EPISO Halts the Nation's Largest Proposed ICE Detention Center

After extensive organizing by EPISO to block the largest planned ICE detention center in the nation, the Trump administration is now abandoning its proposal – a major victory for leaders who’ve fought for decades to protect local water and the dignity of their neighbors.

Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz reflected:

[W]hen a community comes together and speaks up, they can be part of what encourages rethinking of the plans that are being laid out to turn a warehouse into a place that stores people.”

[Excerpts from Religion News Service & El Paso Matters]

The reversal on the planned Socorro detention facility came after months of scrutiny over costs and intense local opposition to its impact on local water supply and first responders.

Numerous political and advocacy groups in El Paso opposed the Socorro detention center plan. In Socorro, a community of about 30,000 people southeast of El Paso, much of the opposition came from parishioners [organized by EPISO] in the community’s three Catholic parishes, who had moral objections to mass detention as well as practical concerns about the impact to their relatively small water system.

Human beings should not be treated like sardines. We are not sardines,”

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said in Spanish to 50 people gathered on July 29 at San Felipe de Jesus parish in Socorro for a presentation on the proposed ICE detention center and other issues flagged by the Lower Valley Water District.