By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico — The Torrance County Commission met for about two minutes Wednesday morning to extend an agreement allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue housing detainees at its local jail, a little more than 12 hours after the New Mexico Senate voted to ban such agreements.
The Torrance County Detention Facility is one of three New Mexico jails housing ICE detainees through “intergovernmental service agreements.” Per those agreements, ICE pays counties for costs associated with incarcerating detainees, and counties then pass that money along to private companies that own or operate the jails.
Torrance County ICE contract extension ‘likely improper and invalid,’ NMDOJ says
The agreements’ days are numbered following legislative passage of House Bill 9, the Immigrant Safety Act, which prohibits public entities from contracting with ICE for immigrant detention. Following the state Senate’s passage Tuesday night, the bill now heads to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has has indicated she will sign it.
The contract Torrance County commissioners extended Wednesday between ICE and private operator CoreCivic has been the subject of scrutiny for months, after it expired in October without explanation.
The commission met Dec. 30 to agree on a new contract, backdated to Nov. 1, which expired at the end of March. The New Mexico Department of Justice shortly afterward determined that the commission’s brief meeting between Christmas and New Year’s Day “likely” violated the state Open Meetings Act, raising questions about both the public notice the commission gave and the back-dated contract.
The contract the commission approved Wednesday was the same one commissioners OKed back in late December, County Commission Chair Ryan Schwebach told Source NM on Wednesday. They met “under advice of legal counsel” to re-approve the contract, which was otherwise unchanged, he said.
He said he believes the commission and the contract now comply with the Open Meetings Act, and that the contract is valid through April. The contract requires ICE to give the county roughly $2.4 million a month to house ICE detainees.
Chelsea Pitvorec, a spokesperson for the NMDOJ, which recently sued Torrance County Commission over the alleged OMA violation, said the department is a “aware” the commission met Wednesday to try to cure the violation and resolve the lawsuit.
“We are reviewing the potential impact of this development on the pending litigation and remain committed to ensuring their continued compliance with state law,” Pitvorec told Source in an email.
Schwebach said Wednesday the meeting was the soonest the commission could get together to re-approve the contract, so its timing had nothing to do with the Legislature’s passage of HB9.
But he did say he opposes the bill because he believes it threatens dozens of local jobs, in addition to other economic benefits the jail provides. So he intends to continue approving ICE contracts as long as the commission is allowed to under state law.
“I’m gonna stand by what I’ve said all along: If CoreCivic and ICE deem it prudent to extend it, I will, too,” he said.
If signed by Lujan Grisham, the bill will go into effect May 20, at which point counties under existing ICE contracts will be required to end them “as soon as possible,” according to a fiscal impact report.
Contracts at the state’s other two immigrant detention facilities also expire this year: on March 15 at the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral; and in October at the Cibola County Detention Center in Milan, lawmakers and experts said during the HB9 debate Tuesday evening.
Schwebach said he’s already hearing from Torrance County residents concerned about losing their jobs, and he fears for local schools and the area tax base.
“I’m watching my community die, and Santa Fe is putting the nail in the coffin,” he said. “How many families am I going to see move out of this county?”
While HB9 prohibits the county from contracting with federal immigration officials, it does not have authority over private entities, such as CoreCivic.
Schwebach reiterated Wednesday he believes the most likely result of HB9 is that the two entities will contract directly, but he stressed such an outcome isn’t guaranteed, especially given the “message Santa Fe is sending” by enacting the bill.
Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, told Source in an email Wednesday afternoon that CoreCivic is still determining next steps following the Legislature’s passage of HB9.
“We are in close contact with our government partners to determine how best to meet their needs going forward. Our priority is to continue caring for each person in our facilities respectfully and humanely,” he said in an email.
ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday, nor have they responded to requests for comment on HB9 previously.
As of late November, the most recent data available from the Transaction Records Clearinghouse, the facility has an average daily population of about 440 ICE detainees. Many of the new arrivals have come from an ICE enforcement operation in Minneapolis, detainees told Source NM recently.
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