not impacted their operations, but that runs contrary to what detainees said during that same visit," Heinrich wrote.
His staff were told by detainees that "water was only turned on for one hour every three days for showers, they were provided only two bottles of drinking water per day, and they were unable to flush toilets for days at a time."
CoreCivic was notified on April 29 that Estancia was having a water supply issue and tried to reduce its water consumption. Drinking water and bottled water were available, Todd said, and water was provided to help flush toilets "as an added measure to reduce water consumption." The laundry services and showers were placed on a schedule, but "those services were still available to all of those in our care," according to Todd.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
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