The New Mexico Department of Justice is disputing a recent report that alleges that the state attorney general is not doing enough to police immigrant detention centers.
The New Mexico Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights claimed in its report, released earlier this month, that the New Mexico Department of Justice is not exercising its authority as it relates to counties entering into immigrant detention agreements with private contractors and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“From what we can tell, the New Mexico Attorney General’s office is not prioritizing monitoring these facilities,” the report stated. It also claimed that the New Mexico Department of Justice has the authority to approve each county’s agreements with private contractors and ICE.
“It appears that this oversight function is deferential to the judgment of the counties, but we were not able to hear the Attorney General’s perspective on this role,” the report concluded.
On Wednesday, Lauren Rodriguez, chief of staff at the New Mexico Department of Justice, defended the Department’s record and claimed the Department cannot conduct such oversight.
“The advisory committee members who issued this report are in no position to comment on the agency’s priorities and must have missed the Attorney General’s repeated calls for specific statutory authority to investigate civil rights claims and his related request to increase our budget to enable meaningful oversight of state and local agencies,” Rodriguez stated in an emailed response to questions from New Mexico Political Report.
The report was the culmination of an inquiry that the Advisory Committee conducted of the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral and the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan. According to the final report, at the facilities, detainees had limited access to legal representation. There were also ongoing issues with physical conditions and safety, and a lack of transparency regarding their operation.
In a 7-2 vote, committee members recommended closing the facilities and that the state approve legislation banning local bodies from entering into immigrant detention contracts. Such legislation cleared the New Mexico House of Representatives earlier this year but failed to reach the floor of the New Mexico Senate before the 60-day legislative session ended. An advisor to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., has said the governor will support such a bill in next year’s 30-day regular legislative session.
Contractors that operate the facilities have denied the claims made in the report. Republicans also criticized the report as flawed. In a press release, New Mexico House Republicans deemed the investigation that was the basis for the report as flawed, and “nothing more than political advocacy masquerading as fact-finding.”