FBI investigates drug-trafficking ‘epidemic' in prison also housing Ice detainees: ‘A lot of corruption'

The Guardian

3 days ago

A private US prison contractor that is expanding its immigrant detention business amid increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests is running a federal facility that is being investigated by the FBI for rampant drug trafficking and violence, a Guardian investigation has found.
Even some staff who work for the contractor, CoreCivic, are implicated in drug smuggling at the Cibola county correctional center (CCCC) in New Mexico that is owned and operated by the company on a government contract.
Cibola has faced various problems, including allegations by the FBI of extensive drug smuggling, including involvement by some guards, and an alarming number of deaths at the facility, the Guardian can reveal.
The facility, about an hour west from Albuquerque, primarily houses people apprehended by the federal US Marshals Service (USMS) and local county detainees, with immigrants in Ice custody making up about 30% of the population.
An FBI agent wrote in October 2024, in an affidavit submitted to a New Mexico federal court as part of a pursuit of suspects engaged in drug smuggling into Cibola, that there was a 'drug trafficking epidemic' at the facility. The affidavit, obtained by the Guardian, accuses some CoreCivic employees at the facility of smuggling in drugs and fueling the lucrative trade among the detained population that has led to overdose deaths.
A number of FBI informants 'reported that there were dirty COs [correctional officers] at CCCC, who would smuggle drugs and other contraband in for inmates', reads the FBI affidavit seen by the Guardian, adding: 'One CO concealed suboxone and methamphetamine in his boots to get past security and later drops the drugs in a cell while conducting a search of a cell.'
The investigation is based on hundreds of pages of court documents, FBI records, police reports, 911 call logs, reports from medical investigators working with the coroner's office and numerous lawsuits exclusively accessed by the Guardian.
The FBI began investigating the Cibola facility last September and the network of gangs and dealers allegedly bringing in drugs. That same month, according to records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) following a freedom of information request, CoreCivic pitched Cibola to Ice as an ideal location for expanding immigrant detention.
'CoreCivic proposes to work with ICE on a mutually agreeable percentage of the 1,129-bed facility that would meet ICE's need,' the CoreCivic document reads. 'We are confident that the Cibola facility would prove to be a valuable resource to the El Paso AOR [area of responsibility].'
Despite CoreCivic's confidence about its Cibola operations, an FBI document shows otherwise. 'CoreCivic struggles to keep CCCC operating in a safe and efficient manner, confronting many of the same issues that face other correctional facilities nationwide,' the FBI affidavit reads. 'The quantities of drugs seized are exceptionally large, given that they are located within a secure federal facility.'
It is unclear whether CoreCivic disclosed the drug problems and the FBI's scrutiny in its pitch to Ice, since much of the document is redacted. But according to FBI records, CoreCivic probably knew about the federal criminal investigation – and members of what the company calls its intelligence unit have actively collaborated with the bureau.
'We continue to hear claims and allegations about our Cibola County Correctional Center (CCCC) that are false and misleading. The reality is that we provide a safe, humane and appropriate environment for those entrusted to us by our government partners at this facility, and we are constantly striving to deliver an even better standard of care,' the company said in a statement to the Guardian. 'We have a zero-tolerance policy for the introduction of contraband into our facilities. The introduction of contraband in correctional settings is a nationwide challenge that requires close and constant collaboration to prevent.'
The company also confirmed it provided intelligence to the FBI investigation, and added it was 'grateful for the investigative efforts' of the agencies involved in the case. 'We share their commitment to keeping everyone safe,' it said.
At least 15 Cibola detainees have died there prematurely since 2018, the Guardian discovered, a relatively high number, documents show.
'Certainly one would imagine that information regarding these types of investigations and this number of deaths in custody would be relevant to Ice's consideration of whether or not this is a suitable facility for expansion of its contract [with CoreCivic],' said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project.
Asked for comment, CoreCivic said in a statement that it took 'very seriously' anyone dying while in its care and was 'deeply saddened' by any such death.
'At all our facilities, including the Cibola County Correctional Center (CCCC), the safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care and our dedicated staff is our top priority,' the company said.
Tennessee-based CoreCivic is the second largest private corrections company in the US; it is publicly traded and operates scores of facilities in almost 20 states.
As the Trump administration continues its mass deportation agenda, by arresting, detaining and deporting thousands of immigrants plucked from the US interior – in a switch of focus from the US-Mexico border – many facilities nationwide, and especially in hotspots, are overcrowded.
Troubled facilities such as Cibola continue to be used to detain increasing numbers of immigrants – and the company is cashing in.
In 2025 so far, the Guardian calculated that, according to company press statements and financial reports, CoreCivic has significantly increased its immigration detention portfolio. Seven facilities owned by the company have signed on to contracts to hold more Ice detainees and the company bought an additional Ice facility from another private prison contractor. In response to a lengthy request for comment, CoreCivic did not respond to the numbers tallied by the Guardian.
Exact numbers are redacted, but according to a contract document from May 2025, Ice increased its payment, per bed, to CoreCivic for detention services at Cibola.
The FBI declined to comment for this story or to confirm if its investigation is still under way, but the New Mexico US attorney's office in effect confirmed that Cibola is still being investigated.
'We cannot comment on the status of ongoing investigations or provide details beyond what has already been made public,' the US attorney's office told the Guardian.
The USMS did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
Meanwhile, the drug problems persist there, according to interviews.
Although the FBI investigation has primarily focused on smuggling into the USMS and the local county units within Cibola, further reporting reveals that drug smuggling and consumption are occurring in the Ice units, too.
Two immigrant men at Cibola under Ice custody revealed that they have observed drugs being introduced into the facility and sold and consumed in their unit, as recently as May.
In one instance, one of the men, who spoke to the Guardian, said he and his friend were threatened by a dealer in the unit in May after mistakenly being given an envelope disguised as mail from an attorney. The envelope contained 'strips of paper' that the pair recognized as the kind of contraband widely purchased by detainees, for a steep price. The items were probably strips containing Suboxone, or the buprenorphine or naloxone generic versions of a prescription medication used to treat opioid addiction and which provides a slight high. When the detainee who allegedly operated as a drug dealer discovered that the envelope was erroneously given to one of the men, he threatened them.
'He told us, 'This paper is mine,'' the man recounted in a call from inside the detention center. 'He then said, 'I'll give each of you $500. Accept it, or I'll kill you.' And we stood there with our mouths open,' he said.
To avoid being hurt, and to avoid any trouble that could jeopardize their immigration cases, the two say they tried to report the interaction to CoreCivic guards but the guards ignored their pleas. As word got out, other detainees jeered at them: the two were now targets, having to watch their backs. Days later, for attempting to report the threat, the dealer assaulted them, hitting both of them and smearing feces on one of them, the man said. The Guardian is withholding his and his friend's identities at their request, as they fear retaliation.
' Last year it was our pretty clear understanding that the drug issue was limited to the US Marshals' side,' said Sophia Genovese, a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center and a former attorney at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center (NMILC), which advocates for Ice detainees. 'And the only time men in Ice custody, as far as we know, saw any drugs was when it was accidentally sent to their unit through the kitchen.
'It was a bit surprising to hear that someone in the Ice unit was the intended recipient of drugs,' she added, as the problems had previously appeared to be limited to the other units.
CoreCivic said in response that: 'We have a robust grievance process available to all detainees that provides multiple safe and discrete avenues for concerns to be raised.'
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Ice, vehemently denied any drug smuggling taking place inside the Ice units at Cibola.
'Allegations that drug smuggling is taking place in the ICE Section of the Cibola County Corrections Center are FALSE. In fact, there has not been a single report of drugs within the ICE section of the facility,' the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to the Guardian.
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She continued: 'Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false. Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. ICE continues to move forward with the contract in its efforts to fulfill the President's mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens.'
Amid the scandal, a tragedy has been unfolding at Cibola. At least 15 people detained there have died since May 2018, the Guardian's research has revealed.
' That is a significant number of people to have died in one facility during that period of time,' Cho said. 'It indicates that the operation of the facility itself has serious problems. It seems there are significant operational problems that are leading to, especially in the case of suicide, likely preventable deaths.'
CoreCivic further responded: 'Our facilities have trained emergency response teams who work to ensure that any individual in distress receives appropriate medical care.'
Cibola has operated since the 1990s and was acquired by CoreCivic in 1998. In 2016, the facility was shuttered when CoreCivic lost its contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons. The rare step followed reports of medical neglect and questionable deaths, published by the Nation. However, later that year the facility reopened with a USMS and Ice contract with CoreCivic, housing pre-trial federal detainees and local county detainees but also immigrants and asylum seekers.
Since the second Trump administration began, the number of immigrants detained in Cibola has risen to 224 in late June from 160 in January. Austin Kocher, an assistant research professor at Syracuse University who tracks Ice enforcement, estimated an average of 405 Ice detainees in late April, with recent numbers sitting at just more than 200. The facility has the capacity to hold a total of about 1,200 detainees.
'Our biggest concern has always been lack of medical care,' Genovese said.
According to CoreCivic, the facility is 'subject to multiple layers of oversight' and is also 'monitored very closely by our government partners to ensure full compliance with policies and procedures'.
Due to CoreCivic's contract with Ice, DHS oversight offices conduct inspections of the facility and publish reports on the conditions. But Genovese said the watchdog inspections were limited and she had little faith in their effectiveness.
The FBI began investigating CoreCivic's operation of Cibola after problems of drug smuggling, violence and corruption escalated until federal judges began expressing concerns to the New Mexico US attorney's office and matters reached the bureau, according to FBI records reviewed by the Guardian.
More than 40 FBI informants, including gang members, drug dealers and Mexican organized crime operatives in New Mexico, revealed that a network of gangs – both inside and outside Cibola – worked together to bring drugs into the facility, most commonly fentanyl, methamphetamine, Suboxone and heroin, the FBI records show. From January to October 2024 there were 43 drug seizures inside the facility, although that was fewer than past years, according to an FBI affidavit submitted on 29 October 2024 in the process of the agency's investigation into contraband.
The gangs involved in the smuggling operations include the New Mexico Syndicate, the state's largest prison gang, Mexican American crime outfits known as the Sureños network and the Paisas gang, and the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood. An FBI agent explained that despite being rivals on the street, the gangs work together to distribute drugs inside jails.
'I have observed traditional gang rivalries set aside and associations be formed to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine and make money,' Jordan Spaeth, an FBI special agent working in the bureau's violent gang taskforce in Albuquerque, wrote in the affidavit. 'Gang allegiance is secondary to money and profit.'
It is not easy to obtain illicit drugs inside a federal facility, leading to an extremely lucrative drug trade. As Spaeth, the FBI agent, noted in the document, a pound of meth on the street can cost $1,000. Inside Cibola, the equivalent would cost $272,400. One fentanyl pill goes for $50, while a single Suboxone strip is priced at $100.
People often pay for the drugs through intermediaries, including spouses, families and associates on the outside. The most common payment method is through CashApp transactions on contraband cellphones, which are also smuggled into Cibola. One immigrant man detained in one of the Ice units, who cannot be named for his own safety, confirmed to the Guardian the use of apps to transfer money. The FBI documented that one inmate made $10,000 inside Cibola in less than one month just by selling meth.
The drugs are sneaked into Cibola in various ways. As the FBI affidavit explained, and as one of the immigrant men verified, people receive phoney 'legal mail', which facility staff don't first open and that actually contains drugs. There is also the 'throw-over' method, in which outside associates drive up and launch packages into the recreation yard to be recovered by inmates.
FBI informants alleged, however, according to the FBI affidavit, that CoreCivic staff members working at Cibola have also been responsible for smuggling drugs into the facility. One informant told the FBI that a CoreCivic correctional officer, who was later fired, had probably smuggled 700 fentanyl pills into the Cibola. One guard, the FBI documented in its affidavit, was paid $5,000 for each time she brought drugs into the facility.
Another CoreCivic employee, a key manager whose name the Guardian is withholding as it was unable to reach the individual for comment, assigned a team of inmates to distribute food and items throughout the facility and those inmates would use the opportunity to distribute illicit drugs, the FBI document says.
Furthermore, in May 2024, a different, unnamed correctional officer caught some detainees smoking methamphetamine. The guard confiscated the drugs and submitted a report, despite hesitance by the aforementioned manager, the FBI document says, adding that the guard later found the drugs had disappeared from evidence, photos had been deleted and their report was missing. The guard believed the manager was responsible for the attempted cover-up, according to the FBI affidavit.
Weeks later, the FBI says that same manager assigned the guard to a high-security section of Cibola, despite the guard not having the experience or rank to be there. During the shift, two gang members escaped from their cell and assaulted the guard, knocking them out and locking them in a cell. The guard, beaten and bruised, was later rescued and reported that they suspected the manager was involved in facilitating the assault.
The manager was later fired by CoreCivic for disciplinary problems, the FBI affidavit says, but does not appear to have been charged with any crimes in the case. But in 2023, another guard was sentenced to 24 months in prison for smuggling meth into the facility.
The FBI affidavit says that starting pay for a CoreCivic guard is less than $48,000 a year, yet dealers pay guards $3,000 to $6,000 per package of narcotics brought into the facility.
'A CO [correctional officer] who imports three packages a week, every week, could make twice as much in a month as they make a year,' the FBI affidavit states. In one instance documented in a New Mexico wrongful death lawsuit filed against CoreCivic by the family of a young woman who died of an overdose inside Cibola, a correctional officer confessed to smuggling drugs, explaining she needed the extra money because she was on the brink of losing her home.
An aghast immigrant in an Ice unit at Cibola said in an interview: 'I thought the US was a country of laws, like they say on the television – that they took security and safety seriously. But I have now learned that there is a lot of corruption here.'
Ice detention centers throughout the country are overwhelmed. The DHS is waiting on a cascade of funds from the vast spending bill Donald Trump signed into law on 4 July to further increase detention space throughout the country, even as some controversial new facilities are being rushed into operation.
According to the CoreCivic pitch document obtained by the ACLU, the company says Cibola is an appropriate place to further incarcerate immigrants, proposing that the facility be entirely made up of Ice detainees, or a 'mutually agreeable percentage'.
'Regardless of the population, CoreCivic is dedicated to delivering excellent service to meet the partner's needs,' the company wrote.
On Monday, part 2 of the Guardian investigation into the Cibola county correctional center