For more than two years, we have visited dozens of clients and friends in the Cibola County Correctional Center (“Cibola”)—a private detention center operated by CoreCivic (formerly the Corrections Corporation of America or CCA) in Milan, New Mexico. Almost all of the people we have spoken with are (or were) seeking asylum in the United States because of the persecution they survived in the countries they fled—in most cases, because of their gender identity or their religious or political beliefs.

We urge the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (“CRCL”) to use its authority under federal law to investigate the civil rights and civil liberties violations outlined in this letter during your upcoming April 2019 visit to Cibola; recommend policy changes to address these violations; and oversee Cibola and ICE’s implementation of policy changes. We also recommend specific changes that ICE and Cibola must make immediately to stop violating the law and to comply with ICE’s own rules.