B Y A U S T I N F I S H E R , J E F F P R O C TO R t i p s @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
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adonna Evans was serving a nine-year sentence for a drug conviction at the Northwestern New Mexico Correctional Facility when moving day came. State prison officials took the 42-yearold Tucumcari native and a handful of others from what was the women’s prison to a new, remote location several miles north on the very eastern edge of Grants. The women approached a housing unit across the highway from what is now called the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility, where about a dozen trailers had been modified to fit two pods per trailer. It was October 2016. Walking toward the trailers, Evans saw a rat scurrying through the dirt and initially thought it was normal, since she was outside. In an interview with SFR, she even recalls thinking it was funny. Then the humor stopped when Evans and the others entered the prison itself. “We started seeing them inside, inside the kitchen, inside the chow hall, in our food,” she says in an Aug. 16 interview. “It
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was like, ‘OK, this is a issue, there are rodents inside the prison.’” The issue did not stop, SFR has found through a series of interviews and a review of government records and court filings. Rather, a large-scale rodent infestation peaked in the prison around 2018, keeping imprisoned women fearful and potentially exposed to the sometimes-fatal respiratory illness Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome—in a county that has helped drive New Mexico’s reported cases of the disease higher than in any state in the nation. The state Department of Corrections is well aware of the problem and has employed some curious strategies to address it, current and former inmates tell SFR. Among them: allowing several feral cats to roam the prison and hunt the rodents and, more recently, bringing in a domestic feline that goes by various names, including Ruffles. Prison guards also handed out clicktop plastic bins—and kept them in the commissary area—encouraging women to store food and belongings in them as a defense against mice and rats. Prisoners also took matters into their own hands, blocking the bottoms of their
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cell doors with tape, books and whatever else they could find to keep the rodents out, according to women currently and formerly locked up at Western. The situation has improved, according to current and former prisoners, though the prison remains far from rodent-free. It is not clear whether the corrections department has undertaken a full remediation effort, though SFR’s review of records shows that corrections required the state Environment Department to give Western a heads-up before coming out to inspect the prison for rodents and other potential health hazards. In February 2020—three and a half years after Evans saw a rat outside Western, then many more inside—Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the corrections department and Attorney General Hector Balderas agreed to deploy exterminators at both Western and the men’s prison in Grants at least once a month. The agreement came as part of the latest consent decree in Duran v. Grisham, the class action lawsuit first brought in 1977 to end overcrowding and other unconstitutional conditions in the state’s prisons. Now, SFR has learned that Evans is one of 40 current and former prisoners and staff at Western who have signed sworn declarations describing the prison’s kitchen and cafeteria, including multiple accounts of rodents breeding in the kitchen’s ventilation and in an old food cart, and defecating on the floor, counters, food trays and other surfaces. The New Mexico Prison & Jail Project, a nonprofit legal organization that litigates on behalf of incarcerated people in the state, collected the declarations as part of a lawsuit on behalf of two wom-
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en against the state and Summit Food Service, LLC, the prison’s food service contractor. The lawsuit was filed Feb. 21 in US District Court arguing that prison and Summit officials violated the women’s rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution. On July 16, high-ranking officials from the corrections department and CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the men’s prison at Northwestern, traveled there to announce to facility staff and prisoners that the state will be taking over its operations. Jessica Vigil-Richards, interim warden of Western, joined them. She declined SFR’s request for an interview about the infestation, and Eric Harrison, a department spokesman, declined to answer questions related to the lawsuit, citing the department’s policy of not speaking publicly about issues that are the subject of current litigation. Harrison also declined to set up an interview about SFR’s reporting that isn’t related to the lawsuit. Harrison did, however, send an email listing several cleaning procedures in place at Western, including twice-monthly visits from pest control specialists. Harrison’s email did not address the cats, but said prison officials allow women to grow mint outside their housing units “to prevent mice, as it is known as a natural deterrent.” SFR’s recent visit to the prison confirms the mint: It grows in thickets in several locations on the grounds. The corrections department “takes pest control and the health and wellbeing
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These rodents of New Mexico are known carriers of the hantavirus, which causes a potentially fatal respiratory disease: 1. House mouse. 2. Roof rat. 3. Norway rat. 4. Deer mouse.
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SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER 22-28, 22-28, 2021 2021 •• SFREPORTER.COM SFREPORTER.COM
COURTESY NMSU
Scope of rodent infestation at New Mexico women’s prison, allegations of cover-up, much larger than previously known
