The Otero County Prison Facility is a privately managed prison for men located in

Chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean c ...

Otero County, New Mexico Otero County is a county located in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 63,797. Its county seat is Alamogordo. Its southern boundary is the Texas state line. It is named for Miguel Antonio Otero (born 1859), ...

, operated by the

Management and Training Corporation Management & Training Corporation or MTC is a contractor that manages private prisons and United States Job Corps centers, based in Centerville, Utah. MTC's core businesses are corrections, education and training, MTC medical, and economic & soci ...

. The facility opened in 2003, and has a capacity of 1420. Otero County is the owner of the facility. Clients include the state, which began sending about 300 sex offenders to the institution beginning in early 2013. Most of the facility is dedicated to housing federal prisoners of the

United States Marshals Service The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforceme ...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

, and the

Federal Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that is responsible for the care, custody, and control of incarcerated individuals who have committed federal crimes; that i ...

. A 2011

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

report was highly critical of prison conditions in Otero County, access to legal resources, and the level of health care provided. As of December 2017, the ICE Processing Center at Otero County "landed at the center of ongoing controversy surrounding private prisons and ICE detention" when a report of the

Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General was established along with the Department of Homeland Security itself in 2002 by the Homeland Security Act. Its website describes its mission as "supervis ngindependent audits, inve ...

found that conditions undermined the rights of detainees meant to be held in civil, not punitive, custody. In 2018, some of the detained immigrant parents affected by the

Trump administration family separation policy The United States family separation policy under the Trump administration was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. In some cases, families followi ...

were housed at Otero County.

References

{{State prisons in New Mexico Prisons in New Mexico Buildings and structures in Otero County, New Mexico Management and Training Corporation 2008 establishments in New Mexico