In a stunning move, never made before, the Inspector General who serves as watchdog over Department of Homeland Security ordered ICE to relocate all the detainees to somewhere safer.
ICE facility ‘unsanitary’
In what’s being hyped as an “unprecedented” move, DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari put out a “management alert” calling for the “immediate relocation” of all detainees held at an ICE facility in New Mexico.
The conditions are so substandard that they aren’t fit for human beings.
His bulletin ordered the Torrance County ICE Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico to move the detainees somewhere else and do it fast. Inspectors “found critical staffing shortages and unsanitary living conditions that led to health and safety risks for the people housed at the facility.” Things like “clogged toilets, mold and water leaks.”
On top of squalid conditions, agents “did not properly supervise and monitor detainees in the housing units.” There were “blind spots under stairwells and behind barrier walls” where anyone could get up to anything and probably were. Control rooms were discovered “dark and empty without posted officers.”
People housed at the facility were subjected to health and safety risks by the horrific living conditions. The only time management alerts are issued is when there is a need for “urgent and immediate action by an agency.”
What makes this one so special is that it’s “the first time the DHS inspector general has called for the immediate removal of detainees from an ICE facility.”
Egregious conditions
During the official inspection visit, the IG reports, “we found such egregious conditions in the facility that we are issuing this management alert to notify ICE.” Also on the list of infractions were “found broken sinks and faucets that did not have hot water.”
some migrants were reminded of conditions back in their homeland. Because of the faulty plumbing, coupled with Covid-19 restrictions, detainees were forced to get their drinking water “from a communal area faucet intended for filling mop buckets.”
ICE pushed back on at least some of the claims. They “disagreed with the conclusions of the report, setting up a dispute between the watchdog and the agency.” They claim it wasn’t nice that the IG inspectors dropped in without notice.
“Investigators visited the Torrance facility as part of an unannounced in-person inspection from February 1 to February 3.”
The day the inspection team arrived, “the facility housed 176 male ICE detainees.” One of the biggest problems was “critical staffing shortages.” They’re supposed to have 245 full-time workers. They barely have half that, 133 at last count. A full 94 of those empty jobs are security related.
Staff “acknowledged the shortage, with one employee indicating the reason could be the facility’s remote location, which is a one-hour drive from Albuquerque.” You would think that they could use some of the $2 million a month they get to house migrants to call in a plumber.
