BS BULLETIN:
- Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández accused ICE officials of trying to prevent her from talking with detainees during a New Mexico facility tour.
- ICE responded publicly: She signed an agreement requiring detainee meetings to be arranged beforehand.
- ICE says Fernández ignored the rule and began “talking and shouting” toward detainees anyway.
New Mexico Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández went looking for answers inside an ICE detention facility this week.
She also found something considerably less useful to a political narrative: The agreement she signed before walking in.
Fernández toured the Torrance County Detention Facility Wednesday after posting that she was going there to see “exactly what is happening inside.” Afterward, she complained that officials had tightly controlled the visit and prevented her from freely speaking with detainees.
“They were terrified of me having conversations with the detainees,” Fernández told Albuquerque station KOB, claiming ICE and CoreCivic officials were “afraid of what we’ll hear.”
ICE then did something government agencies traditionally aren’t famous for doing.
It answered.
And rather specifically.
“We were glad to host you, Congresswoman,” ICE wrote in its public response.
According to the agency, Fernández signed a Facility Visitation Agreement before entering, acknowledging the rules governing congressional visits. One of those policies requires meetings with detainees to be scheduled beforehand, which ICE says protects detainees’ privacy as well as visitors’ safety.
ICE says its field leadership then provided Fernández with the tour she requested, including visitor check-in, intake, food preparation and medical services.
Then they reached the kitchen.
Fernández asked to speak with detainees working in the area, according to ICE, and officials reminded her that they couldn’t accommodate the request without the detainees’ prior consent.
That’s where the two versions of events really diverge.
“Instead of accepting this guidance,” ICE said, “the Congresswoman began talking and shouting to them from a distance, telling the detainees who she was and attempting to get closer to them.”
ICE says the episode disrupted operations and forced facility leadership to intervene.
Fernández sees something more sinister. She characterized the tour as “very sterile” and argued that officials were deliberately preventing her from hearing directly from people in custody.
The clash comes amid a larger fight over ICE operations in New Mexico. Immigration agents have arrested at least a dozen people around Santa Fe since Sunday, according to local advocates, prompting protests and condemnation from Democratic officials.
Fernández herself said she headed to Torrance partly because of an ICE arrest outside a Santa Fe medical clinic that left a 13-year-old girl temporarily separated from her parents. She has accused the Trump administration of conducting indiscriminate immigration raids and has called for greater restrictions on enforcement around clinics, churches and schools.
There are legitimate questions Congress can ask about detention conditions and immigration enforcement.
But ICE’s response presents Fernández with a considerably simpler question:
If you sign the visitation rules before entering a secure detention facility, are you still required to follow them once the cameras are rolling?
ICE’s answer appears to be:
Yes.
MY QUICK TAKE
I particularly enjoyed the opening: “We were glad to host you, Congresswoman.”
That is federal-government language for: Oh, we’re doing this? Fine. Let’s do this.
Then came the receipts. You signed the agreement. You were given the requested tour. You asked to talk to detainees. You were reminded that those conversations had to be arranged beforehand. And then, according to ICE, you started shouting toward them anyway.
There is an increasingly popular political disease in Washington called Rules Are Fascism When They Apply To Me Syndrome.
The treatment is apparently very simple. Post the paperwork.
No screaming. No twelve-paragraph press release. No cable-news food fight. Just: “Congresswoman, lovely having you. Here’s what you signed.”
Sometimes bureaucracy really can be beautiful.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
Twitchy — ICE responds to Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández after detention-facility visit
KOB 4 — ICE says New Mexico congresswoman violated visitation rules at Torrance facility
Searchlight New Mexico — Advocates decry recent spike in Santa Fe ICE arrests
