On March 21, U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, DN.M., paid an unannounced visit to a privately managed immigrant detention facility in Estancia and then spoke with reporters.
Two days later, in a television interview, she provided a modified account of her visit.
The Torrance County Detention Facility, owned and operated by private corporation CoreCivic, was the subject of a damning inspection report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
The facility holds detainees on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, under a private contract signed in 2019. It also holds detainees for the US Marshals Service and the county.
The OIG report, issued last week, detailed allegations of mold, broken sinks and clogged toilets in living areas, lax supervision and inadequate staffing. The OIG called for all detainees (176 at the time of a February inspection) to be removed until the findings were addressed.
As the representative of New Mexico’s 1st congressional district, Stansbury invoked her legal authority to conduct a surprise visit.
According to Stansbury’s staff, she arrived at the facility at 9:15 am Monday. Stansbury emerged at approximately 12:45 pm and spoke to reporters by the side of the road because CoreCivic had ejected journalists from the property.
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At that time, she described visiting two housing units and said she had been granted “full access.” On Wednesday, however, in an interview with Albuquerque broadcaster KOB-4 television, Stansbury said she had been kept waiting in a conference room for two hours and was provided limited access.
Stansbury’s office said new information, provided by OIG inspectors on Tuesday, suggested her access had been “managed and controlled” by managers on site.
“We spent several hours here at the facility,” she told reporters Monday afternoon. “We were met by the local ICE representatives along with the warden and the senior management and we toured extensively through the facility. We went to the housing units where detainees are being housed. We went to two units and actually interacted with the individuals who were being housed there.”
The Las Cruces Sun-News asked her, “Was there anything you asked to see that you were not permitted to see today?”
Stansbury answered: “We were given full access to the entire facility.”
She mentioned smelling sewage at one point during the tour and being told it was in an unoccupied unit where repairs were taking place. She also said she heard from detainees about lack of access to legal counsel for their pending cases.
The news conference ended after just a few minutes, as it was held outdoors in the midst of rain and hail.
‘She saw a lot but not everything’
Stansbury’s office provided a transcript of her comments for Wednesday’s interview with KOB-4, which was abridged and largely paraphrased for broadcast.
According to that transcript, she told the interviewer she was shown to a conference room and holding area within the detention facility, where she said she waited for 90 minutes.
“We don’t know what happened during that hour and a half,” she said. “We were told that they were obtaining clearances, but we don’t know.”
CoreCivic spokesperson Steve Owen said Stansbury and her staff were asked to wait while clearance for their visit was obtained from ICE. Once that was obtained, he said Stansbury “was provided unfettered access to the entire facility and was taken to all areas that she requested.”
But on Wednesday Stansbury said, “It’s clear we did not see all of the housing units.”
The two units she visited “were clean, and it appeared as if there have been repairs to some of the issues that have been flagged in the OIG report,” she said; but after questioning OIG inspectors who had been to the facility in February, she said she learned there were “several housing units that were not in use that probably had been in use when the OIG was there.”
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ICE and CoreCivic had pushed fiercely against the OIG’s findings, even alleging that photographic evidence had been misrepresented or staged “in order to achieve preconceived conclusions.” They said the backed-up sinks and toilets were in units where plumbing repairs were taking place and not in use for detainees.
Stansbury told KOB-4 that while visiting a wing that was housing detainees for Torrance County they detected “an overriding smell of sewage,” adding: “We were told by the inspectors who physically had been inside of the facility that when they were there, there were ICE detainees being held where the raw sewage was actually in the living area,” specifically in between two bunk rooms where people were held.
“She saw a lot but not everything,” a spokesperson for Stansbury told the Sun-News.
As for the report’s warning about low staffing levels — which has been a complaint in previous inspections, including a failed inspection conducted on behalf of ICE last year — Stansbury’s office said she had inquired about current staffing on Monday but did not get an answer and still had not heard back as of Thursday.
Staff members for Stansbury conducted announced inspections in October and February, her office said, with required 24-hour notice. (Only members of Congress can conduct unannounced inspections.) Those inspections were not delayed, and the office said staff members had never been denied permission to inspect a housing unit of interest.
Stansbury, a former New Mexico state legislator, is serving her first term in Congress after being elected in 2021 to fill the seat vacated by US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
She is on record as opposing for-profit detention facilities, saying the contracts with private firms do not allow sufficient oversight of living conditions and human rights.
Read the OIG report on Torrance County Detention Facility here:
Algernon D’Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, [email protected] or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
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