Currently, there is no immigration detention center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Rather the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Albuquerque temporarily detains immigrants (for less than 24 hours) before sending them to the El Paso Processing Center.  Until a few years ago, the Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque was used as an immigration detention facility, but is no longer in use.  It was also known as the Bernalillo County Detention Center.  The facility housed approximately 700 ICE detainees, many of whom were transferred from Southern California.  The detention center came under an ICE investigation in 2007 after two female detainees reported that they went for two days without food or drink during a transfer from California to the Regional Correctional Center.  They also alleged that the staff failed to give them blankets, despite the cold weather.

Contact Information

Contacting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

To contact the immigration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, call 505-764-3535.

Contacting The El Paso Processing Center

Address:

El Paso Processing Center
8915 Montana Avenue
El Paso, Texas 79925

Phone:

(915)225-0700

Facility Background

The Regional Correctional Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico is no longer to house ICE detainees.

In April of 2007 a special delegation visited the Regional Correctional Center in response to complaints of mistreatment by two female detainees.  The delegation made numerous findings of deficiencies:

• inadequate access to telephones: phones tested were inoperable; detainees testified that the phones would not work for up to three days in a row; one detainee testified that she was unable to make an emergency call to locate her missing teenage son;
• detainees were not allowed to make free calls to legal service providers or consulates;
• detainees’ calls were disconnected arbitrarily after 15 minutes by facility staff;
• the facility staff did not take and deliver messages from attorneys;
• detainees’ lacked adequate access to the law library

  id=”attachment_458″ align=”alignleft” width=”528″ caption=”Albuquerque Regional Correctional Center – 2007 Audit Excerpt”[1]

Nearby Facilities

Because ICE detainees are housed only temporarily in Albuquerque, try contacting the following detention centers to locate a person in ICE custody:

• El Paso Processing Center (i.e., El Paso Detention Center)
• West Texas Detention Facility (i.e., Sierra Blanca Immigration Detention)
• Otero County Detention Center (i.e., Otero County Processing Center)