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Immigration agency moves Albuquerque jail inmates
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The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has yanked hundreds of its inmates from the Regional Correctional Center in Downtown Albuquerque, reducing the jail's population by about a third.
The move, which removed all the female inmates and inmates held on non-criminal immigration violations from the jail, is a first since Cornell Corrections Inc. took over the jail about three years ago.
The move comes as attorneys in a 12-year-old lawsuit — known as the McClendon case — about jail crowding seek access to the building to monitor living conditions at the facility.
ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said the lawsuit didn't play a role in the decision to move "at least half" of the ICE inmates.
"In an effort to manage ICE's use of bed space, ICE has determined that the agency is only going to use the RCC for male criminal aliens," Zamarripa said.
She did not have the exact number of inmates transferred from the jail and moved to other facilities in New Mexico and Texas.
The agency in the past has housed about 700 people in the jail and the population frequently fluctuates as immigrants are brought to the RCC and then deported.
The move by ICE comes about a month after Bernalillo County removed its inmates from the Regional Correctional Center. The county removed their inmates about one week after a filing in the McClendon lawsuit by inmate attorneys wanting access to the RCC facility.
The county contends the lawsuit had nothing to do with the move.
"Bernalillo County removed its inmates from the RCC because intermittently we will place overflow inmates there as needed," said county public safety director John Dantis. "At the time, we could manage this group within our facility."
It's unclear how many people remain at the jail.
A consultant for the company, Charles Seigel, declined to release the current population, but said it's not over capacity. The building is rated to hold 970 people.
"On a regular basis, it's more appropriate for the agencies to say how many are in there," he said.
The county, ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service house detainees in the facility.
The U.S. Marshals Service has just fewer than 200 people in the facility, said Deputy Chief Marshal Carl Caulk.
Marc Lowry, an attorney for inmates in the McClendon case, said he was at the jail to visit a client this week and saw 22 people in a receiving and discharge unit marked with an 11-person population sign.
"They all had to eat lunch standing up and holding trays," he said. "I don't know why they have to stuff people in there like sardines."
The lawsuit filed in 1995 focused on crowding and living conditions including medical care at the jail, which was then the county's main detention facility.
Things haven't improved at the Downtown jail since the county built a new jail on the far West Mesa, Lowry said.
Attorneys in the lawsuit held a status conference on July 27 but said a judge asked that the proceedings be kept confidential, two lawyers involved said.
Meanwhile, the county this week pitched ideas to state lawmakers on how to manage the population at its main jail, the Metropolitan Detention Center. Among other things, the county wants to decriminalize some minor traffic offenses.
