All Eyes on Estancia

Will Torrance County Be Complicit in the Coverup?

Andrew Free

Apr 24, 2024

Transcript

Estancia, population ~1300, bills itself as ‘the Heart of New Mexico.” In English, ‘Estancia’ roughly translates to ‘resting place.’ It’s also the site of a 991-bed for-profit prison where a man died a preventable death after the federal government told ICE to remove every single person from the facility due to horrific understaffing and inhumane conditions. Unlike many migrant detention facilities across the country, the CoreCivic-owned Torrance County Detention Facility (TCDF) in Estancia is the subject of demands from U.S. Senators and House committee chairs/ranking members to cut the contract and terminate ICE’s use of the place.

A Dire Warning, Ignored

When Kesley Vial died there in August 2022, ICE was in the process of defying an historic and unprecedented demand from the DHS Inspector General to depopulate as a result of damning findings during a February 2022 unannounced inspection. After he died, the Inspector General released a 50-page report reaffirming and expanding upon those findings.

ICE temporarily removed nearly everyone from TCDF and halted new transfers into the facility while the agency completed its detainee death review. In December 2022, ICE OPR released the review, which included only minor findings of agency policy violations which did not, ICE claimed, contribute to Kesley’s death. As far as we can tell, Vial’s is the first detainee death review the agency publicly posted in more than five years—since Roger Rayson’s in February 2017. ICE promptly repopulated Torrance, conditions findings by OIG, Senate and House calls to terminate the contract, and voices of people inside be damned.

A Coverup, Revealed

Today, the ACLU revealed in a letter to ICE’s Acting Director that ICE misled the public about Vial’s death. The Detainee Death Review OPR published omitted any reference to the findings of an ICE Health Services Corps (IHSC) Mortality Review, completed in October 2022. Those findings include the conclusion that the medical and mental healthcare Vial received were not “within safe limits of practice.” That is another way of saying, as a matter of medical opinion, that he did not receive the care he needed within the standards required before he died.

Imagine if ICE had published that IHSC Mortality Review, or even acknowledged its existence, in December 2022. Would the facility be repopulated today?

A Chance to End the Impunity

Tomorrow morning the Torrance County Commission will vote on whether to extend its contract with ICE for 4 months, giving CoreCivic an estimated $2 million each month.

Austin Fisher News from the States County Commission Meeting Story

Agenda

Zoom Link to County Commission Hearing

Torrance County Commission