ICE facility administrator Dora Orozco said her staff at the Otero County Processing Center were “appalled” to read our story.

Otero County Processing Center. Credit: Joel Angel Juárez for Reveal

On Sept. 15, we received a letter to the editor from the company that runs the New Mexico immigration detention facility was at the center of our latest story ([link removed]) , which revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s disinterest in accepting COVID-19 assistance from the New Mexico Department of Health.

The letter has run in a number of New Mexico news outlets ([link removed]) , despite having some inaccuracies, so we wanted to respond.

In the letter, facility administrator Dora Orozco said her staff at the Otero County Processing Center were “appalled” to read our story, which they called a “complete misrepresentation of the facts.”

This was surprising to me. During the course of our reporting, I tried to get the company’s perspective a number of times. I reached out to Issa Arnita, spokesperson for prison contractor Management and Training Corp., which has a contract with ICE to run Otero. I explained what we were working on and asked for a comment. But Arnita never directly responded to me. Instead, Arnita forwarded my inquiry to an ICE spokesperson, who told me they would look into my request. I followed up, but never heard back. I also called the health services administrator at the Otero County Processing Center twice on his cell phone, and he didn’t return my calls.

In the letter, Orozco claims that our story says staff didn’t respond to the health department’s requests to stop detainee transfers. That’s not true. In fact, our article focuses squarely on ICE’s decisions:

ICE continued detainee transfers, despite warnings from (Health Secretary Kathy) Kunkel’s staff that such movement could spread the virus.

Orozco also writes that the story’s claim that MTC wasn’t communicating with the health department “does not add up.” We never said this. Our story clearly explains that the health department’s concerns were mostly with ICE, not MTC:

Emails show that wardens and health administrators for Management and Training Corp. and CoreCivic, the other private contractor running ICE facilities in New Mexico, mostly responded to health department inquiries. The resistance came from ICE, which over a period of months failed to return phone calls and comply with the state’s plan to conduct testing at all detention facilities, officials told Reveal.

Orozco took issue with a fact that we had quoted from one of those internal emails. According to a May 8 email from an immigration rights advocate who helps detainees inside Otero, detainees’ sheets hadn’t been washed in a month. This was the email that prompted health Kunkel to petition a top Department of Homeland Security medical professional for help in getting ICE to respond to her. But in her letter, Orozco said this statement was “ludicrous.”

She wrote that detainees’ bedding is cleaned weekly.

We’ve asked MTC for any documentation or other evidence to contradict the claim. They haven’t yet responded.

Read our story here ([link removed]) .
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** DHS LAUNCHES INQUIRY INTO WHISTLEBLOWER COMPLAINT FROM GEORGIA NURSE
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The Department of Homeland Security is investigating ([link removed]) a series of bombshell accusations about dangerous medical practices at the Irwin County Detention Center in rural Georgia. The claims stem from a complaint written by a nurse, Dawn Wooten ([link removed]) , who says staff at Irwin underreported COVID-19 cases, failed to test detainees exhibiting symptoms, ignored medical complaints and transferred detainees to other facilities while they were awaiting COVID-19 test results.

Among Wooten’s most controversial claims ([link removed]) is that a doctor performed questionable hysterectomies on detained immigrant women, often without an interpreter present or a clear explanation about why the procedure was needed. Prism identified the doctor ([link removed]) last week as Dr. Mahendra Amin, who is affiliated with Coffee Regional Medical Center and Irwin County Hospital in Georgia.

Since the allegations emerged two weeks ago, more than 170 members ([link removed]) of Congress have called for an immediate inquiry. “Everyone, regardless of their immigration status, their language, or their incarceration deserves to control their own reproductive choices, and make informed choices about their bodies. We request an immediate investigation into these reports,” their letter to the Office of Inspector General reads.
Read about the DHS inquiry here ([link removed]) .


**
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** 3 THINGS WE’RE READING
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1. The pandemic is further undermining advocates’ search for migrant families separated under the Trump administration. (KQED ([link removed]) )

Nearly all of the roughly 2,800 migrant children separated from their parents in the summer of 2018 under the “zero tolerance” policy have been reunited. But the government later acknowledged that hundreds more children who were separated as early as July 2017 remain apart from their parents, many of whom have been deported. Advocates and lawyers have been searching in Central America for their parents, but with new travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19, the search has become more difficult. “We're now in 2020 and this is still going on,” said Lee Gelernt of the ACLU.

The kicker: "When the administration started separating families at the southern U.S. border ... there was no plan to track the families or even reunite them, even though their own experts warned these separations were causing harm," said Nan Schivone, the legal director for Justice in Motion. "And here we are three years later, still dealing with the fallout."

2. COVID-19 is devastating Latino communities in Texas, where they are more likely to be hospitalized and die of the virus. (The Washington Post ([link removed]) )

In Texas, Latinos comprise about 40 percent of the state’s population. From San Antonio natives to indigenous immigrants in Austin, “Latinos comprise the bulk of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.”

The kicker: Jocelyn Hernandez, a nurse at Davis’s clinic, lives with 10 family members, including her siblings, parents, an aunt, a cousin and a 6-year-old niece. All followed the decontamination rules Hernandez helped establish. She and her sister were the assigned grocery shoppers of the home. But they could not control for everything. There are six rooms and three bathrooms in the house but one preferred shower. Hernandez, 27, starting feeling feverish at work at the same time that her father, who has diabetes and hypertension, was bothered by chest congestion. Her mother felt her allergies flaring up. Their symptoms weren’t severe at first, but everyone got tested. All but the child were positive.

3. Amid the pandemic, a moment of joy for new U.S. citizens at a Texas naturalization ceremony. (Dallas Morning News ([link removed]) )

The government postponed naturalization ceremonies at the beginning of the pandemic. But in June, the ceremonies restarted on a much smaller scale, with participants wearing masks and sitting six feet apart. On a recent Friday, 30 Texas residents became citizens after a 10-minute ceremony. “Family waiting outside moved in to snap photos and grab hugs. Masks hid half their faces, but not the joy in their eyes.”

The kicker: From a video screen, Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn, chief of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, presided over the ceremony. “I wish I was there with you, seeing and welcoming you as new citizens, shaking your hands,” the judge said. “But we can’t do that now, for obvious reasons." Thirty people, all wearing masks and spaced across a room, peered back at the judge. Most arrived by 7:30 a.m to take their oath of allegiance.

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** NEWS BREAK: A TREASURE HUNT YIELDS SHARDS OF TEXAS HISTORY
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How does one pass the time on a ranch in South Texas during the pandemic? For writer Melissa Guerra and her family, the answer is scouring the land with a metal detector to unearth artifacts that once belonged to “neighbors who lived out here before us.” They’ve found Lone Star Beer pull tabs, spark plugs, a hammer from the 1800s, and lots of pieces of ceramic dinnerware from England.

From the Texas Monthly story ([link removed]) :

Rural social distancing has heightened my curiosity about other people living in isolation. With everyone at home and communicating through Zoom, we have all become hungry voyeurs: we scrutinize other people’s garage offices and kitchens, and we study the bookshelves that serve as teleconference backdrops. But in less populated communities like mine, we can also acquaint ourselves with the intimate lives of the neighbors who lived out here before us, by excavating the relics they left behind.

On a recent Sunday my husband and I headed to my brother’s property, also in Hidalgo County. Aided by our family and the beep boooop bip bip of a metal detector, our searching yielded a particularly good bounty. By the afternoon, my husband had already dug up some ancient Lone Star Beer pull tabs and spark plugs, what we suspect were a Confederate soldier’s heel taps, coffee grinder parts, and a chunky clothing iron that was missing its handle. My ten-year-old niece was sifting sand with her dad when she found a flintlock rifle hammer that we later learned was manufactured between 1816 and 1830. I found three white glass ointment jars and stumbled across a knobby pre-HD television set that appeared to have been shot and set on fire.

But amid the jetsam, we invariably find one artifact more often than any other: pieces of ceramic dinnerware manufactured in England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rancher friends from the Coastal Bend to Jim Hogg County report the same findings on their land. We come across these pieces of porcelain far more often than the Mexican pottery that I’d expect to unearth this close to the border. Agriculture, weather, and animal traffic have moved the pieces over wide areas, so surface-level ceramic shards can only show us approximately where people resided. We usually use metal detectors to sleuth out rusted artifacts buried in the dirt, uncovering ceramic fragments as we dig. Sometimes, when agricultural machinery has exposed them, the pieces lie right on the surface, scattered across the red sand and glinting in the sun. Occasionally, if we catch the setting sun at the right angle after a good rain, a scintillating mosaic of British traditional industry stretches from under our
snake boots all the way to the horizon.

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