By Zoe Bowman, Supervising Attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Maria Archuleta, Communications Director at ACLU-NM  

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of stories from inside the Otero County Processing Center, based on interviews conducted in the summer of 2024 by Colorado College students: Alex Reynolds, Sandra Torres, Karen Henriquez Fajardo, and Michelle Ortiz. We are grateful for their invaluable work on this project. 

Yofer Fernando Orozco-Herrera, a basketball enthusiast from Barinas, Venezuela, dreamed of a career in public service. Instead, he was forced to flee his homeland in search of safety and opportunity. And at age 31, he found himself detained at the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico. 

Like many Venezuelans, Yofer participated in protests against the government—activism that came with a steep price. He said the CICPC (Venezuela's national police) repeatedly detained and beat him—he ultimately had no safe choice but to flee the country. 

"Solitary is horrible...the guards damage us psychologically."

Yofer experienced the psychological torture of solitary confinement while detained at Otero. "Solitary is horrible," he told us. Guards allowed him just ten minutes daily for family calls and routinely accused all Venezuelan detainees of gang affiliation with Tren de Aragua without evidence.

Yofer spent 17 days in solitary in a tiny cell with severely restricted yard access. Initially, guards told him and others that ICE had ordered their isolation, but Yofer later learned the decision had been made by MTC, the private company that operates the facility. Even outside of solitary, he continued to face arbitrary cruelty in the detention system. Even though he had been ordered deported four months earlier, Yofer remained in Otero, taking medication for anxiety, depression, and nightmares brought on by his prolonged confinement.

"The guards want to damage us psychologically," Yofer explained, describing how some guards treat detainees with explicit racism. The experience has changed him. He now avoids speaking to guards for fear of being returned to solitary confinement. 

Yet even in these dehumanizing conditions, Yofer believes strongly in second chances and human dignity. "If I were in the guards' position, I would never put people in solitary. I would talk to them instead and explain the situation calmly," he told us.

"We are not bad people. We are fathers and mothers who want to work."

He speaks with pride about how detainees in his and other units formed a brotherhood, sharing what little they have and supporting each other through the hardest times. For Yofer, maintaining this sense of community is an act of resistance. When the facility cut free phone privileges and instituted charges of 45 cents per minute—a cost many detainees had no way to pay—Yofer and others organized hunger strikes. Though these actions often resulted in more punishment, they maintained their solidarity. 

Yofer's dreams for life beyond detention are both modest and profound: to be able to speak with his family and prepare traditional Venezuelan dishes like arepas con jamón and pabellón with passion fruit juice.

His message to ICE, MTC, and Otero officials is simple: "Give us a chance; trust us; we are not bad people. We are fathers and mothers who want to work." As he puts it in Spanish, "Con una oportunidad basta y sobra para hacerlo realidad"—one opportunity is enough to make it a reality. 

Yofer's story, like countless others, underscores why New Mexico must pass House Bill 9, the Immigrant Safety Act. Our state cannot continue to be complicit in a system that strips immigrants of their dignity, subjects them to arbitrary punishment, and denies them basic human rights. 

Editor's note: This is the first blog in a series of stories from inside the Otero County Processing Center, based on interviews conducted in the summer of 2024 by Colorado College students: Alex Reynolds, Sandra Torres, Karen Henriquez Fajardo, and Michelle Ortiz. We are grateful for their invaluable work on this project. 

Juvenal Junior Reyes Villegas—Junior, as he prefers to be called—was held in the Otero County Processing Center when we spoke with him in June 2024. A 24-year-old geology and civil construction student from Venezuela, Junior fled political persecution after participating in student protests. One day, Venezuelan police forced him into their patrol truck and gave him a chilling ultimatum: pay extortion money within 24 hours or be killed. Junior had no choice but to escape to Colombia. His journey to seek safety in the United States involved a harrowing trek through the Darién Gap, where he witnessed fellow travelers fall from cliffs to their deaths. 

But the trauma didn't end at our border. Despite passing his asylum screening interview, Junior faced an immigration judge who repeatedly accused him of gang membership based solely on his tattoos. When the psychological strain of detention became unbearable, he requested deportation, desperate to help his struggling family. The immigration judge denied even this plea for release. At the time that we spoke with him for this story, he was still in detention—five months after he was ordered deported.  

"Otero uses solitary to disturb the detainees...it's psychologically damaging."

Junior is one of the hundreds of people held on any given day in immigration detention in New Mexico. His experience illustrates the systemic abuses that plague these facilities. One day in the spring of 2024, guards pulled Junior and other Venezuelans from their beds at the Otero facility without explanation. Junior spent 17 days arbitrarily held in solitary confinement in a cramped two-by-three-meter cell, where bright lights burned 24/7, making sleep nearly impossible. It took a hunger strike for Junior and the others to learn that ICE had never even ordered their isolation—it was, they claimed, a "miscommunication." 

"Otero uses solitary to disturb the detainees," Junior said. "I've seen people break down and cry there. It's psychologically damaging. They make you feel worthless.” He described guards who mock detained individuals’ English, pepper their speech with profanities, and openly discriminate against Venezuelans, telling them they don't belong in the United States. 

This is the reality of ICE detention in New Mexico. While Junior maintained his spirits by reading his bible, giving haircuts to people detained alongside him, and dreaming of opening his own barbershop, he struggled daily with the prolonged separation from his daughter, who kept asking when he would come home. 

During his time in Otero, Junior dreamed of his release from detention. The first thing he would do, he said, was to call his family and eat his favorite meal, a parrilla (barbecue) with an ice-cold soda. He hoped to find work to help his family and, one day, to live his childhood dream of attending a Yankees game. 

Image of Junior and his loved ones. Photo courtesy of Junior and his family.

Last summer, Colorado College students working with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the ACLU of New Mexico sat down with people detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Otero County Processing Center to document the human cost of immigration detention in New Mexico. Their stories reveal a system rife with abuse, where basic human dignity is routinely denied and due process violations are commonplace. 

With the Trump administration pursuing aggressive deportation policies, our state faces the prospect of thousands of people apprehended within the United States being transferred into New Mexico's three detention centers—facilities already marked by well-documented human rights violations, including excessive use of solitary confinement, inadequate medical care, and three deaths since 2022. 

House Bill 9, the Immigrant Safety Act, would prevent our state from enabling these abuses. Seven other states have already passed similar laws, recognizing that no detention is safe. By prohibiting state and local government agreements with ICE for civil immigration detention, we can stop being complicit in this dangerous system. 

Over the coming weeks, we'll share the stories of those trapped in ICE detention in New Mexico in a series called Behind Detention Walls. Their experiences make clear why New Mexico must join other states in refusing to facilitate a system that treats our immigrant neighbors—who are integral parts of our communities as family members, friends, and coworkers—with such profound disregard for their basic dignity and safety. 

A huge thanks to all the students—Alex Reynolds, Sandra Torres, Karen Henriquez Fajardo, and Michelle Ortiz—for their invaluable work on this project.