“Esta experiencia que tengo aqui no le deseo a nadie”
-Edgar Lalvay Gallego in Torrance County Detention Facility
P, an older Latina woman who serves lunch at the Estancia Senior Center just three miles down the road from Torrance County Detention Center (TCDF), thinks about quitting her job almost weekly. The measly $13/hr she makes at the center pales in comparison to the hourly wage she could make if she started working at the detention center–a whopping $27, which the facility dangles over the heads of Estancia residents and plasters on billboards coming into town. She doesn’t like what ICE is doing, but she worries that if the facility were to shut down again—like it did from 2017 to 2019—Estancia would become a ghost town. She is one of thousands of residents living in Estancia, Moriarty, Willard, and other small towns in the area who are unsure about the ethics ICE’s operations at TCDF, but who are ultimately held hostage by the county’s intense—but clearly manufactured—economic dependence on the facility.
Meanwhile, testimonies from immigrants being held inside TCDF continue to expose the torturous conditions inside. Since it reopened in 2019, thousands of detainees have faced extreme medical neglect, psychological and physical torture, inadequate food, arbitrary solitary confinement, and endless violations of due process. Notes written by detainees detail daily torture from guards and staff:
“Help us get out of here because they’re psychologically killing us.”
“My experience here in the Torrance detention center is the worst thing that’s happened to me in my life.”
“We could die waiting for them to attend to us.”
“I ask the entities for an immediate closure of these prisons because they are an abuse to human rights and to society. No human being should receive these punishments.”
TCDF constantly treats Black detainees, mostly Haitian immigrants, in horrifically racist ways. They’ve been disproportionately blocked from accessing legal counsel, denied mail service, and faced unusually rapid deportation proceedings in violation of even ICE’s virtually nonexistent standard of ‘due process’. Despite a complaint filed by several prominent civil rights organizations, these abuses continue unabated.
In August 2022, 23-year-old Brazilian asylum seeker Kesley Vial died by suicide after months of psychological torture and threats from TCDF staff that he would be “locked up for two years”. In response to his death, detainees at TCDF did what local and state lawmakers (most of them democrats) refused to do—stuck their necks out to demand an end to the abuse. While these politicians issued their predictable, toothless statements lamenting his death, immigrants inside TCDF went on hunger strike and issued a collective letter of protest demanding an end to ICE detention at Torrance and the release of all immigrants currently at the facility. Over a dozen men made their full names and lives public, and many faced retaliation for speaking out; the strike was temporarily suspended after a number of the hunger strikers were disappeared in the middle of the night.
Kesley’s death came just months after activists, democratic politicians, and even the feds—DHS’ own Office of the Inspector General (OIG)—declared the facility unfit for operation. In March 2022, the OIG issued a Management Alert documenting widespread abuse at TCDF and recommending the immediate removal of everyone detained there. ICE rejected the recommendation with a simple “non-concur,” claiming the findings were based on “fabricated evidence of abuse.” This response left the alert officially “unresolved and open,” and operations went back to business as usual. Just weeks later, ICE transferred over 100 more people into Torrance, in a blatant ‘fuck you’ to even their own at DHS. Over four years later, OIG’s report remains ‘unresolved’ and immigrants continue to suffer inside.
It has always been a lie and a fantasy to think that internal oversight bodies like DHS’ OIG will actually take action to enforce their findings, no matter how egregious they are. Not to mention that this was Biden’s OIG and Biden’s ICE that—no different from Trump’s—was more than happy to let immigrants languish in torturous conditions.
The Democrats’ current response to the deaths of dozens of detained immigrants has been equally hollow. From New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherill claiming that she’s “pushing to see Delaney Hall closed” while at the same time sending NJ State Police to clear out protesters, to New Mexico’s Governor Grisham signing the Immigrant Safety Act (HB9) to cash in on political points, we must confront these lying Democrats for their role running the deportation machine. In New Mexico, this means seeing the shiny but ultimately worthless diamond of HB9 for what it actually is—a toothless piece of legislation that sounds great on paper but has almost no bearing on the operations of detention facilities in the state. The Act, passed by the house and signed into law by Governor Grisham in February, makes it illegal for local governments in the state to collaborate with ICE. However, two of the three death camps in New Mexico, including TCDF, are owned and operated by CoreCivic itself. This renders HB9 useless as a tool to shut them down. The Otero County facility, which does fall under the jurisdiction of HB9, continues to operate, and the politicians who ‘championed’ the bill refuse to enforce it. The Act also places no restrictions on the feds’ ability to carry out operations as usual. In the words of NM’s Attorney General, “The federal government remains free to detain immigrants in its own facilities, contract with private companies, or build new facilities in New Mexico.”
The only thing that will change the conditions immigrants face at TCDF, Otero, Cibola, and in detention centers across the country is coordinated resistance on both the inside and the outside that brings detainees, their loved ones, and their supporters into direct confrontation with the enemy. ICE will continue to kill and kidnap across the state of New Mexico and across the country unless they start to face consequences for inflicting terror. We are responsible for building a movement capable of inflicting these consequences.
That means no more giving eyes and ears to anyone pushing for false policy solutions, or trying to water down the primary demand coming from hunger strikers: the immediate closure of these death camps and the release of all the detained. It also means holding these same politicians and organizations accountable when they scapegoat rural towns like Estancia for supporting ICE operations in their county. While we may not be able to unite with people living near these facilities in the immediate term, it is well worth getting to know their conditions and the forms of economic coercion—endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans—that have produced such widespread support for ICE’s continued operations there.
More than anything, this struggle must be taken up by those who are under attack from the mass deportation system. From Orlando de los Santos Evangelista, who helped start hunger strikes at Torrance County in response to Kesley Vial’s death in 2022, to Mohammadreza Omidian and Rogelio Bolufé who launched a strike at TCDF this spring, to the others that sparked at Delaney Hall, Adelanto, and Prairieland, immigrants who are facing the worst of this system have been the leading force changing the situation right before us. We must look to these leaders, put forth their demands, and have a strategic direction to see them through together.
There is no fight to be had without them.
Join us THIS Saturday, June 27th at 2pm at the Torrance County Detention Facility for Viva La Huelga, a national day of protest to raise up the demands of the hunger strikers and continue to support those inside who have risked it all.
RESEARCH
https://innovationlawlab.org/testimonies-torrance
https://theappeal.org/torrance-detention-center-kesley-vial-brazil
Dare to Struggle 