ICE Attempting To Keep Taylor Immigrant Detention Center Open

AUSTIN, TX — Federal immigration officials have solicited information from potential contractors in a seeming attempt to keep a Williamson County detention center for immigrant women operational even after a recent community rebuke of the facility, an advocacy group said Monday.

In a press advisory, Austin-based Grassroots Leadership reported that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has issued a so-called Request for Information for a 500-bed detention facility centered on the existing T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas. An RFI is something of a precursor to a Request for Proposals (RFP) for contractors to submit bids in running a site.

The detected RFI is being seen as an attempt by ICE to keep the facility running even after Williamson County Commissioners Court members on June 26 opted to end an intergovernmental contract with the facility by the end of January 2019. That action ends a years-long relationship the county has had with ICE in allowing the facility to operate in the region that proved lucrative to local coffers. The site's owner/operator, CoreCivic, pays Williamson County some $8,000 each month for costs related to the county's liaison role as it relates to the detention site.

Related story: Williamson County Ends Contract With Immigration Detention Site

“We are outraged, but not surprised," Bethany Carson, immigration researcher and organizer at Grassroots Leadership, said. "ICE grows more shameless every day and is as beholden to their private prison partners as ever. The community has made it crystal clear: ICE is not welcome. This place is so bad that Williamson County Commissioners ended the contract so they wouldn’t be liable for its litany of abuses. So we’ll keep fighting to see this place close for good.”

Ahead of the commissioner's vote to end its relationship with the facility's operators — an action previously seen as implausible for the deeply conservative county — some 200 people protested against the site outside the Williamson County courthouse. Over the years, stories of alleged abuse at the hands of guards have emerged, another factor that may have contributed to the county's reversal.

Immigrant women who were formerly detained at the facility are scheduled to testify at the Williamson County commissioners meeting on Tuesday, Grassroots Leadership officials said in the Monday press release.

As first reported by Mother Jones magazine, the RFI was issued on Aug. 9 for insights sought from conntractors on a 500-bed detention center for women within 50 miles of Austin. The RFI states that ICE would then issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) in 15 to 30 days, and anticipates bringing the facility online by January 1, 2019, according to Grassroots Leadership.

The process outlined in the RFI seemingly runs afoul to the tactics of a fair and open bidding process, Grassroots Leadership officials said, as the proposed date to open the “new” facility comes right before the previous T. Don Hutto contract is set to end. Instead, CoreCivic/CCA continues to operate the facility as if nothing had changed, Grassroots Leadership officials noted, referencing the acronym to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) that was the operator's former name.

In June, The Williamson County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to end the intergovernmental service agreement with the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor after months of public pressure from formerly detained women, advocates, members of the faith community and Williamson County residents in the Shut Down Hutto Coalition who have called for the closure of the for-profit prison, Grassroots Leadership officials noted. The decision gave ICE until January 2019 to renegotiate contract or determine logistics for closing the facility.

"ICE’s efforts to keep open a profitable lock up for asylum-seeking women comes as calls to dismantle and abolish the 15-year-old deportation force grow louder," Grassroots Leadership officials said.

Further reading:

Sexual Abuse Claims Emerge From Hutto Immigrant Detention Site

Austin Council Members Seek Access To Detained Immigrant

Chody Blasted For Inaction On Detention Site Sexual Abuse Claims

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