GOP legislators laud conditions at Otero County immigration detention facility

SANTA FE — With the future of three federal immigration detention centers in New Mexico possibly hanging in the balance, several Republican legislators said Monday they were impressed by the conditions they saw while touring one of the facilities.

Several of the nine legislators who took part in the tour of the Otero County Processing Center described the facility as humane, saying it featured video games, a library and a sound-proof room for detained migrants to hold virtual meetings with immigration attorneys.

“I don’t think anyone can disagree the facilities were very clean,” said Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, who helped arrange the tour.

“I was happy to see it was not as much of a prison environment as I expected,” she added.

She also said legislators were allowed to visit with some of the roughly 1,000 people at the processing center, though she acknowledged translation issues made communication difficult. During his tour of the Otero County facility last month, U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., said he was not allowed to meet any of the detainees.

Vasquez also said at the time of his visit the facility was bursting at the seams, but GOP legislators said Monday that description was at odds with their observations.

Rep. Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, said there were some empty beds in the Otero County facility, while describing it as “safe, clean and well maintained.”

“I was pretty impressed with the way they tried to be humane and care for these people,” Reeb told the Journal.

The tour comes as lawmakers are preparing for a possible special session in which legislation banning New Mexico local governments from entering into contracts with federal agencies to detain immigrants for civil violations could be among the items on the agenda.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has not yet set a date for the special session, but her chief legal counsel told a legislative panel last month she was considering adding such a bill to the special session mix. The governor did not attend Monday’s tour, citing scheduling conflicts.

Of the nine legislators who took part in Monday’s tour, eight were Republicans. The lone Democrat was Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, who was among the lead sponsors of legislation during this year’s 60-day session that would have forced the three immigrant detention facilities in the state to close down. That bill passed the House, but ultimately stalled in a Senate committee.

Following the tour, Romero said during a Monday afternoon committee hearing she felt compelled to attend the tour but did not specifically discuss her observations.

Another Democrat, Rep. Christine Chandler of Los Alamos, said she thought it was “disrespectful” for Republicans to schedule the tour on the first day of the three-day Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee hearing in Las Cruces.

“It was a date that clearly interfered with (the committee hearing),” Chandler said.

The committee is scheduled to hear presentations about the immigration detention facilities from several county officials Tuesday. The governor’s top attorney, Holly Agajanian, is also scheduled to testify.

New Mexico currently has three private detention centers — in Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties — that operate via intergovernmental service agreements between local counties and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.