Cibola County Correctional Center

Cibola County Correctional Center is a privately owned minimum-security prison, located at 2000 Cibola Loop in Milan, Cibola County, New Mexico. The facility first opened in 1993 as a county prison with capacity to house state prisoners, and was then acquired and expanded by the Corrections Corporation of America in 1998. It has a capacity of 1129 inmates. Until October 2016 it housed federal minimum-security prisoners under a contract with the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons and the United States Marshal Service. but was soon re-opened under a new contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This facility is unrelated to Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, also in Cibola County, operated by the New Mexico Corrections Department with an inmate capacity of 440. Closure Before the facility was closed in 2016, it had been a "standout example of the problems at the BOP's private prisons". Almost 700 Cibola County inmates staged a non-violent protest of prison conditions on April 23, 2001 and were tear-gassed. In March 2013 about 250 inmates staged another non-violent protest, which was resolved peacefully. Prison officials declined to reveal the reason for the protest. As of June 2002, 95% of prisoners held in Cibola County were undocumented Mexican nationals. From 2007-2016, 30 of the 34 citations against the facility were related to poor medical care, including the lack of an on-location doctor, failure to perform CPR, and lack of mental health evaluation for a suicidal inmate. In August 2016, Justice Department officials announced that the FBOP would be phasing out its use of contracted facilities, on the grounds that private prisons provided less safe and less effective services with no substantial cost savings. The agency expected to allow current contracts on its thirteen remaining private facilities to expire. The same month CCA announced that their federal contract had not been renewed. The FBOP removed its last prisoner on October 1, and facility was slated to close with the loss of about 300 local jobs. ICE administration The facility was reopened with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract under CCA's new name, CoreCivic. There are open lawsuits and investigations related to deaths of people who were detained in the facility since October 2016. A 2018 hearing at the New Mexico state capitol documented experiences of abuse and negligence at both Cibola and Otero County Prison Facility. Eight ICE detainees died in 2018, with half of those occurring after detention in facilities operated by CoreCivic. Transgender migrant detention Cibola County includes a dedicated section for the detention of transgender migrant detainees, one of the only such facilities after protests by immigrant groups led to the closure of the dedicated ICE GBT Pod that had housed gay, bisexual, and transgender detainees in Santa Ana. Transgender women detained at the facility face significant challenges, particularly due to the isolation and lack of available representation. The New Mexico Immigrant Law Center has sought emergency funding to provide lawyers with travel fees to provide suitable counsel. In some cases, however, they are more likely to have legal representation than other detainees at Cibola. In November 2018, Roxsana Hernandez Rodriguez, a 33 year old transgender woman seeking asylum from Honduras died from dehydration and complications from HIV infection after having been detained at CCCC for a single night. Hernandez had been in ICE custody for 16 days when she died, and been hospitalized for the same conditions a week before arriving at Cibola County. Fellow detainees witnessed her symptoms of severe dehydration and reported a lack of medical treatment or attention. An independent autopsy paid for by the Transgender Law Center, a group that sued ICE on behalf of Hernandez, reported deep hemorrhaging of the soft tissues and muscles over her ribs. References External links Cibola County Correctional Center (CoreCivic) Cibola Detention Center (New Mexico Immigrant Law Center)