In June 2024, Jhon Javier Benavides Quintana, a detained kitchen worker, died in OCPC. ICE failed to provide clarity to his family about what happened and then does not repatriate his body to his family in Ecuador until five months later. Medical negligence at OCPC took the lives of Johana Medina in June 2019 and Rafael Barcenas Padilla in 2016.
In 2019, staff at OCPC force fed protesting hunger striker Ajay Kumar. Stories of protest for dignified treatment and survival of retaliation by staff are too numerous to list, but several have been written down.
Management and Training Corporation (MTC), one of the largest for-profit private prison companies in the United States, operates OCPC. The facility has the bed space to detain over 1,000 people in immigration custody at any given time. Next door MTC operates the Otero County Federal Prison.
Otero has long been a site of public scrutiny for its legal and human rights violations, documented through reports from both advocacy organizations and government oversight agencies. For further documentation about the history of abuse at Otero, follow the links below:
- Timeline of History of Abuse at Otero
- News about the Otero County Processing Center
- Reports and Complaints about the Otero County Processing Center
Learn more about the harmful histories of the other immigration detention centers in New Mexico:
