IMMIGRATION
Some wonder if Taylor detainee center will be under renewed focus
TAYLOR –– Randy’s Ice House and Louie Mueller Barbecue, a pair of Taylor eateries along Second Street, have long been community focal points – the former a popular stop for burgers and beer against a backdrop of pool tables and karaoke while the latter, proclaimed as the “best BBQ restaurant in Texas” serves up ribs, sausage, brisket and more as it’s done since 1949.
Sandwiched between them a mile away, across U.S. 79 to the south, a more imposing presence looms incongruously as it hums along with decidedly less fanfare. Long a source of controversy and divisiveness, the private T. Don Hutto Detention Center abutting Hidalgo Park at 1001 Welch St. has achieved renewed focus under the second Trump administration and its plans to ramp up immigrant deportations.
Opened in 1997 as a medium-security prison, the site metamorphosed by 2006 as a “family residential facility” for detention of immigrant families and, three years later, a women’s detention center.
With diminished emphasis on deportations under the previous Biden administration, a spotlight on the site had waned – only to regain its strength now that Donald Trump won a second term as president.
To be sure, the facility has been reenergized with renewed vigor amid talk of mass deportations.
The East Wilco Insider reached out to CoreCivic for details as to how the site is being used. To hear company spokesman Brian Todd tell it, it’s business as usual there.
“The T. Don Hutto Detention Center has an existing contract to house adult detainees on behalf of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and has been doing so for multiple years,” he wrote in an email.
He urged EWI to contact ICE for details regarding the facility’s use, but an agency spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
COUNTY ROLE DIMINISHED
Williamson County once had a lucrative arrangement with CoreCivic via an agreement allowing it to operate the facility, a pact that ended in 2018 amid a policy of family separation under the first Trump administration and, separately, allegations of sexual abuse at the site.
Such allegations have surfaced before at the center; in 2010, a former supervisor at T. Don Hutto was arrested on charges related to alleged sexual assault at the detention site before being convicted of five misdemeanor charges, as reported by the Taylor Press at the time.
Until the contract ended, the Commissioners Court had been reaping thousands of dollars in fees for its role as “liaison.” Since that county role ended, seemingly too has commissioners’ focus on the site – despite its checkered history and continued presence on Williamson County soil.
A response to questions from EWI from Precinct 1 Commissioner Terry Cook reflects the diminished focus the site now demands among commissioners since the end of its pact with the detention facility’s operators.
“Commissioner Cook asked me to respond to your inquiry to let you know that she’s not kept up with the T. Don Hutto Immigration Center,” wrote spokeswoman Doris Sanchez.
However, Cook assured there were no plans for a rebooted county agreement with the facility’s operators: “And as far as the county reentering into an agreement over the site’s operation, she said there’s been no mention or discussion of this by the Court within the last six years. She has no information on what is going on with that center…” she concluded.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Russ Boles responded similarly though spokeswoman Connie Odom, confirming that “since Williamson County is no longer in a contract with CoreCivic or T. Don Hutto…” the commissioner neither knew how the facility was being used nor the type of offenders currently housed there.
Like Cook, Boles insisted that “the Williamson County Commissioners Court has not discussed entering into a new agreement with CoreCivic or T. Don Hutto.”
At the height of the agreement with the county, ICE payments to Wilco from May 2006 to September 2015 amounted to $1.7 million in “administrative fees” deposited into the county’s general fund, county officials have said.
The county reaped $8,000 per month from the facility’s operators – up from $6,000 each month at the contract’s beginning – in addition to $1 per day per detainee at the facility capable of housing just over 500 detainees.
TAYLOR POLICE DEPARTMENT ROLE
The lack of focus on the T. Don Hutto facility – named after a co-founder of Corrections Corporation of America that has since been renamed CoreCivic – yields questions about legal oversight, and it’s unclear if any such scrutiny exists other than that of its operators.
Williamson County Sheriff’s Office officials told television news outlet KXAN that it had no formal oversight role as it relates to the facility.
“At this time, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office does not have a formal agreement in place with any particular federal operations related to immigration enforcement,” a statement read. “However, as always, we remain committed to public safety and to enforcing all applicable laws in accordance with our mission to serve and protect the community.”
As it happens, the sole area law enforcement agency tied to the facility is the Taylor Police Department – and only on a “case-needed” basis, Wilco spokesperson Odom confirmed to EWI.
“You are correct that the Taylor Police Department would be the responding law enforcement agency to the T. Don Hutto facility if needed,” Odom wrote.
The CoreCivic spokesman also confirmed the role in an email to EWI while emphasizing the site’s purpose in detaining undocumented immigrants.
“For law enforcement-related needs, the facility has a memorandum of understanding with the city of Taylor Police Department,” the spokesman wrote in an email. “To be clear, the facility does not house individuals for that agency or any other law enforcement agencies.”
EWI reached out to a Taylor police media contact for additional details about the department’s role – including messages left on voicemail and email address – but did not receive a response to questions by press time.
The silence, as is often said, has been deafening – in this case as it relates to machinations at the detention facility.
At the peak of the site’s controversial nature years back, some 5,000 protestors marched 30-plus miles from the detention site to the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Austin calling attention to alleged detainee abuse and family separations.
As Trump’s mass deportation policy take effect in earnest like it did before, protesters’ rallying cries may once more fill the air with the cacophony of complaint – piercing the more festive air at the community’s cherished icehouse and barbecue joint just up the road – as the past increasingly revisits as prologue.
There are no plans for a rebooted county agreement with the facility’s operators.”
— TERRY COOK
WILLIAMSON COUNTY COMMISSIONER - PRECINCT 1
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