In the small town of Estancia, New Mexico, daily life and the local budget are closely bound to a single institution: the Torrance County detention facility. The relationship between the community and the prison illustrates how some American towns have come to depend financially on immigration detention, an arrangement that local officials describe with a mix of pragmatism and unease.
The facility's recent history shows how fragile that dependence can be. In 2017, CoreCivic, a major company in the private prison industry, told its investors that it was idling the Torrance County detention facility in response to a drop in the federal inmate population. For a town built around the prison, the closure raised immediate questions about the local economy's future.
Two years later, the arrangement was revived. In 2019, Torrance County signed a deal with ICE that guaranteed CoreCivic revenue for 714 beds. That agreement allowed the company to reopen the detention facility, restoring the flow of money that the surrounding community had come to rely on.
Local officials are candid about how central the prison is to the town. They describe it as the lifeblood of Estancia, noting that the community effectively does not exist without it. Much of the area was annexed in order to bring the prison into the municipality and to channel its tax revenue into town coffers, tying the town's very boundaries to the facility.
The numbers underline that reliance. According to local figures, two-thirds of the town's gross receipts tax comes from the prison operating under its federal contract. When the facility is open and the contract is active, the town's finances hold together; when it is not, the foundation of the local budget is shaken.
The Estancia case also reflects the broader ways that ICE detention is organized across the country. There are roughly three main models: ICE can own a facility and contract out management and security to a private company; a private company can own the facility while ICE contracts directly with it for bed space; or a private company can own the facility while ICE has an agreement with the county where it is located. That third model gives local governments a growing and unusual role in immigration detention.
Even those who benefit express reservations. The town's mayor, Nathan Dial, said that he personally does not believe in private prisons, arguing that running prisons is something government itself should do, even as his community depends on this one. Every several months the Torrance County Commission votes on extending the ICE contract, and in March 2025 all three commissioners voted to extend it. One of them, Commissioner Jaramillo, said she wanted to visit the facility because of reports about poor conditions before voting again in October; after touring it, she said she did not see the problems that advocates had described, while adding that she was not accusing those raising concerns of lying.