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Prison Town How Adelanto, California, tied its fate to the booming immigration-incarceration economy By Sarah Tory May 15, 2017 | $5 | Vol. 49 No. 8 | www.hcn.org 49 No. | $5 Vol. 2017 15, May CONTENTS

Editor’s note Imprisoning myths

We the people are living through a period of history where our national mythologies have been laid bare. It has been a tough run: 9/11 showed us our vulnerabilities, even as the sin of exceptionalism led us into an unwinnable, unending war; then came the Great Recession, the result of Wall Street greed and the optimism of fools; then the triumph of cynical corporations; and now a new president who revels in chaos and xenophobia, lies with impunity and brings out the worst in all of us. Many who voted for Donald Trump, I believe, did so out of fear and frustration — the emotions that undergird intolerance. But no one has a monopoly on hate. And we are all in the same mess now. Here in the West, we are no strangers to American myths — of progress, of independence, of high character. As much as we’d like to forget it, though, our region was built on blood and bone, A hopeful slogan for the Southern California town of Adelanto, which turned to a prison and detention-center conquest and lies. Our wide skies and wild spaces Andrew cullen economy after its military base closed. conceal a dark history, and if we are all to live in this region together and move forward, we must FEATURE confront the untruths that hold us back. Especially in such troubled times, when the temptation is to 12 Prison Town hunker down and mind our own business. On the cover How Adelanto, California, tied its fate to the booming This issue’s cover story tells of a town in A guard escorts immigration-incarceration economy By Sarah Tory Southern California that, betrayed by the stories an immigrant it told itself, is now in a desperate struggle for detainee through the CURRENTS viability. In that struggle, as correspondent Sarah Adelanto Detention Facility in Adelanto, 5 California tribe wins groundwater rights Tory reports, the town has become part of a California, Federal court ruling could limit supplies for other users booming incarceration economy, a heavy cog in a where around brutal machine that imprisons the innocent, denies 5 2,000 detainees The Latest: Mexican gray wolves basic rights, and perpetuates confinement for the of Immigration 6 Suburbanites reckon with arcane drilling law sake of economic efficiency. Adelanto, California, and Customs Enforcement await On Colorado’s Front Range, companies can extract oil and gas from was built on the myth of desert agriculture. When hearings on their private land — without homeowners’ permission its orchards dried up, it reinvented itself as a immigration status. 6 The Latest: Pallid sturgeon and a Yellowstone River dam military town. And when its Air Force base closed, John Moore/Getty Images it turned to prisons, earning pennies on the dollar 7 Mistrial in Bundy standoff case Jury deadlocked over most charges for a corporation that profits by detaining asylum- 8 Public banking goes to pot Can the cannabis industry help launch seekers and others for the Department of Homeland the nation’s first public bank in nearly a century? Security. The story of Adelanto is inextricable from the DEPARTMENTS story of its prisoners, and Sarah unsparingly reveals 3 FROM OUR WEBSITE: HCN.ORG the history of both the town and of one man caught in its system, an asylum-seeker who believed in 4 LETTERS the American promise of freedom and found only Complete access 10 THE HCN COMMUNITY Research Fund, Dear Friends despair. It is a difficult story to read, for it asks to subscriber-only 21 MARKETPLACE many questions about our basic values. Dostoyevsky content famously said that “the degree of civilization in a HCN’s website 24 ANALYSIS society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Here, hcn.org Fact-checking Trump’s Antiquities Act order By Jonathan Thompson we go even further; we take you inside a detention Digital edition 26 BOOKS facility designed for the innocent. We are far beyond hcne.ws/digi-4908 Engineering Eden by Jordan Fisher Smith and The Bear Crisis and a Crime and Punishment and deep into Capitalism Tale of Rewilding from Yosemite, Sequoia, and Other National Parks and Profit. Read it, and ask yourself: Why does such Follow us by Rachel Mazur. Reviewed by Kit Stolz a place exist at all? And why was it built in the American West? 27 ESSAY By Murr Brewster  The Collector —Brian Calvert, editor-in-chief @highcountrynews 28 HEARD AROUND THE WEST By Brian Calvert

2 High Country News May 15, 2017 From our website: HCN.ORG

Fatal explosion linked to gas well Trending In April, a home in Firestone, Colorado, a fast- Make your growing community 25 miles north of Denver, erupted in a fiery explosion. The blaze destroyed march matter the house, and two men were killed. In early May, Could the gritty following a two-week investigation, the local fire work of revolution department linked the blast to a recently restarted be too burdensome gas well, located 178 feet behind the home. Gas to exchange our from the well, operated by Anadarko Petroleum comfortable lives Corp., entered the house from a cut, abandoned for the difficult acts gas flow line still connected to the well. The fatal of protest required home explosion reignites the drilling safety debate to change the path as the increase in drill rigs, truck traffic and well of government? In pads encroaches on suburban communities. For an opinion column, years, activists have pushed to limit drilling near Auden Schendler growing suburban communities along Colorado’s argues that if the Front Range, while the state government and citizenry refuses to industry leaders have fought tougher restrictions. endure more than Following the explosion, Anadarko pledged to co- “the footsore feeling operate with the oil and gas commission and inves- of a long walk down tigators, and the company shut down 3,000 wells a wide avenue,” then across northeast Colorado. “We hope that doing action on a number so also provided some additional reassurance to of pressing issues will the community in the wake of this tragic accident,” continue to elude A gas well, seen in the upper left below the bike path, lies less than 200 feet from the Firestone, said Al Walker, Anadarko CEO and president, in a us. A possible fix? Colorado, home that exploded in late April, killing two. Investigators say the cause was a “fugitive statement. Joshua Zaffos “If marchers blocked gas leak” from a well flow line that had been cut but not capped. RJti Sangos /The Denver Post via Getty Images More: hcne.ws/well-explosion Trump Tower for six months, caused commerce to stop, got arrested, then did What’s really killing King Coal? it again and again, In April, Energy Secretary Rick Perry called for of sources of alternative energy, but the most you might just get somewhere.” Ratio of residents1 inof Los A ngeles’5 a review of “regulatory burdens” on the coal- significant factor in coal’s demise has arguably mining industry. Baseload power sources, like been cheaper, abundant supplies of natural gas: Auden Schendler/ Boyle Heights neighborhood who are Opinion in the U.S. illegally coal and nuclear, are dying out not because Today, the country produces 50 percent more gas of regulations, but because the market and than it did a decade ago — and at half the cost. You say new technologies are transforming the electric Jonathan Thompson Number of “detainer” requests grid. Policies have encouraged development More: hcne.ws/dwindling-coal Lynn Jackson: 78issued to Los Angeles law enforcement by U.S. “What I find troubling Immigration and Customs Enforcement during about (the March one week in February. Electric generating capacity (in gigawatts) by type and year it went online for Science) is that scientists — real A day in the life of Los Angeles Police scientists, that is — Department Officer Alex Fiallos helps illustrate purposefully stay out how the Trump administration’s new immigration of politics. Most of policies are playing out in one of the West’s them realize that to most diverse cities. In Los Angeles, a complicated do otherwise is to history of racial conflict and crime impacts cast their credibility in the way officers navigate the demands of doubt.” community policing. In the neighborhood Fiallos Charlie Lawton: patrols, a significant portion of the community “Scientists have never, is undocumented. But keeping crime rates low and will never, and do depends on gaining their trust. “Some people not, purposefully stay around the neighborhood say you shouldn’t out of politics, and we trust the police because they can turn you over don’t delude ourselves to immigration,” she says. “We have no time for that science is immune that.” Ruxandra Guidi to political pressure or SOURCE: U.S. ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, PRELIMINARY MONTHLY GENERATOR INVENTORY More: hcne.ws/immigration-patrol doesn’t have political implications.” Photos Vincent Landau: “It “It’s ridiculous that they would even Canada’s coal pollutes will have no direct think about coming into this land — Montana’s streams impact, as marches only a quarter of a mile or less away The Elk River that straddles generally don’t. How- Montana’s northern border has been ever, (marches) act as from the Colorado River and the one of the continent’s most fruitful a catalyst for further Colorado River Headways ecosystems for fly-fishing. But the action by those who Scenic Byway — to try to do river also happens to drain Canada’s participate, whether most productive coal country. As it’s considering science oil and gas development.” the government implements stricter when deciding whom —Ken Fosha, owner of a dude ranch near Rocky controls on selenium pollution, to vote for, or contact- Mountain National Park that was scheduled to be nearby residents hope U.S. pressure ing representatives.” part of a BLM lease sale but then withdrawn, in an can spur Canadian action, too. More: hcne.ws/why- unexpected victory for conservationists Celia Talbot Tobin march and Facebook. Elizabeth Shogren More: hcne.ws/trumps-limits More: hcne.ws/canada-coal com/highcountrynews Celia Talbot Tobin

Never miss a story. Sign up for the HCN newsletter at hcn.org/enewsletter. www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Letters Send letters to [email protected] or Editor, HCN, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428.

High Country News The following comments were posted on Executive director/Publisher our website, hcn.org. Paul Larmer E ditor-in-Chief Brian Calvert Choosing to ride SENIOR EDITOR Your “Recapture Canyon rules” update Jodi Peterson in the May 1 issue had this quote from Art director Cindy Wehling Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: “For Deputy editor, digital many persons with disabilities or for Kate Schimel people who just don’t get around like Associate EDITORs Tay Wiles, they used to, our public lands aren’t ac- Maya L. Kapoor cessible without motorized vehicles.” Assistant EDITOR Paige Blankenbuehler For folks with legitimate disabilities, D.C. Correspondent I can see this in appropriate spots, but m

Elizabeth Shogren we also need enforceable (and enforced) o c . WRITERS ON THE RANGE restrictions on where the motor vehicles s editor Betsy Marston

can go. If you ride off-trail in obviously oon t

Associate designer r

restricted areas, losing your ORV seems a Brooke Warren c

like a fair penalty. le Copy editOR g Diane Sylvain For folks who just don’t get around a Contributing editorS like they used to, I don’t have much on/C Cally Carswell, Sarah sympathy. If it’s age-related, then they ts Gilman, Glenn Nelson, Ruxandra Guidi, had a chance to go walk it when they Michelle Nijhuis, were still in relatively good shape, just R.J. Ma Jonathan Thompson like I did. That they chose to do some- CorrespondentS Krista Langlois, Sarah thing else when they were younger isn’t review. There is not enough space here how to balance the separation of powers Tory, Joshua Zaffos our fault or problem. If it’s just laziness to discuss the doctrine of separation doctrine with government agencies try- Editorial Fellow or related issues, which seem to be a big of powers, but it is a vital protector of ing to effectively fulfill their mission. Anna V. Smith part of the problem, then they’d be bet- our political process and of procedural Interns Jim Bolen Emily Benson, ter off walking anyway — you get to see fairness. Chevron was a departure from Rebecca Worby Durango, Colorado Development Director more, and you get the health benefits. that long-held concept of justice. It is Laurie Milford But most of the folks I see riding not enough to say that “Chevron helps EPA’s dirty past Philanthropy Advisor ORVs seem to be both young enough safeguard the environment,” because it Alyssa Pinkerton and fit enough to get off their butts and can be just as effective the other way, Your story about Anne Gorsuch Bur- Development Assistant Christine List walk; they simply choose not to because and because people concerned about the ford’s tenure at the Environmental Marketing & Promotions they have this cool toy they need to environment are also concerned about Protection Agency brings back some bad Manager JoAnn Kalenak play with somewhere. And it certainly “liberty and justice for all.” memories, especially for those working WEB DEVELOPER Eric Strebel invites abuse and ecological damage in a in chemical industries in the early 1980s Michael Waggoner Database/IT administrator number of ways. (“Scott Pruitt isn’t the first administra- Boulder, Colorado Alan Wells tor hostile to the EPA’s mission,” HCN, DIRECTOR OF ENGAGEMENT Tim Baker 3/20/17). The chemical industry was Gretchen King Eureka, California FINANCE MANAGER Congress vs. agency missions quite successful in getting implementa- tion of new and lower exposure limits for Beckie Avera I wonder if under President Donald Accounts Receivable Conhevr cuts both ways chemicals such as ethylene dibromide Trump we’ll go back to Congress decid- Jan Hoffman and ethylene oxide delayed in the United This is a thoughtful article, but I would ing every policy detail and micromanag- Customer Service Manager States, long after their carcinogenic and Christie Cantrell like to advance a contrary view (“Shift- ing federal agencies, creating massive teratogenic risks were well-documented. Circulation Systems admin. ing scales,” HCN, 5/1/17). Our basic stagnation in light of a Congress that Implementation of the ethylene dibro- Kathy Martinez theory of government is that Congress views collaboration as capitulation to the Circulation mide standards on the original timeline enacts the laws, the executive enforces enemy (“Shifting scales,” HCN, 5/1/17). I Kati Johnson, Pam Peters, would have interfered with the Reagan Doris Teel the laws, and the courts decide the facts don’t have a legal background but I can’t administration’s payment-in-kind policy, GrantWriter Janet Reasoner and the laws’ meaning. Administrative see that the Chevron decision is a depar- which compensated farmers for hold- [email protected] agencies have been fit into this struc- ture from long-held views of separation ing their acreage fallow with “surplus” [email protected] ture under the theory that Congress, by of powers, as it seems to stay within the [email protected] grain from the strategic grain reserves enacting laws, still decides the policy, guidelines set up by the Legislature for [email protected] rather than with dollars from the federal [email protected] but the administrative agencies can government agencies. Many laws appear Treasury. Trouble was, the grain had FOUNDER Tom Bell fill out the details of those policies by to be set up purposefully broad so that been regularly fumigated with ethylene Board of Directors issuing regulations, and that the agen- the specific expertise of agencies can be dibromide and wouldn’t have met the John Belkin, Colo. cies are enforcing the laws and their utilized. Without the Chevron decision, Chad Brown, Ore. recommended standard. So implemen- regulations largely through civil actions the Endangered Species Act’s protection Beth Conover, Colo. tation was delayed, and the tainted Jay Dean, Calif. (rather than criminal prosecutions) and of wildlife habitat and the Environ- grain went into the American diet. One Bob Fulkerson, Nev. are typically subject to judicial review. mental Protection Agency’s protection Wayne Hare, Colo. wonders what the American public will The problem with Chevron defer- of clean air, including carbon dioxide Laura Helmuth, Md. be fed this time around. John Heyneman, Wyo. ence is it allows the agency (rather regulation, could be eliminated, which Osvel Hinojosa, Mexico than Congress) to decide the policy, and would be a disaster for endangered spe- Edward A. Sullivan III Samaria Jaffe, Calif. Nicole Lampe, Ore. it reduces the effectiveness of judicial cies and the climate. So the question is San Francisco, California Marla Painter, N.M. Bryan Pollard, Ark. Raynelle Rino, Calif. Estee Rivera Murdock, D.C. Dan Stonington, Wash. High Country News is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Printed on Rick Tallman, Colo. High independent media organization that covers the Ave., Paonia, CO 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, CO, and other post offices. recycled paper. Luis Torres, N.M. issues that define the American West. Its mission is POSTMASTER: Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428. All Andy Wiessner, Colo. Country to inform and inspire people to act on behalf of the rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News region’s diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org 4 High Country News May 15, 2017 CURRENTS

consumers; the Coachella Water District writes that the tribe’s claims could force California tribe wins customers to reduce water use, and poten- tially even lead to building moratoriums. groundwater rights Beyond the valley, tribes and water managers are paying attention. “A ruling Tribes have priority rights to groundwater — like this is good for the tribes,” says Dan and that could limit supplies for other users Decker, attorney for the Confederated Sal- ish and Kootenai Tribes. Those western By Joshua Zaffos Montana tribes are finalizing a complex water-rights compact with the state and A breeding pair of federal government to quantify their sur- Mexican wolves. Endangered Wolf Center/ n the surface, Southern California’s In the Coachella Valley, the tribe’s rights face and groundwater rights as well as to Michelle Steinmeyer O Coachella Valley seems like a cushy date to 1876, which could mean reduced gain legal standing for wells drilled with- paradise. A short jaunt from Los Angeles, supplies for everyone else. out permits on the reservation. Decker says it’s known for its hot springs, golf courses “The Agua Caliente have been raising the court’s decision bolsters the tribes’ case. THE LATEST and music festival. But the lush retreat is concerns about the condition of the aqui- Water providers, however, are con- something of a mirage, at least as far as fer underlying the Coachella Valley for cerned. Should tribes make new claims Backstory water is concerned. It’s a desert that re- at least two decades,” says Steve Moore, to groundwater, they would get priority In the 1970s, the ceives a paltry 3 to 5 inches of rain a year. co-counsel for the tribe and an attorney when courts calculate how much ground- Mexican gray wolf To live here, people have always re- with the Boulder, Colorado-based Native water a basin’s users can draw. That pro- nearly vanished from lied on groundwater, whether in historical American Rights Fund. “The matter rip- cess, known as “adjudication,” has been the Southwest. The Native American settlements or the mod- ened to the point that the tribe decided used to rein in the groundwater mining U.S. Fish and Wildlife ern resort city of Palm Springs. Surging that their concerns were being ignored by that has often enabled development in the Service began reintroductions in population growth and tourism in recent the water districts and it was time to as- arid West, where, historically, groundwa- New Mexico and decades have only increased demand. Lo- sert their rights in court.” ter has been much less strictly regulated Arizona in 1998, cal utilities now supply water to roughly The Agua Caliente Tribe also argues than surface water. The Coachella Val- but conflicts with 400,000 full-time residents, 121 golf cours- that the water districts’ system of replen- ley is one of the many basins in Califor- ranchers kept es, and 66,000 acres of dates, lemons and ishing the aquifer with Colorado River nia and the West that have never gone numbers low, other crops, taxing the aquifer. A recent water degrades water quality, because through adjudication. Ultimately, the pro- and the already- NASA study found that the aquifer under- the river water is saltier than the aquifer. cess could force some utilities to curtail or endangered species lying the Coachella Valley has dropped 62 Now, a federal district court will decide on even halt groundwater pumping, leaving became dangerously feet since 1960, despite programs that pipe potential water-quality protections for the them scrambling for supplies. inbred. In 2015, an agency plan gave Colorado River water underground to off- aquifer, such as treating the river water “A lot of tribes around the country rely wolves more room to set the depletions. before piping it underground. Then it will on groundwater and need to have access roam in New Mexico The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla determine just how much groundwater to quality groundwater in sufficient quan- and allowed the Indians, who have called the valley home the tribe is legally entitled to. tities for their reservations’ livelihoods release of captive-bred for centuries, have been anxious about The water providers have questioned and economic security,” Moore says. He animals to increase the state of the water supply for years. In the tribe’s motivation, since it lacks any adds that the ruling is also a boon to trib- genetic variation, 2013, the tribe sued the Coachella Valley infrastructure to pump and transport al sovereignty — the right to self-govern- but the state sued Water District and Desert Water Agency groundwater, and hasn’t disclosed how ment — because it acknowledges Native and a federal court to halt groundwater pumping. And in it might use its share of water. A state- Americans’ right to manage the natural ruled in its favor, halting releases (“Line March, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Ap- ment from the Desert Water Agency sug- resources connected to their reservations. of descent,” HCN, peals delivered a major victory to the tribe. gested the tribe could sell the water back “It reinforces for a lot of tribes what they 8/6/16). The court said the tribe has legal rights to to the utilities and drive up rates paid by have already believed.” the groundwater — a decision that could Followup restrict housing and resort development In late April, the 10th and set a precedent for water disputes be- U.S. Circuit Court of tween tribes and utilities across the West. Appeals reversed the The 9th Circuit’s ruling is “a big deal,” decision; Fish and says Monte Mills, co-director of the Uni- Wildlife can again versity of Montana’s Indian law clinic and release wolves into one of 11 professors who penned a brief the New Mexico wild. supporting the tribe’s claims. It’s the first Meanwhile, the first- time a federal appellate court has un- ever Mexican wolf pup has been born equivocally recognized that tribal water through artificial rights extend to groundwater. insemination, using Tribal water rights stem from a 1908 frozen semen, at a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Winters v. wildlife center in St. United States, which established that Louis. The technique tribes’ rights to water are tied to the dates may improve the their reservations were created. Gener- species’ genetic ally speaking, that means their water diversity over time, rights pre-date almost all other legal wa- enhancing its chances for survival. ter claims. And in the West, those who Paige hold the oldest rights are entitled to water Blankenbuehler before anyone with more recent claims.

A groundwater recharge facility for the Coachella Valley adds water imported from the Joshua Zaffos is an HCN correspondent in Fort Colorado River to the valley’s main aquifer and prevents the land from sinking and damaging Collins, Colorado.  @jzaffos the surrounding infrastructure. Brent Stirton/Getty Images www.hcn.org High Country News 5 THE LATEST The Lowell Pad, Backstory where Extraction Pallid sturgeon, Oil & Gas plans declared endangered a 42-well site, in 1990, can live between Wildgrass for decades and and Anthem reach 5 feet in length. developments Fewer than 125 are in Broomfield, left in the Upper Colorado. Missouri River Basin; Ted Wood/ they’re believed The Story Group to be genetically distinct and key to the species’ survival. Their reproduction is hampered by dams, though, and in 2015, environmental groups sued to demolish one on the Yellowstone River that blocks 165 miles of crucial spawning habitat (“Can pallid sturgeon hang on in the overworked Missouri River?” HCN, 9/17/12). Federal agencies proposed building a gas. Under rule of capture, drillers would new dam with a fish Suburbanites reckon sink as many wells as they could, with bypass channel as a virtually no distance between them. That compromise, but a U.S. district court judge created a need for spacing rules. But spac- blocked the project with arcane drilling law ing doesn’t work unless all the minerals in 2015, pending underneath the checkerboard of wells are review of the bypass On Colorado’s Front Range, companies can extract oil and gas pooled. Pooling also ensures that all the channel’s efficacy. from private land — without homeowners’ permission mineral-rights owners involved are com- pensated. Thirty-three states — all the

Followup By Mark Jaffe major oil-producing states save California In April, the judge — have pooling laws. allowed the $57 But not all forced-pooling laws are the million dam to hen Ann Marie Byers received a let- condemned. As rising oil prices stimulate same. Colorado, which boasts cutting-edge proceed. However, W ter last June giving her 15 days to ei- more drilling, hundreds of homeowners rules on drilling, fracking-fluid disclo- the environmental ther accept an offer to lease the oil and gas on Colorado’s bustling Front Range are sure and methane-emissions control, has review acknowledges rights underneath her suburban Colorado receiving letters giving them the choice of an “extremely permissive” pooling rule, that “there is no evidence” that home or have the driller legally take the receiving a lease at a set royalty rate or of says Matt Sura, an attorney represent- sufficient numbers mineral rights anyway, she thought it was facing forced pooling. ing three communities in forced-pooling of sturgeon will a scam. Now, those Colorado residents are disputes. “Forced pooling is giving corpo- use the bypass, “I didn’t even know we had mineral scrambling to figure out how to respond, rations the power of condemnation,” Sura leaving the fate of rights,” says Byers, a 42-year-old law- and legislators are taking another look says. “Some operators use forced pooling the prehistoric fish in yer and mother of two, who lives in the at the old statute. “To allow a corpora- as a gun to the head to force landowners limbo. Denver suburb of Broomfield. “The letter tion to take someone’s property by force to sign leases.” Emily Benson looked suspicious. There were errors and — it sounds like something we could hear The recent flurry of protests is in part typos, and it asked for my Social Security about in Russia or China or Azerbaijan,” caused by drilling expansion into more de- number. I thought, ‘They can’t just take says Kevin Kreeger, a Broomfield city veloped areas with more fragmented land your mineral rights.’ ” councilman. ownership, says Matt Lepore, the execu- But the letter was no con. Under an Pooling laws were instituted in the tive director of the Colorado Oil and Gas arcane 82-year-old statute, an oil and gas 1920s in response to the prevailing “rule Conservation Commission. “You are send- operator can legally extract oil and gas of capture,” which held that whoever ing out a lot of letters to lots of property from underneath someone else’s land — drilled first owned the resource. Daniel owners, many who don’t even know they even if that landowner refuses to lease. Plainview, the main character in the 2007 own the mineral rights,” he says. New hor- It’s called “forced pooling.” film There Will Be Blood, explained it izontal drilling and fracking techniques, “Pooling” is the term used to describe thus: “If you have a milkshake and I have which enable wells to extend two miles or the aggregation of all the mineral rights a milkshake, and I have a straw. … And more, can also scoop up more landowners in a designated drilling “unit.” It becomes my straw reaches across the room and I in a single project. Pallid sturgeon “forced” when the mineral right of an un- start to drink your milkshake. … I drink When Byers realized that forced pool- Katie Steiger-Meister/ willing owner in the unit is, in essence, it up!” Forced pooling statutes ensure that ing was real, she began organizing her USFWS real-life Daniel Plainviews have to pay for neighbors in Broomfield’s Wildgrass de- that milkshake. velopment, where homes with scenic Mark Jaffe has covered environmental and energy State regulators and industry officials mountain views sell for close to $1 mil- issues for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bloomberg say that forced-pooling rules are neces- lion. The Wildgrass Oil and Gas Commit- News and The Denver Post.  @bymarkjaffe sary for the orderly development of oil and tee was born.

6 High Country News May 15, 2017 Only 12 of the 510 homes in the About 310 Wildgrass homeowners and for Great Western. “When people asked development signed leases, Byers says. 40 others from the adjoining Anthem de- for more time and had questions, we ex- But that is enough to allow the driller — velopment hired Sura to negotiate with tended the deadline. We met with people Denver-based Extraction Oil & Gas Co. Extraction, primarily in order to mitigate in the neighborhoods and tried to answer — to seek a forced-pooling order; in fact, a the drilling impacts. But when the city their questions.” single lease is sufficient. government found out that the number In April, Rep. Mike Foote, D-Lafayette, When it became clear that there was of wells Extraction planned to drill had and Rep. Dave Young, D-Greeley, repre- no way to stop the pooling, Byers says, “we jumped from 24 to 140, the possibility of senting Front Range districts facing drill- thought we should negotiate the best deal a moratorium was raised. In response, ing, filed a bill to update the forced pooling we could.” In a lease agreement, a prop- Extraction has agreed to delay the project law. erty owner negotiates a royalty rate and while the city reviews its oil and gas rules. The bill extends the time landowners possibly other considerations, such as well A spokesman for the company, Brian have to respond to a forced pooling no- location. The company had offered a 15 Cain, declined to comment. tices to 90 days from 35. It requires that percent royalty and a $500 signing bonus. Then, in December, letters from the forced pooling notices be in plain English Landowners who are forced to pool Denver-based Great Western Oil & Gas and that the oil and gas commissions keep usually get a raw deal. There is no signing Co. began landing in mailboxes at the public records on how many people are be- bonus, and the royalty rate is a flat 12.5 Highland Meadows Golf Community and ing forced pooled. percent. In contrast, the going lease rate neighboring developments in Windsor, “This is about transparency and due in Colorado is between 16 2/3 percent and 50 miles north of Broomfield. Residents process” Foote says. Under pressure from 20 percent, says Lance Astrella, an attor- were offered a lease with a 16 percent industry lobbyists a provision requiring ney who represents landowners in lease royalty rate minus production costs. Four that an operator have leases for more than agreements. That can add up to hundreds neighborhoods filed a protest with the oil 50 percent of the drilling areas to be able or even thousands of dollars per month and gas commission, arguing that the ap- to force pool was removed from the bill. more for the leaseholders, depending on proaching holidays gave them insufficient The bill passed the House 36-29 and how many rights are in the pool. time to respond. The deadline was extend- went to the Republican-controlled Sen- The force-pooled landowner gets only ed, allowing the homeowners a chance ate. All 28 Republicans in the House voted a fraction of the royalties until the costs of to organize. They eventually signed with against it. Broomfield homeowner Byers equipment and drilling are paid off, which another operator, Horizon Resources, for believes that reform deserves bipartisan can take years, since wells cost $5 million a 20 percent royalty. Horizon will access support. “This isn’t an environment or to $7 million apiece to drill. By the time the oil and gas from a mile away. climate-change issue,” she says. “This is the well has been paid off, its production is “The process worked the way it a property-rights issue. Both sides of the likely to have dropped considerably. should,” says Hal Writer, land manager aisle should get that.”

Mistrial in Bundy standoff case Jury deadlocked over most charges against defendants

By Tay Wiles

In a stunning twist, the first of three trial has now been postponed, with no dates federal trials involving the 2014 armed set for it or the third trial, involving the standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Nevada standoff’s “mid-tier” participants. Bundy and federal land managers ended The April 2014 events at Bundy Ranch, in a mistrial. Todd Engel of Idaho and 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas, drew Gregory Burleson of Arizona were con- hundreds of anti-federal protesters furi- victed of some charges, but the Las Vegas ous over the government’s impoundment jury was hung on all other counts for them of Cliven Bundy’s cattle, which had been and fellow defendants Eric Parker, Steven grazing illegally on public land for years. Stewart, Scott Drexler and Ricky Lovelien. (According to the Bureau of Land Man- On April 24, on the sixth day of delib- agement, Bundy owes at least $1 million eration, the jury told District Court Judge in grazing fees.) BLM and National Park Gloria Navarro that they were “hopelessly Service employees halted the operation to deadlocked” on the remaining counts (10 avoid a violent confrontation with armed for each defendant). Navarro declared a protesters. The lack of convictions after two Bundy family mistrial, with new proceedings scheduled The standoff was just one skirmish in months of proceedings is a blow to the supporters fly the to begin on June 26. the longstanding war over control of the prosecution, since the government usually American flag as The second of the three trials will in- West’s public lands. Yet public-land man- wins federal cases. Some Bundyites, who cattle are released by volve the standoff’s accused organizers: agement was not directly addressed in the view the trial as a referendum on federal the Bureau of Land Cliven Bundy and his sons Ammon and trial, nor were the Bundys’ anti-govern- land management, see the mistrial as a Management after the standoff in 2014. Ryan, conservative blogger Pete Santilli ment views, including a fringe interpreta- sliver of hope. “This is a total answer to Jason Bean/Las Vegas Review- and Army veteran Ryan Payne, also a key tion of the U.S. Constitution that claims (our) prayers,” said John Lamb of Boze- Journal, via AP player in the 2016 occupation of Oregon’s the federal government is not allowed to man, Montana, after hearing that Engel Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That own land. “I wanted nothing to do with the and Burleson were not convicted on all Bundys and their fight with the federal charges. Federal prosecutors now have two Associate Editor Tay Wiles writes from Oakland, government,” defense attorney Todd Lev- more months to hone their arguments for California.  @taywiles enthal told High Country News. putting all 17 defendants behind bars.

www.hcn.org High Country News 7 Public banking goes to pot Can the cannabis industry help launch the nation’s first public bank in nearly a century?

By Jeremy Lybarger

ast October, a couple from Philadelphia much more rapidly.” The endgame is both L traveled to Sebastopol, California, a a boon to the cannabis industry and a new quiet outpost some 50 miles north of San economic model in which communities can Francisco, to buy pot. They’d arranged call on local banks to fund infrastructure the deal beforehand, but at some point and low-interest loans. during the hourlong transaction, the mood soured. Gunfire shattered the mild he 98-year-old Bank of North Dakota night. When it was over, two men were T is currently the country’s sole public dead, a woman was critically injured, and bank. It operates as an extension of the 100 pounds of marijuana and $100,000 to state itself — managed by the governor, $200,000 in cash were reportedly missing. attorney general and agriculture commis- The killers remain at large. sioner — with a $4.3 billion loan portfolio Crime haunts the edges of the canna- and $7.4 billion in assets. There are no bis industry, as it does any underground branches or ATMs, since its aim is not to economy. Sebastopol’s local newspa- compete with local banks but to partner per reports that seven of the 26 people with them by expanding their lending ca- murdered in Sonoma County since 2013 pacities. The institution’s annual reports died during marijuana deals. “People get read like socialist case studies: funding robbed all the time,” says Andrew DeAn- for schools, daycare, veterinary clinics, gelo of Harborside, a dispensary in Oak- dairy farms, low-interest student loans land, California. Although 29 states and and infrastructure projects. The bank has the District of Columbia have legalized been an unlikely success in a conservative marijuana in some form, it’s still feder- state. In 1997, for example, the Red River ally classified as a Schedule I drug along- in Grand Forks flooded, triggering a fire side heroin and LSD. And that means, and property losses totaling more than as Last Week Tonight host John Oliver $3.5 billion. The Bank of North Dakota, noted in an early April show, that “legal then led by future Republican Gov. John marijuana businesses have struggled to Hoeven, suspended mortgage and student get bank accounts, because at the federal loan payments for six months after the di- level, they are still seen as criminal en- saster — a courtesy almost no Wall Street terprises.” Banks and credit card compa- behemoth would extend. nies blacklist cannabis businesses. Many Interest in public banks has seesawed dispensary operators have no choice but over the years, but it spiked after the 2008 to stash money in home safes bolted to financial crisis and subsequent Great Re- the floor. Security guards are hired and cession. Occupy Wall Street intensified surveillance cameras installed. Armored grassroots campaigns for financial reform. cars deliver tax payments in suitcases In 2011, a California bill that would have and duffel bags stuffed with cash, a authorized a task force to study the fea- public safety liability that Oakland City sibility of a state-owned bank passed the Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan laments legislature, only to be vetoed by Gov. Jerry as “spectacularly stupid.” Brown. More recently, activists in Santa Now, Kaplan and activists in Oak- Fe, Philadelphia and Vermont have rallied land are inching toward a potential solu- for public banking, and New Jersey Demo- tion: a city-owned public bank that would cratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Mur- service a chunk of California’s $7 billion phy has pitched a public bank in that state. cannabis industry and support the local Marc Armstrong, former executive economy without having to rely on Wall director of the Public Banking Institute, Street. The idea has recently packed com- saw an opportunity to market public munity forums and sparked interest from banks to cannabis businesses during the neighboring Bay Area mayors. If it suc- run-up to California’s passage of Proposi- ceeds, Oakland will become the second tion 64 this past November, which legal- place in America — and the first in nearly ized recreational use of marijuana. Arm- a century — to establish a public bank. strong argues that Oakland is a prime Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local candidate for a public bank because it’s Self-Reliance, a community development a charter city awash in cannabis money. nonprofit, predicts that “once one place Once a public bank opens there, a regional does it, other places are going to follow network could follow that would be a blue- print for Colorado’s $2.4 billion cannabis Steve DeAngelo, co-founder with his brother Andrew DeAngelo of Jeremy Lybarger writes from San Francisco. His economy and the $1 billion-plus econo- Harborside Health Center in Oakland, California, says their dispensary work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Mother Jones mies in Washington, Nevada and Oregon. handles more than $20 million in cash annually. James Hosking and other outlets.  @jeremylybarger Brian Vicente, executive director of Sen-

8 High Country News May 15, 2017 sible Colorado, a nonprofit pushing can- Harborside, which pulls in more than $20 keen to relax its stranglehold, and lob- nabis reform, cites marijuana’s $3 billion million annually. He adds that because byists for big banks do what they can economic impact in his state as one reason cannabis is still an all-cash economy, cit- to nix talk of public banking as a viable that a bank serving the industry would be ies are tangled in a sort of catch-22. “Tax alternative. Finally, and perhaps most “greeted with open arms.” dollars are being spent one way or the oth- challenging, there’s a lack of political will, “We make the case that this is an eco- er. You can either spend it with the police especially in states like California, where nomic issue,” Armstrong says, “and we or you can spend it on a public bank and the world’s sixth-largest economy is hum- can use states’ rights arguments, which solve the problem.” ming. “We’ll have to keep pushing it,” says is what this is all about, because this is Momentum behind public banks is Kaplan. “Just because right now people a constitutional matter.” The Constitution surging, particularly given a White House are excited about it doesn’t mean those is the reason why a public bank could ac- determined to roll back environmental who care about this issue can go to sleep.” A city-owned cept cannabis deposits whereas a private regulations, defund sanctuary cities and But if another public bank is going bank cannot. Armstrong points to the 10th crack down on immigration. Communities to open anywhere in America, odds are public bank ... Amendment, which reserves for states across the country want banks to defend it’ll be in Oakland, which has histori- would service any power not given to the federal govern- their values. On March 14, San Francisco’s cally taken the lead in cannabis policy. ment. In states where cannabis is legal, a Board of Supervisors unanimously passed It was the first city in the state to permit a chunk of public bank would also be a branch of the a resolution calling for the city to divest and license dispensaries, and the first to California’s government and could invoke Article 10. from financial institutions that bankroll pass a dedicated cannabis tax. Now, the The argument is actually wonkier than the Dakota Access Pipeline. This follows city is considering a 10-week feasibility $7 billion that, but as Armstrong notes, “If the state similar divestments in Seattle, Washing- study to evaluate the costs and timeline cannabis industry is silent on the matter, which they are in ton, and Davis, California, as well as a na- of establishing a public bank there. Once regards to public banks, there’d be no con- tional “Defund DAPL” campaign. that’s complete, Harman hopes to start and support the flict” as to legality. “Everybody, whatever their silo is, laying the groundwork for Oakland’s local economy Besides being a constitutional matter, they see the potential benefit of the (pub- public bank by January 2018. (“People it’s also one that could force the federal lic) bank,” says Susan Harman, an activ- laugh hysterically when I say that,” she without having government to clarify financial regula- ist who helped found Friends of the Public admits.) tions around cannabis. In 2013 and 2014, Bank of Oakland last October. Her group “I think it’s a big ask,” says Dale to rely on the departments of Justice and the Trea- has received endorsements from the Cali- Gieringer, an Oakland-based cannabis Wall Street. sury respectively issued guidelines as to fornia Nurses Association, the Oakland activist. “It would be a whole lot easier if how banks should handle marijuana mon- Green Party and a local tenants’ union, Congress would simply reschedule mari- ey. Joe Rogoway, an attorney in Santa among others. “We’re getting broad sup- juana.” Nonetheless, he’s cautiously opti- Rosa who represents the cannabis indus- port because everyone can see that hav- mistic that a public bank could be a work- try, says that most banks found the com- ing control over our finances, instead of around. pliance rules too “onerous” and spurned sending them off to Wall Street, will be a Constituents have a choice, says Ka- cannabis business altogether. He now benefit.” plan: Either be depressed about a federal advises clients to open multiple accounts If public banks are so appealing, why government that enables Wall Street’s at different banks so that if one gets shut haven’t more cities or states opened them? worst excesses, or push communities to down they have backups. For one, the process can take years, with take control of their own financial destiny. “(Banks) are leaving a tremendous a long growth curve before the bank can “Not everything needs to be in (Trump’s) amount of money on the table by not deal- build its capital base and make profit- hands,” she says. “It’s a chance to put our ing with us,” says Andrew DeAngelo of able loans. In addition, Wall Street isn’t money where our values are.”

An employee counts cash in a guarded room at Harborside Health Center, Harborside Health Center co-founder Steve DeAngelo holds some of the cash which calls itself the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the United States. revenue from the company’s safe. James Hosking James Hosking

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Puppies, personnel and pea pods Tree Lines By Valerie P. Cohen and Michael P. Cohen. 80 pages, softcover: Snap pea seedlings are pushing coverage and in-depth reporting $29.95. University of Nevada Press, 2017. up through the cool soil here in on Western issues, which she’s Paonia, HCN’s headquarters, familiar with as a Westerner Swirls of black ink, intersected and framed by ruler-straight lines, and Colorado’s weather con- herself. “I could not be more create an intricately rendered abstraction of the grain of a bristle- tinues to undulate from warm excited to join the HCN team cone pine. Tree Lines explores the long lives of the high-altitude to cold and back again. Mean- for an opportunity to put my conifers of the dry eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the while, our major gifts officer organizational skills to work Great Basin. Alyssa Pinkerton has been busy, for such a terrific publica- Each of the 28 drawings by Valerie Cohen collected here is accompanied by a vignette written by her husband, Michael Cohen. setting up fundraisers and tion,” Christie says. Aside from The Cohens often walk through the trees together, but each of them meet-and-greets between do- expanding our subscription works in isolation, without any criticism or coaching. The end result nors and HCN staffers for May base and providing subscriber is a harmonious juxtaposition of two different ways of interpreting in Fort Collins and Durango support, Christie is looking the complex relationship between humans, the alpine environment in Colorado and Albuquerque, forward to warmer weather and and the tough old conifers that dwell there. “To see them now or New Mexico. If you’re in the spending time in the mountains even to walk among them seems to create them,” Michael writes. area, look for those meet-ups, fishing, hiking, photographing “But this is not true. The trees say where to go.” Emily Benson which are a great way to con- and enjoying bike rides in the nect with your neighbors. North Fork Valley. Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Bristlecone Pine) and The Abstract Truth. Visitors Travis Pugh and In other news, the HCN dog Valerie P. Cohen Alicia Olson, subscribers for the pack has expanded to include last three years, stopped by Lefty and Porter, the new pups with their 2-and-1/2-month-old of Editor-in-chief Brian Calvert daughter Edith on a cloudy day and Assistant Editor Paige in late April. The Denver-area Blankenbuehler, respectively. Charles J. Brandt & Timothea Elizalde | Jim West & Susan Newell | Detroit, MI family was headed to Utah to Lefty comes to us via a local Belen, NM Michael Wickes | Bozeman, MT James Brinson | Las Vegas, NV visit Canyonlands National dog rescue service, and is part Judi Williams | Bailey, CO Park and relatives near Salt Sarah Campe | Three Rivers, CA Australian shepherd and Cata- Penington Wimbush | Dillon, CO Lake City. Future HCN reader houla cur. So far, he has shown Phil & Susan Carrillo | Minden, NV John Winkel | Arvada, CO (and who knows, future intern) great aptitude for being petted, Terence Colligan | Scottsdale, AZ Diana C. Wood | Sacramento, CA Edith is already a master road- patted and passed around. Marshall Potter | Tigard, OR Deborah & Will Wroth | Santa Fe, NM tripper: She slept all the way to He’s also good at napping, and Robert Putsch | Canyon Creek, MT R. Yale | Tucson, AZ Glenwood Springs despite the barks in his sleep. And Porter, Craig H. Reide | Langley, WA Peter Hartsough | Davis, CA traffic. She did open her eyes to Paige’s first pup, is an adopted Krehe & Kathy Ritter | Berkeley, CA Eric & Susanne Henley | El Cerrito, CA take a peep at the office while 10-week-old coonhound from Gary Rivedal | Woodland Park, CO James Henricks | Colorado Springs, CO she was here, though. Happy Meeker, Colorado. He’s a mel- Abraxas Qlippoth | Duluth, GA Allen Henry | Grantham, NH trails, Edith, Alicia and Travis! low fellow who follows whatever Gerry A. Roberts | Arvada, CO Renita Herrmann | San Francisco, CA We’d like to give a warm scent his nose points him to- Tom Rottler & Margie Mulligan | San Diego, CA John Hoffman | Sonoita, AZ welcome to Christie Cantrell, ward. He’s excellent at “sit” and Gregory Sagmeister | Portland, OR Jay Hohensee | Broomfield, OC HCN’s new Customer Service “stay” — better than most of us, Dixon Sandoval | Dulce, NM Pauline & Michael Klein | Heber, AZ Manager. Christie comes to us in fact — and is just about the Kathleen Satterfield | Flagstaff, AZ Naomi & Ward Kroencke | Madison, WI from a digital marketing service sweetest pup in town — besides Henry Saverino | Englewood, CO Gwen Lachelt | Durango, CO in Carbondale. Although new HCN’s other pups, of course. Sara Scoles-Sciulla | Las Vegas, NV Vincent & Nancy Lee | Cortez, CO to the HCN staff, Christie is In “Change Comes to Short Don Sharp | Decatur, GA Scott McKay | Nephi, UT no stranger to HCN’s home- Creek” (HCN 5/1/17), we mis- Pete Simon | Arvada, CO Warren Miller | Prescott, AZ town, having lived here for identified Kristyn Decker as Scott T. Smith & Mary Bedingfieldsmith | Mel Mooers | Victor, MT the last nine years. Publisher the head of Holding Out HELP. Torrey, UT Maddie & Randy Nichols | Lakewood, CO Paul Larmer was one of the first Decker founded the Sound Susan & Lee Smith | Parachute, CO people she met when she first Patricia Pilcher | Ivins, UT Choices Coalition. The executive Hjalmar Sundin | Glenwood Springs, CO moved to Paonia, and she’s been director of Holding Out HELP Joseph Potts | Tallahassee, FL Steve & Val Swanson | Aberdeen, WA interested in working for HCN is Tonia Tewell. We regret the Janice Pryor | Littleton, CO Richmond & Sarah Thomason | Chelsea, MI ever since. Christie says she ap- error. Joretta Purdue | Colorado Springs, CO George Thornton | Oroville, WA preciates HCN for its important —Anna V. Smith, for the staff Michael Reinemer | Annandale, VA Glenn Thornton | Richland, WA Tom Reynolds | Denver, CO Stephen Toy | Seattle, WA Dave Roberts | Montrose, CO Evelyn Treiman | Las Cruces, NM Will Robinson & Maria Katherman | Douglas, WY Leland Trotter | Tacoma, WA Adele Schmalenberger | Ojai, CA Cheryl Turner | Leadville, CO Penelope Schott | Dufur, OR Robert Turner | Boulder, CO G.A. Seiffert | Scottsbluff, NE Margo van den Berg | Tucson, AZ Minna Sellers | Durango, CO Scott Vander Molen | Gallup, NM Tom & Diana Sheldon | Boulder, CO William VanHorn | Columbia Falls, MT Dick & Sandy Shuptrine | Jackson, WY Joel G. Vignere | Lakeside, MT Gary Sims | Evergreen, CO Sandra Villavicencio | Bonsall, CA Karen Sjoberg | Grand Junction, CO John Walenta | Seattle, WA Katherine S. Stimson | Olympia, WA Richard M. Walton | Billings, MT Muriel Strand | Sacramento, CA Timothy James Warfield | Fort Collins, CO George Swendiman | Redding, CA Peter & Mary Sue Waser | Portal, AZ Christie Cantrell, left, joins HCN as the new customer service manager. Larry D. Taylor | Carson City, NV Gail E. Wells | Corvallis, OR New puppies Porter and Lefty are bringing some much-welcomed baby- George & Jenny Tempest | Carbondale, CO mammal therapy to the office, right. Barooke W rren

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 FEATURE | By Sarah Tory Prison Town How Adelanto, California, tied its fate to the booming immigration-incarceration economy

f all the details Abdul Khan He traveled almost 4,000 miles, passing remembers of his flight from through 10 countries via secret trails, in his home country, Ghana, per- fishing boats and long canoes, through haps the clearest is the glint of the uncharted jungle of the Darien Gap, lightO on the machetes. He was 25 years through Panama, Central America and old, and his textile business was failing. Mexico, to the border at Tijuana. There were few jobs in his isolated vil- When border officials asked him lage in Ghana’s mountainous interior, why he had come to America, Khan and Khan had started working for two told them he had fled Ghana and come The moment gay men, who ran an underground male to seek asylum. For months, all he had prostitution business. In Ghana, homo- thought about was survival, but soon, Abdul Khan sexuality is not tolerated. You can be he imagined, he would be on his way to imprisoned for it, and you can be killed. New York, where he had family. Instead, fled Ghana, his When Khan’s association became known, Khan was detained. He spent his first fate became gossip began circulating that he, too, was night in the United States on a concrete gay. One day in the fall of 2014, his uncle floor in a cold, windowless room at the intertwined sat him down for a talk. Renounce that San Ysidro Port of Entry. For five days, with Adelanto, friendship, his uncle said, or die. Khan he was passed from one detention center had already heard rumors that his neigh- to the next. Finally, Khan was brought to California, a bors were looking to kill him before he the Adelanto Detention Facility, where he “infected” their children, so he took his would spend the next 16 months. struggling town uncle’s threat seriously. One night, as he Last December, almost two years later, on the edge lay awake and fearful in bed, a group of I met Khan in New York, on a busy corner men brandishing machetes approached in the Bronx. Khan, whose name has been of the Mojave the house. Khan jumped out of bed and changed to protect his identity, wore dark Desert that has escaped through a window in the back. jeans and Adidas sneakers, his boyish face dotted with Joshua trees. Interstate 395 Khan ran to his two gay friends, the framed by short curly hair and sideburns. runs through the middle of town, out of hitched itself only people he trusted. They told him Inside a Ghanaian restaurant, we shared Southern California and toward a line of that Ghana was no longer safe for him a plate of fried plantains and beans, and distant ochre mountains. Trucks barrel to America’s — that he should flee the country — and he told me his story. It is a story that says up and down the roadway that serves as booming they scraped together money for him to much about the way the United States Adelanto’s main thoroughfare, but there buy a ticket to Ecuador, which did not now treats asylum-seekers and immi- is no real center to the town. Instead, a incarceration require a tourist visa. On Nov. 6, 2014, grants, even before the Trump adminis- haphazard collection of tract homes, trail- Khan stepped off the plane in Quito, Ec- tration’s vitriolic rhetoric and attempted er parks, warehouses, gas stations and economy. uador’s capital. Before he’d even left the bans. It tells of the rise of corporate deten- fast-food restaurants spreads out over 56 airport a man told him about a group of tion centers, and their role in reshaping square miles of desert. There are so many migrants, mostly from Somalia, Bangla- communities in rural areas, including the abandoned lots that the overwhelming desh and Pakistan, who were trying to West. The moment Khan fled Ghana, his impression is one of empty space. reach the United States, and advised him fate became intertwined with one such Adelanto, a town of 32,000, is home to to join them. America, the man said, was place: Adelanto, California, a struggling three prisons. This was not a coincidence. the only country where he would have town on the edge of the Mojave Desert A century ago, orchards covered parts of rights. He introduced Khan to a smug- that has hitched itself to America’s boom- the Mojave Desert. Farmers grew apples, gler who would arrange his journey to ing incarceration economy. pears, plums, grapes and alfalfa. Crops the U.S. border. Khan paid the man $800 were watered by the Mojave River, which of the $1,000 he had with him and three Adelanto sits 85 miles northeast of Los begins in the nearby San Bernardino days later was on a bus heading north. Angeles, on a flat and featureless expanse Mountains; its water supply, farmers be-

12 High Country News May 15, 2017 lieved, was inexhaustible. At the western were forced out of business. The vacant property values cratered. Houses emptied An inmate is edge of the valley, past the town of Victor- land they left behind brought the U.S. and lawns died. seen behind the ville, Earl Homes Richardson, an inventor military to the town’s northern edge in With the farms and base gone, Adel- locked door at the and industrialist, envisioned a “City With 1941. The Air Corps established an ad- anto turned to prisons. During the 1980s, Adelanto Detention Unlimited Possibilities,” where soldiers vanced flying school for World War II, and under increasingly stringent drug laws Facility. Formerly a California state returning from the Great War could recu- by 1950, George Air Force Base served and harsh sentencing policies, demand prison, it is now perate in the high desert’s clean dry air. as a training ground for fighter jets and for new prisons had grown. So had the owned by the private Richardson sold one of his patents in 1915 bombers. belief that prisons could nourish eco- prison contractor and bought a parcel of land for $75,000, With the base came jobs and steady nomic development in rural communi- GEO Group and hoping to subdivide it into one-acre plots tax revenue, and in 1970, Adelanto in- ties. In California, the prison boom took houses nearly and develop a master-planned community. corporated, becoming the smallest city off throughout the Central Valley and in 2,000 detainees of But vets had no interest in living so far in San Bernardino County. It was almost the desert regions outside Los Angeles U.S. Immigration out in the desert, and Richardson’s vision wholly reliant on a military economy, but and San Diego, in poor rural towns with and Customs never materialized. Instead, Adelanto planners hoped for more: giant shopping high black and Latino populations, too Enforcement. Maya Sugarman, grew up around the orchards, gaining malls, new homes, and new people to far from major metro areas for subur- Southern California Public Radio. © 2016 some renown for its fruit and cider. boost the tax base. By then, a few poultry ban growth. As Ruth Gilmore writes in Southern California As agriculture intensified throughout ranches were all that remained of Adel- Golden Gulag, the new prisons were sited Public Radio. Used with permission. All rights the Victor Valley, excessive water use and anto’s agricultural past. In 1993, however, on previously irrigated and cultivated reserved. scpr.org a series of dry years shrank the Mojave the base closed, due to congressional re- land, taken out of production by the in- River. Adelanto’s farmers struggled, and alignments and closures at the end of the terrelated forces of “drought, debt, and when the Great Depression hit, many Cold War. People packed up and left, and development.”

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Chain-link and razor wire surround the Adelanto Detention Facility East, one of two private facilities operated by the GEO Group in Adelanto, California, with beds contracted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company is approved to build a third facility nearby. Andrew Cullen

Adelanto got its first prison in 1991: jail would be repurposed into the Adel- particularly hard time with the handcuffs, the Adelanto Community Correctional anto Detention Center, housing asylum- which guards placed around his ankles Facility, which held inmates for the Cali- seekers and others caught in immigration and wrists any time he was transported fornia Department of Corrections. In just bureaucracy. Adelanto’s detainees are outside the facility for a court appoint- GEO Group’s 11 years, the number of prisoners in Cali- among the 40,000 people held every day ment. He had broken no laws and had not initial contract fornia had more than quadrupled. in over 400 facilities nationwide by Im- crossed the border illegally. He had simply That growth trend continued across migration and Customs Enforcement, or asked for protection. He, like many of the with rural America. In the 1960s and 1970s, ICE, pending a decision in their immigra- other asylum-seekers held in the deten- Immigration about four new prisons were built in tion cases or while awaiting deportation. tion center, had passed a “credible fear” in- small towns and rural communities each A fortified compound surrounded by terview and had no criminal record. Back and Customs year, according to the Agriculture Depart- high barbed-wire fencing, the Adelanto in Ghana, Khan had always imagined ment’s economic research service. During Detention Center sits at the end of a America as a country of freedom; a coun- Enforcement the 1980s, that figure increased to an an- paved road near an industrial zone on the try where basic human rights were pro- included a nual average of 16. The following decade, outskirts of Adelanto. When Khan was tected. Why keep us locked up? he thought. the number jumped to 25, with a prison brought there on Dec. 11, 2014, it was If you don’t want us, tell us to go back. 975-bed opening somewhere in rural America ev- the middle of the night, but he could still ery 15 days. sense the confinement. He felt confused, Cari Thomas is the former mayor of minimum By 2006, two more prisons were sited he told me. This was not the America he Adelanto. She has long red hair and a no- occupancy rate near or within Adelanto’s town limits: the had envisioned. Why, he wondered, was nonsense air. An Adelanto transplant who High Desert Detention Center, a county he being treated like a criminal? was born in the L.A. suburbs, she saw guaranteeing facility, and a gigantic federal complex on The guards gave him a blue jumpsuit the high desert as an affordable place to GEO roughly the border with the neighboring town of and escorted him to a windowless dormi- live — where land was cheap and a com- Victorville. tory. Soon, he learned about the “segrega- fortable, middle-class life still in reach. $40 million A few years later, the GEO Group, a tion units” used to isolate unruly detain- Elected to city council in 2008, Thomas Florida-based private prison company, ees. By law, immigrant detention facilities became mayor in 2010 and oversaw the per year. offered to buy the old Adelanto Commu- are not supposed to be punitive, but the GEO Group’s arrival. nity Correctional Facility, for $28 million. official distinction between “detainees” Adelanto had plenty of incentives to Adelanto happily accepted. But the com- and “prisoners” seemed largely meaning- keep the detention center full, she told pany had no plans to run an ordinary jail. less. Guards conducted daily headcounts me last fall, over an egg breakfast at Instead, GEO had its eye on the latest — usually five or six, each one up to an Denny’s. After the base closed, the town iteration of America’s prison boom, this hour, during which time detainees had to struggled to replace the lost jobs and rev- one targeting immigrants. The county remain in place by their beds. Khan had a enue. Houses that once sold for $80,000-

14 High Country News May 15, 2017 $100,000 plummeted to half their value. percent. “You can work at Stater Bros or many of them asylum-seekers. On June Former Adelanto “It was horrible,” Thomas said. Through- Del Taco or Denny’s or in one of the few 20, 2014, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayor Cari Thomas, out the mid- and late 1990s and early manufacturing places,” Thomas said. “But Jeh Johnson announced a plan to sig- top, cut the first 2000s, money flowed into the town, as past that we had no employment.” nificantly expand detention capacity to deal to transform a new housing developments were built — For GEO, the deal offered plenty of detain and quickly deport Central Ameri- former state prison into a privately run part of the nationwide housing boom. For perks, too. The facility was already built cans, in an attempt to “send a message” detention facility for a while, “things were good,” Thomas said. — the company just needed bodies to to those seeking asylum or attempting to ICE. Current Mayor But it didn’t last. The 2008 recession hit, fill it. As part of the sale agreement, the cross the border illegally. Rich Kerr, center, and Adelanto suffered another housing town was obliged to secure the govern- Caught up in that policy, Khan would elected on an anti- crash and another wave of sunken hopes. ment contracts that would bring immi- have to prove his case from inside Adel- prison platform, Thomas had dreamed of turning Ad- grant detainees to the newly renamed anto. The prospect of indefinite detention now embraces elanto, with all its space, into a town like Adelanto Detention Facility. ICE would terrified him, a fear made worse by the them. Bottom, City Rancho Cucamonga, an hour south, with then pay GEO money based on the num- smaller indignities he endured. Some- Councilman John its colossal malls and shining housing ber of prisoners held in the facility, with times, the meat served at mealtimes was Woodard, center, tours developments set against the San Gabriel the town serving as the middleman. GEO moldy or rotten, compelling many detain- a medical marijuana production facility — Mountains. But the Adelanto she inher- quickly expanded the facility to hold ees to buy much of their own food at the a new revenue stream ited was in dire financial straits. “It was a 1,300 detainees. Its contract with ICE GEO-run commissary, but Khan had no the town is pursuing really bad time to get into politics,” Thom- included a 975-bed minimum occupancy money to spare. Often he barely ate. GEO — being developed in as said. She spent much of the next four rate guaranteeing GEO roughly $40 mil- guards barred him from praying with Adelanto’s industrial years just trying to balance the budget. lion per year. Please see Adelanto, page 18 area. Andrew Cullen In the wake of 9/11, private prison According to documents obtained from companies like GEO saw a lucrative busi- a state records request filed by Commu- ness opportunity in the government’s nity Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in immigration policies. Throughout rural Confinement (CIVIC), Adelanto was only Texas and the Southwest, new for-profit paid a flat yearly $50,000 “administra- immigrant detention facilities sprang up, tive fee” from GEO for its initial 650 bed bolstered by more and more government capacity, even though the company had contracts. Last year, for instance, GEO’s expanded the facility to hold 1,300. revenue was over $2 billion, 18 percent “I think it was a good deal,” Thomas of which came from ICE — the highest of said. Maybe they could have bargained any government contractor. To protect its for more, she added, but with the post- profits, the industry developed a number recession economy still wobbly, it was of tactics, such as incorporating so-called unlikely. Besides, where her constituency “guaranteed minimums” into detention was concerned, the facility was a boon. center contracts, ensuring the company “There’s zero impact to our residents oth- gets paid for a certain number of beds, er than an economic driver for employ- whether or not they’re filled. ment,” she said. “Unless you drive that This arrangement gives ICE an in- road, which nobody does, you don’t even centive to funnel immigrants into deten- know it’s there.” tion, regardless of their circumstances. A 2014 U.S. Government Accountability A few days after arriving at Adelanto, Office report on immigration detention Khan met with an asylum officer who recommended that ICE place detainees, interviewed him about why he had fled whenever possible, in facilities with Ghana and gave him a number of forms guaranteed minimums to provide the to fill out. He was hopeful he would be agency with “better assurance that it is released while he waited for his court cost-effectively managing detainee place- hearing, where he would present his ment.” Because GEO has been the most story to an immigration judge. Under successful at incorporating guaranteed government policies, asylum seekers who minimums into its contracts, its facili- pass their “credible fear” interview should ties are often used to fill local quotas. be released from detention if their “iden- According to emails obtained through tity is sufficiently established, the person a FOIA request from Detention Watch poses neither a flight risk nor a danger to and the Center for Constitutional Rights, the community, and no additional factors John P. Longshore, the former director of weigh against release.” Denver’s ICE Field Office, wrote in 2013 Khan thought he had all the papers that “we must ensure we are maximizing required to prove his identity. He had GEO beds for cost savings. … We will be financial documents showing he had fam- getting emails and calls from (ICE head- ily who could support him and an uncle quarters) if they note we are not making in New York to stay with. He assumed he good use of those cheaper beds. They al- would be released. Yet the ICE officers ready call me enough on stuff.” denied him parole, claiming that Khan’s When the GEO Group offered to buy documents were insufficient. the Adelanto Community Correctional This kind of detention is not uncom- Facility in 2010, Thomas readily agreed. mon. According to a recent report by California was downsizing its overcrowd- Human Rights First, ICE has increasingly ed state prison system, which meant the refused parole for asylum seekers — even town was about to lose its contract with when they meet the official criteria. In the California Department of Correc- 2012, 80 percent of asylum seekers who tions for the facility — a major source of passed their credible fear interview were revenue. Selling the facility balanced the granted parole. By 2015, the number had city’s budget for the next five years and dropped to 47 percent. The sharp drop brought a few hundred new jobs to Ad- coincided with an influx of migrants from elanto, where unemployment was at 22 Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras,

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Key dates and policies that led to the expansion of the U.S. immigration detention apparatus

President Ronald Reagan signs the Comprehensive Reagan signs the Crime Control Act, which eliminates the federal Anti-Drug Abuse In a speech to in. parole system, reinstates the federal death penalty m Act, which mandates d

Congress, President A and initiates the asset-forfeiture system. harsh minimum Richard Nixon s sentences for drug officially declares Washington state enacts the first ord c offenses. e

outube truth-in-sentencing law. Others follow suit, after R

Y a “war on drugs,” calling drug abuse Reagan offers grants to states that restrict parole and “public enemy No. 1.” opportunities and require offenders to serve most of s

tion via their sentences. hive c r

The Corrections Corporation of America (now A . ounda

F CoreCivic) opens the world’s first private prison, ATL N on a federal immigrant detention center in Houston, .S. ix U N Texas. 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 NIXON FORD CARTER REAGAN BUSH 1 CLINTON BUSH 2 OBAM A TRUMP

The Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now the GEO U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over-72-hour detention facilities, 2015 Group) gets its first contract to run a federal immigration detention center in Aurora, Colorado.

Legend Average daily population (size) 0-10 President Bill Clinton signs 11-50 the Illegal Immigration 51-100 Reform and Responsibility 101-500 Act, which calls for the mandatory detention of greater than 500 immigrants with criminal convictions and profoundly Facility type (color) reduces how much discretion Family residential facility Service processing center immigration judges can give Contract detention facility cases. Dedicated intergovernmental services agreement facility Nondedicated ICE intergov- ernmental service agreement facility, or U.S. Marshals Service intergovernmental agreement, or Sour ce: Gao analysis of ICE information; Mapinfo (map). GAO-16-231 contract facility The immigration-incarceration economy P B Immigrant detention is now the fastest-growing form of incarceration Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump exploited the C in the United States, an increasingly lucrative business that costs growing divide between citizens and immigrants, pledging to taxpayers $2 billion per year. Its roots reach back to the early 1980s, build a wall along the Mexican border and escalate deportations. with then-President Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” and “tough on In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a speech crime” laws. The surging numbers of Central Americans fleeing civil in Nogales, Arizona, announcing the government’s renewed war were an easy target for the Reagan administration’s focus on commitment to criminal immigration enforcement, referencing 4,000 illicit drug activity, helping justify the growing use of detention as a gangs and cartels that “flood our country with drugs.”R eferring to U.S. Border Patrol budget, 1990-2016, and highlights from means of immigration enforcement. the Borderlands, he said: “On this sliver of land, is where we first the budget of the Department of Homeland Security Enforcement picked up steam during the Clinton take our stand.” 3500 administration. After 9/11, immigration policy shifted even Meanwhile, the boom in immigrant detention practices has The budget of the U.S. Border Patrol, while only a small fraction of the budget of the further, from regulation to enforcement, punishment and increased demand for prison companies. Across the West, new Department of Homeland Security within which it falls, shows the trajectory deterrence. The result was a growing merger of the criminal justice detention facilities have emerged in struggling rural communities. 3,000 of the booming immigration-incarceration economy. and immigration systems. Between 1993 and 2013, the industry’s profits soared 500 Although politically popular, the criminalization strategy came percent, bolstered by heavy lobbying for increased Homeland 2500 under fire from those working inside the system.I n 2008, Heather Security spending. Williams, first assistant to the federal public defender of Arizona, “The federal market is being driven for the most part, as we’ve told the Washington Post that the crackdown on immigrants not been discussing, by the need for criminal alien detention beds. 2,000 only diverted attention from real crimes, it offended basic notions That’s being consistently funded,” George Zoley, the chairman of of fairness. “(If U.S. citizens) were placed in any other country on the GEO Group told investors in 2008. the planet, and had to resolve a case in a day that could result To protect their bottom line against changes in immigration 1500 in being deported and having a criminal record, we would be laws, private prison companies began including guaranteed udget in millions of dollarsudget B outraged, and so would our government,” she said. minimums in contracts with ICE and with local governments, 1,000 Former President Barack Obama claimed to go after “felons, requiring occupancy rates of 80 to 100 percent. Today, the not families,” but his administration deported more people than government spends more than $5 million per day on immigrant any other. Undocumented immigrants without criminal records detention, while CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of 500 were detained and deported, after being stopped for minor traffic America, and GEO Group have doubled their revenues since 2005. infractions such as broken taillights and jaywalking. Sarah Tory 0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1990 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Data from the American Immigration Council, compiled from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol Fiscal Year Budget Statistics (FY 1990-FY 2015),” Jan. 12, 2016. 16 High Country News May 15, 2017 Key dates and policies that led to the expansion of the U.S. immigration detention apparatus

DHS Secretary The Justice Department Michael Chertoff The Bush administration’s attempts at comprehensive under President Barack The Justice Department ends “catch and immigration reform fail. The legislation sought a Obama announces it agencies charged with release” policy, compromise, allowing a path to legal status for current is ending its use regulating immigration, saying the agency immigrants and a new temporary worker program, while

tion of private prisons. including the INS, are will now detain c strengthening border security and employer crackdowns.

te However, DHS replaced by three new ones: immigrants until their Secretary Jeh Johnson Immigration and Customs deportation hearings. The new Secure Communities program creates says ICE will continue Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Previously, immigrants a national fingerprint database, allowing ICE to to contract with private order Pro Citizenship and Immigration without criminal B track people who are arrested for immigration prisons because of Services (USCIS) and Customs records were allowed violations. The program stems from post-9/11

and “fiscal considerations” and Border Protection (CPB), to attend a hearing ms efforts to increase collaboration between local and the need to handle

all under the new Department and then be released to s law enforcement and the FBI to detect national “sudden increases in

of Homeland Security (DHS). until their court date. Cu security threats. detention.”

1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 NIXON FORD CARTER REAGAN BUSH 1 CLINTON BUSH 2 OBA MA TR UMP

The Wackenhut Corrections President George W. Bush launches Sen. Robert Byrd, January 2017 President Donald Trump’s Corporation (now the GEO Bush’s Intelligence Operation Streamline D-W.Va., chair of the executive order calls for the expansion Group) gets its first contract Reform and Terrorism along the border, from Senate Appropriations of detention centers for undocumented to run a federal immigration Prevention Act the Rio Grande Valley Committee, introduces immigrants near the border. detention center in Aurora, directs Homeland to Yuma, Arizona. CPB a measure into the DHS March A federal judge rules in favor of the Colorado. Security to Appropriations Act of increase agents now must first-ever class-action lawsuit filed on behalf 2010, mandating that immigration turn border crossers of ICE detainees who were allegedly forced DHS “ detention capacity over to the U.S. maintain a to work in slave-labor conditions at a GEO by at least 8,000 Marshals Service level of not less than Group facility in Colorado. beds each year from for prosecution, rather 33,400 detention 2006 to 2010. than returning Mexican beds” for immigrant April The Trump administration runs immigrants to Mexico detention. out of space to detain the increasing or releasing non- number of people caught up in its

kr Mexican immigrants immigration crackdown. Hoping to entice c with an order to appear more sheriffs and local officials to make in court. their correctional facilities available for via fli

cc immigrant detention, DHS announces

h), that it will loosen the standards for jails sc i holding immigrants. Facilities are no longer F Efforts to eliminate the “bed quota” for immigrant required to notify immigration officials if detention fail and government funding to maintain 34,000 a detainee spends two weeks or longer in obert J.

R beds is reauthorized. In the accompanying report, the House solitary confinement.N or are they required (

ps Committee on Appropriations states its expectation for “ICE to to check in on suicidal inmates every 15 o vigorously enforce all immigration laws under its purview.” minutes, or inform detainees, in languages they can understand, how to obtain hineSt c medical care. heMa T tion c

The 9/11 terrorist attacks te bring sweeping changes to U.S. immigration policies, P B order Pro C further criminalizing immigration-related B

offenses in the name of and

national security. ms to s Cu DHS budget: 4,000 $64.9 billion U.S. Border Patrol budget, 1990-2016, and highlights from DHS budget: the budget of the Department of Homeland Security $56.3 billion 3500 The budget of the U.S. Border Patrol, while only a small fraction of the budget of the Department of Homeland Security within which it falls, shows the trajectory 3,000 of the booming immigration-incarceration economy. DHS budget: 2500 $41.1 billion

2,000 DHS budget: $37.7 billion 1500

1,000

500

0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1990 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Data from the American Immigration Council, compiled from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol Fiscal Year Budget Statistics (FY 1990-FY 2015),” Jan. 12, 2016. www.hcn.org High Country News 17 Adelanto, continued from page 15 brary for an hour a day and had no access grant detainees Fagen dealt with were in to the internet, and so Khan struggled to two facilities closer to downtown LA: the other Muslim inmates, denying him an find information. He wanted to call friends San Pedro Processing Center on Termi- important part of his religious practice, and family to see if they could help, but he nal Island and the Mira Loma Detention while Christian detainees were allowed couldn’t afford the high rates charged by Center in Lancaster, run by the Los An- to attend church three times per week. TALTON Communications, the detention geles County Sheriff’s Department. The (GEO later changed its policy in response center’s for-profit phone service provider. shorter drives meant he could take on to complaints.) Khan felt powerless in Khan needed to convince a judge that more clients who were detained, he said. the face of the discriminatory rules, but he met the legal definition of a refugee, Terminal shut down in 2014 after the threat of the segregation units, or SU, which meant proving a “well-founded an internal review found the facility too which mirror the solitary confinement fear” of persecution due to “race, religion, unsafe, and ICE ended its contract for cells used in prisons housing criminals, nationality, membership in a particular Mira Loma in 2012, transferring detain- kept him in check. “You want to fight for social group or political opinion.” ees to Adelanto, in part because the GEO your rights, but if you fight too hard, you Successful cases rely on numerous contract was cheaper — even though it In 2012, will be put in the SU,” he said. documents, such as newspaper articles raised the costs for detainees. Sometimes, entire units experienced and eyewitness testimonies about the For Fagen, Adelanto cases became too 80 percent of multi-day lockdowns as group punishment alleged persecution, David Fagen, an much to bear. “You feel bad,” he said, “be- for one detainee’s actions. “If anything immigration lawyer in LA, told me. For cause there’s nothing you can do to help asylum seekers happens, they put us in our cells and asylum-seekers held in remote rural de- them.” who passed locked the door,” Khan said. He learned tention centers like Adelanto, that can be not to attract attention, to keep his anger especially hard, he said, due to the lack of The proceeds from Adelanto’s GEO their credible and despair in check, to pray alone. access to pro bono lawyers and legal aid deal temporarily plugged the town defi- fear interview Due to the backlog in immigration groups. “If you’re in detention, how are cit but failed to generate the substantial courts, which is now more than 500,000 you going to get those things from Ghana? long-term revenue that the town needed. were granted cases long, asylum-seekers can remain How are you going to get stuff interpreted By 2014, Adelanto was once again con- in detention for months and sometimes — who will pay for that translation? templating bankruptcy. Around that time, parole. By 2015, years while their cases are processed. How’s he supposed to communicate?” a pair of private developers sought out the number had Khan felt like he existed outside the law. Even if Khan had been able to pay Adelanto for another private prison. That is not entirely wrong: Unlike crimi- for a lawyer, he would have had a hard The GEO Group, meanwhile, came dropped to nal defendants, for example, Khan had no time finding one. Immigration attorneys forward with plans to expand the Adelan- right to a lawyer. Like most immigration like Fagen rarely take cases involving to Detention Facility to 1,940 beds, mak- 47 percent. detainees and asylum-seekers, he could Adelanto detainees because of the long ing it the largest immigrant detention not afford one and would have to repre- commute; a round-trip drive from LA can facility in California. Thomas supported sent himself. take most of the day. And there’s a low the expansion. The town was $2.6 mil- For the next six months, Khan waited chance of success. Adelanto’s six immigra- lion in the red and needed the additional to find out when he would have his asy- tion judges are among the harshest in the money that the additional detainees lum hearing. He tried to bolster his case, country. The most lenient of them denies would bring in. As the November 2014 researching the repression of homosexual- 75 percent of asylum cases, according to election approached, Richard Kerr, an ity in Ghana and instances where people data compiled by researchers at Syracuse upstart candidate, ran on a platform that were imprisoned or killed for aligning University. Among the two harshest, the included no new jails. themselves with gay and lesbian rights, denial rate is over 91 percent. Kerr narrowly defeated Thomas and but detainees could only use the law li- Early in his career, most of the immi- is still mayor today. Last fall, I met him at his office in the Adelanto City Hall, a stucco, faux Spanish-colonial style build- ing overlooking the swath of empty desert where the GEO prisons sit. A former Marine, Kerr has a mustache and often wears jeans to work. He has, in his words, a “maverick” approach to city politics. Al- most immediately following his election, the new mayor changed his mind about prisons. Once he found out he could re- negotiate the per-bed rate that GEO paid Adelanto for each detainee held in its fa- cilities, Kerr decided that the prisons were not as bad as they were often made out to be. “We need the money in the city,” he told me. According to the mayor, GEO had no problem paying a higher rate and Kerr appreciated the company’s donation to the rodeo and the local Christmas fund. GEO also paid the town $175,000 to fund an ad- ditional police officer. “They’re 100 percent behind us,” he said. The city council approved both the new prison and the GEO expansion. On July 1, 2015, the Adelanto Detention Facility got 640 more beds, specifically designed to house women detainees. The new beds would bring in an extra $21 million for GEO. Along with another GEO-run state prison, there were over Demonstrators with the Caravan Against Fear, a roving protest against U.S. immigration policies, gathered outside the 9,000 people behind bars within a seven- Adelanto Detention Facility West in April. Andrew Cullen mile radius of Adelanto — almost a third

18 High Country News May 15, 2017 of the town’s total population. After six months in detention, Khan detainees wrote a letter to ICE, request- Abdul Khan, who Renegotiating the GEO contract, Kerr still had no verdict on his case. He was ing to speak with Gabriel Valdez, the as- fled New York out of told me, means Adelanto now receives eligible for a bond hearing, which offered sistant field office director for Adelanto. fear of deportation $80,000 per month from GEO in bed tax him a chance at release, but the judge set They wanted to know why they were still after Donald Trump for its two facilities — an eighth of the the bond at $28,000 — far beyond what locked up, even after many had signed was sworn in, town’s total budget. Khan could afford. And so, like many de- their deportation orders. When their re- currently resides in Still, like most local officials I spoke tainees with limited means, he remained quest went unacknowledged, Khan and Montreal. His name has been changed in with, Kerr would rather not dwell on Ad- in Adelanto. A couple weeks later, in May more than 90 detainees — mostly asylum this story to protect elanto’s prisons or the role they play in 2015, the same judge, denied his asylum seekers — began refusing to eat. Theirs his identity. the town’s economy. Instead, much of our case, citing lack of evidence. Unless Khan became the fourth hunger strike at U.S. Nicolas Gouin hour-long conversation revolved around appealed the decision, he would be de- immigration detention facilities in less marijuana, which Kerr believes is on ported. than three weeks. the cusp of transforming Adelanto from Khan didn’t see much point in appeal- When ICE officials finally met with down-and-out prison town into a haven ing. He would have to continue his fight Khan and the other hunger-strikers, they for California’s nascent medical mari- from inside Adelanto, a process that could tried to assure them that the government juana industry. take years and most likely would not was still working on getting their travel Driving through town, however, it’s yield any new evidence. For Khan, re- documents. When the men asked for bet- easy to see why no one on the current maining in Adelanto seemed even worse ter food and more respect from the GEO city council is ready to give up on the than what he might face back in Ghana. guards, ICE officials were unreceptive. GEO Group and the money it pumps into It was better, he told the judge, for him to “You guys are refugees,” they were told, Adelanto. On the south side, a few newer go back and face the consequences. “I’m according to Khan, “you can’t ask for housing developments have cropped ready for anything,” he said. things.” up, but north along the old main street, Khan signed his deportation order The GEO Group referred all questions vacant lots separate many of the build- and prepared for the worst. But before about the Adelanto Detention Facility to ings. Farther down is a thrift store, then he could be released, immigration of- ICE. In an emailed response, an ICE rep- a liquor mart, then a neighborhood of ficials had to obtain a travel document resentative wrote that detention facilities faded one-story homes with dusty yards. from Ghana — essentially a guarantee are subject to ICE’s “rigorous detention Bartlett Avenue, named for the pears that it would accept its citizen back once standards.” Those requirements, she that once grew in Adelanto’s orchards, the U.S. had deported the person. In the added, “reflect the agency’s commitment dead-ends at the perimeter of the old Air meantime, Khan waited in Adelanto. to maintain safe, secure and humane con- Force base, where bits of trash flap on a Three months passed. An ICE officer told ditions for those in ICE custody.” barbed-wire fence. For Adelanto, prisons him they were still waiting to receive the Under a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, had been one of the town’s few bright documents from Ghana, which is among Khan could petition a judge for release spots. Jessie Flores, Adelanto’s economic around two-dozen countries that often from detention, but only if he could prove development consultant, told me, “We delay repatriating people from the U.S. that his removal was not significantly view them as good neighbors, as assets to Almost a year into Khan’s detention, likely to occur in the foreseeable future — our community.” in October 2015, he and a group of other a claim nearly impossible to prove, says

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 Judy Rabinovitz, a lawyer with the Amer- tention Watch Network chronicled numer- man,” she told me later. Pamplone makes ican Civil Liberties Union, who worked ous reports of sexual assault and abuse. something of a hobby picking up Adelanto on the 2001 case ruling that indefinite The poor medical care led to two deaths. detainees, and she never regrets it. “You detention raised serious constitutional In late March of this year, a Nica- take them to a Burger King and you could problems. “The government can just keep raguan man facing deportation hanged be taking them to the Hilton,” she said. saying, ‘Oh, we’re working on it,’ so a lot himself. Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba, “They’re walking on air. They’re free.” of times people end up in detention much who did not have a criminal record, had One of Khan’s relatives, who lived in longer.” been detained in Adelanto for three Canada, wired Pamplone $300 — enough For Khan, the endless waiting and un- months. Three weeks later, Sergio Alonso for a bus ticket to New York, where an certainty were a special kind of torment. Lopez, a 55-year-old Mexican detainee, uncle lived. Two days after his release, “I stopped having hope,” he told me. “A lot began vomiting blood and later died in Khan said goodbye to Pamplone at the of people give up.” This is a common phe- hospital. He had a history of serious Greyhound station in LA, and set off east, nomenon among asylum-seekers, even medical issues and had been deported to to endure whatever fate had in store. when they have a strong case, Rabinovitz Mexico three times previously. He rode out of the LA sprawl, through says. “The effect of detention is that it the San Gabriels and past Adelanto, a makes people want to stop fighting.” One day last spring, one year, three prison town in a struggle for survival, At least some immigration judges months and three weeks into his deten- past the Mojave National Preserve have questioned the escalating use of de- tion, a guard told Khan he was being re- and into the desert. He was astonished tention. Last October, a group of former leased under supervision. ICE had decided by its emptiness, vast and barren, the immigration judges wrote to Johnson, the to let him out while the agency continued mountains rising in the distance. Peer- former secretary of Homeland Security, its efforts to get his travel documents. At ing through the bus window, Khan was expressing concern that the expansion first, Khan thought the guards were lying captivated by their shape, like fortresses Correspondent Sarah “comes at the expense of basic rights and — but when the guards gave him back his of sand, and the way they shimmered, Tory writes from due process.” People eligible for protection old clothes and told him to change out of reaching toward the sky, like something Paonia, Colorado. under U.S. and international laws are kept his prison uniform, he began to believe. On out of a dream. Though the memory of his She covers Utah, in jail-like facilities operated by private March 23, 2016, Khan was set free. incarceration would remain with Khan, environmental justice prison companies or local jails contracted In the glare of the midday desert sun, coming back in flashes of pain and anger, and water issues. by ICE. “A shocking 86 percent of immi- a woman named Barbara Pamplone was it was over. Adelanto was behind him and  @tory_sarah grants in detention are unable to obtain waiting to pick him up. Pamplone, who is the shining desert was ahead. It was hard

legal representation,” the judges noted. 79, regularly makes the four-hour round- This coverage to hold a grudge in all that open space. “I is supported by The system creates a deep sense of trip drive from Los Angeles to visit with had never seen a place like that,” Khan contributors to the despair for the people trapped within it. inmates as part of a volunteer group. She told me. “It was … I don’t know how to High Country News During Khan’s detention, eight people at- found Khan just as he was walking out describe it,” he said, pausing to search for Enterprise Journalism tempted suicide, and 115 were placed on from the Adelento Detention Center’s blue the right words. “It made me so happy. I Fund. suicide watch. In 2015, CIVIC and the De- doors. “He was just a really nice young was going to live my life.”

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20 High Country News May 15, 2017 MARKETPLACE

Advertising Policy: We accept advertising Conservationist? Irrigable land? Stellar Executive Director – Accomplished leader Live-in housekeeper wanted – Retired because it helps pay the costs of publishing seed-saving NGO is available to serious part- to develop strategic vision in conservation, college professor, widower, wishes to barter a high-quality, full-color magazine, where ner. Package must include financial support. policy and education. Understanding free room and board for a female housemate topics are well-researched and reported Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. of complex environmental issues. to do light housekeeping. Not an employee or in an in-depth manner. The percentage of Success in fundraising required. Apply: a caregiver. Must be a non-smoker with medical the magazine’s income that is derived from conferences and events www.kittlemansearch.com. insurance and own car. Rural forested location advertising is modest, and the number of 20 miles east of Crater Lake National Park. advertising pages will not exceed one-third Year-round paved highway fronts the property. Escalante Canyons Art Festival – of our printed pages annually. Hundreds of books, 600 VHS and DVD movies, Sept. 22-Oct. 1, 2017 – Love Utah’s a dozen subscription magazines, but no TV and Notice to our advertisers: You can place canyon country and supporting artists and artisans? Plan to attend the 14th Annual no internet. Twenty-mile round trip to get mail. classified ads with our online classified Housemate should have a pleasant voice, a system. Visit hcn.org/classifieds. May 15 Escalante Canyons Art Festival. Events sense of humor and be politically open-minded. is the deadline to place your print ad in include: plein air competition and sale, the May 29 issue. Call 800-311-5852, or arts and crafts fair, speaker series, exhibits, Reply by U.S. mail: Triangle J, 13750 Silver Lake e-mail [email protected] for help or in- workshops and demos, and live music. Road, Chiloquin, OR 97624. formation. For more information about our escalantecanyonsartfestival.org. University of Wyoming – Natural current rates and display ad options, visit Resource Recreation and Tourism — Digital Communications Coordinator hcn.org/advertising. Degree Coordinator and Lecturer – This Western Resource Advocates is looking for proposed degree program will emphasize a Digital Communications Coordinator to lead our social media outreach, graphic Business Opportunities entrepreneurial and business management skills, human dimensions of natural resources, design, and material creation efforts. Can be based in one of WRA’s offices or remotely Advertising is a great way to support environmental science, and outdoor skills. To High Country News and get your word in any Intermountain West state. Apply at learn more or apply, visit www.uwyo.edu/hr/ www.westernresourceadvocates.org. out – Consider a classified ad in HCN when (Job ID 8594). Review of applications begins you have a conservation or green technolo- May 30, 2017. gy job to fill, a conference or special event EMPLOYMENT Facilities Superintendent – Part-time coming up, a house to sell, unique home facilities maintenance position needed at Executive Director – Friends of Malheur General Manager – The Colorado River Mono Lake Committee office and Field Station. and garden products, professional services District, based in Glenwood Springs, Colo., to promote, travel opportunities or any oth- National Wildlife Refuge seeks an Executive Housing provided. monolake.org/mlc/jobs. Director to lead its Friends Group at the is seeking candidates for the General er information you would like to get out to Manager position. For further information like-minded people. Visit classifieds.hcn.org Malheur National Wildlife Refuge located Whatcom Land Trust Stewardship and instructions on how to apply, please visit or call 800-311-5852. in southeast Oregon. A job description Director – Position is responsible and qualifications can be found at www. the website at www.ColoradoRiverDistrict.org. for implementing Whatcom Land malheurfriends.org. friends@malheurfriends. Applications should be submitted by May Trust’s stewardship program. org. 31, 2017. [email protected]. www.whatcomlandtrust.org.

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 MARKETPLACE

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www.hcn.org High Country News 23 ANALYSIS

Some of the national monuments under review include (from left) Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Canyons of the Ancients, Cascade- Siskiyou and Basin and Range. Brooke Warren, BLM Fact-checking Trump’s Antiquities Act order Trump and his supporters rely on dubious claims to attack national monuments

“San Juan County is now the epicenter under the Antiquities Act. limestone quarrying and other natural of a brutal battle over public lands,” Or- This launched informal and formal resource development. Because many rin Hatch, Utah’s senior senator, told the discussions on protecting the area, and local Native Americans were worried Senate on April 24, as he railed against prompted the birth of Utah Diné Bikéyah, about losing their ability to gather herbs, then-President Barack Obama’s end- a group of local Native Americans inter- piñon nuts and firewood, the proclama- of-term designation of the Bears Ears ested in preserving the ancestral home- tion explicitly preserves such traditional National Monument. land of numerous tribes. That effort grew uses. The Republican spoke in anticipation into an intertribal coalition that in 2015 of President Donald Trump’s order — formally asked Obama to designate a 1.9 Hatch: “The county schools have been announced two days later — to “review” million acre monument. strapped for cash ever since the Bears BY Jonathan all national monuments designated since The proposal was debated publicly Ears Monument designation, because Thompson 1996, starting with Bears Ears in rural and openly for months. The administra- that designation rendered this land use- San Juan County, Utah, and including tion had numerous exchanges with Utah less.” dozens of other monuments established officials, revealed by documents obtained Fact check: This is an outright fabrica- over the last 21 years. As he signed the by the House Oversight Committee tion, involving state trust lands that are executive order, Trump praised Hatch at the request of Utah congressmen. within the monument’s boundaries. In and parroted some of his points. Finally, in July 2016, Interior Secretary Hatch’s alternative universe, those lands Hatch’s speech was peppered with Sally Jewell and several other top fed- were generating oodles of dollars for the the type of Sagebrush Rebellion rhetoric eral land-management officials traveled local schools until the monument desig- that Utah politicians have spouted since to southeastern Utah, met with local of- nation cut off the cash flow. That’s not Cal Black, the late San Juan County ficials and held a public hearing in Bluff, how it works. Proceeds from the lease or commissioner, threatened three decades attended by approximately 1,000 people. sale of state trust lands are distributed ago to blow up ruins, bridges and trucks to public schools across the state, regard- to retaliate against purported overreach Hatch: “In making this unilateral deci- less of which county the lands are in. by federal land managers. But Hatch sion, our former president either failed Those funds make up a tiny portion of a also relied on outright falsehoods, or, in to heed the concerns of San Juan County school district’s overall budget — 1 per- the nomenclature of the current admin- residents, or ignored them completely.” cent for San Juan County in 2016 — and istration, “alternative facts.” Fact check: This statement has two inac- they weren’t affected by the monument Let’s fact-check the main arguments curacies. First, not all local residents are designation. made by the monument’s opponents, opposed to the monument. Utah Diné Nor did the designation render those including Trump and Hatch. Bikéyah was born locally, with a board lands “useless.” The state retains control made up of local Navajo and Ute Moun- over the parcels. The Obama adminis- Hatch: “As evidence of his disdain, Presi- tain Ute people; six of seven Navajo tration had wanted to negotiate a land dent Obama issued this declaration with chapters in San Juan County officially swap, so that the monument wasn’t no open debate, no public hearing, and support designation; and many residents checker-boarded with inholdings, but no vote in Congress.” spoke in favor of it at the Bluff hearing. the state land board declined. Such an Fact check: The notion that Obama In designating the monument, Obama exchange is still possible under Trump; sprang this “midnight monument” on the was responding to their concerns as well state schools got $50 million from the locals without warning or consultation as those of the five sovereign tribes in feds as a result of the Grand Staircase- is one of the main arguments against it. the coalition. Escalante designation. It’s also false. While a majority of the county’s Ironically, the San Juan School The public debate over white residents and some Native Ameri- District’s website brags about the preserving this remote corner of Canyon cans, particularly Mormons, oppose the public lands and national parks and Country goes back to the 1930s. When monument, it’s clear from the details of monuments within the county’s borders. it became clear that a dysfunctional the final designation that their concerns Congress would never act, the Obama were heeded as well. Obama left near- Hatch: “President Obama … lock(ed) administration included Cedar Mesa, the ly 600,000 acres out of the original pro- away an entire quarter of San Juan heart of the Bears Ears Monument, on a posal, land that holds the potential for County, an action that undermines the 2010 list of sites for possible protection motorized recreation, uranium mining, local economy.”

24 High Country News May 15, 2017 Fact check: This is a widely used argument, monument manager. While this was a lesser role rior Secretary Ryan Zinke, comes up with, the that the designation enacts restrictions that than the co-management one the tribes hoped Antiquities Act gives Trump the power to expand will shut down a vibrant extraction economy for, they have a louder voice now than they had Bears Ears to encompass a greater cultural land- within its boundaries. A variant of it — that the without a monument. scape. It does not, however, give him the power to monument will hold a bevy of drill rigs at bay abolish or significantly diminish the monument. — is used to argue in favor of designation. Both Hatch: In designating over 1 million acres, Back in 1938, when President Franklin claims are dubious. Obama overstepped his authority under the Roosevelt pondered abolishing the Castle- San Juan County does rely on extractive Antiquities Act to set aside “the smallest area Pinckney National Monument, created by Calvin industries; Resolute Natural Resources is its compatible with proper care and management of Coolidge, his attorney general said it couldn’t be No. 1 taxpayer. But that oil driller operates in the objects to be protected.” done. “The grant of power to execute a trust,” he and around the Aneth Oil Field, well outside the wrote, “... by no means implies the further power Fact check: False. The monument is sizeable, but monument’s boundaries. The Daneros uranium to undo it when it has been completed.” And in it also encompasses a landscape that is home mine was within the proposed boundaries, but it the 1970s, as it put together the Federal Land to the physical remnants of over 12,000 years and a huge swath of nearby land, rich with pa- Policy and Management Act, Congress decreed of human occupation — from a Clovis camp, to leontological resources, were left out of the final that the secretary of the Interior can’t “modify or tens of thousands of Puebloan sites, to the Hole designation, as was most of Lime Ridge and the revoke any withdrawal creating national monu- in the Rock Trail — as well as vast paleontologi- Raplee Anticline, where oil drilling historically ments” under the Antiquities Act. Based on the cal resources. Many of the landforms, including occurred. legislative history and a report that accompanied the Bears Ears and Comb Ridge, are spiritually In recent years, a couple of exploratory the bill, legal scholars believe that this clause ap- significant to the Navajo, Ute and Pueblo people. drill rigs appeared on Cedar Mesa, but they plies to the entire executive branch. This cultural landscape stretches across the were either on state land, or on already-leased If Trump wants to abolish or shrink Bears new monument and far beyond its borders. In federal land, and came up empty. The monu- Ears, he’ll either have to convince Congress fact, the smaller monument Obama ultimately ment stops only new mineral leases, so existing to do it, or commit himself to a brutal legal proposed already excluded some significant sites. drilling rights will not be affected. Advances in battle against the local tribes who fought so Further diminishment would result in more im- drilling technology or extremely high oil prices hard to get the monument designated. portant antiquities being left out. If anything, the could someday make drilling, or even tar sands new monument is too small to include all of the development, feasible within the monument, but relevant cultural landscape — it should stretch Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor there were no pending projects or leases when it eastward to connect with Canyon of the Ancients at High Country News. He is currently writing was designated. National Monument in southwestern Colorado. a book about the Gold King Mine spill. Grazing won’t be affected at all. Not only Whatever the review, spearheaded by Inte-  @jonnypeace does the proclamation preserve existing grazing leases; it also allows for new ones. The only ex- tractive industry that might be hampered is the Western national monuments 100,000 acres looting of ancient artifacts — but that is already or more subject to review under Trump’s order Hanford Reach Upper Missouri River Breaks illegal on federal land. 195,000 acres 377,346 acres So no jobs will be lost and the economy won’t In April, President Donald Trump ordered a be harmed. If anything, the tourist economy review of monuments designated under the Cascade-Siskiyou Grand Staircase-Escalante will get a boost, as monument status makes an Antiquities Act since 1996 that exceed 100,000 100,000 acres 1.7 million acres already well-visited area more marketable. In- acres. Other monuments that are not included deed, even as Utah’s politicians try to kill Bears on this map may also be reviewed if the Interior Vermilion Cliffs Bears Ears Department deems their designation was made 293,000 acres 1.35 million acres Ears, the state tourism office is actively promot- without enough public outreach. ing the new monument. Grand Canyon- Canyons of the Ancients Parashant 164,000 acres 1.014 million acres Trump: “The previous administration bypassed Berryessa Snow Mountain 330,780 acres Basin and Range Rio Grande del Norte the states to place over 265 million acres of land 704,000 acres 242,555 acres and water under federal control through the Giant Sequoia abuse of the monuments designation.” 327,769 acres

Fact check: Nope. All the land was already man- Carrizo Plain aged by federal land agencies. No private, state 204,107 acres or other land was “seized” or “grabbed” in Bears San Gabriel Mountains Sonoran Desert Organ Mountains- Ears or other monuments. Nor did the locals 346,177 acres 486,149 acres Desert Peaks 496,330 lose any control over the land. In fact, in the Sand to Snow case of Bears Ears, local tribes (meaning those 154,000 acres with deep ancestral ties to the land in question) Mojave Trails Ironwood Forest 1.6 million acres 128,917 acres gained more control as high-level advisors to the SOURCE: NPS | DATA VISUALIZATION: BROOKE WARREN

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 BSOOK Bear interventions: The good, the bad, and the ugly

In June 1972, a young man from Alabama named Harry Walker visited Yellowstone. One night, returning to his illegal campsite near Old Faithful, he was mauled and partially eaten by a grizzly bear. His death marked a nadir for the National Park Service, which in- creasingly found itself having to kill griz- zlies that came into conflict with humans, even though the species was in decline. Grizzly advocate Martha Shell, convinced that the agency was covering up its mis- management, soon filed a lawsuit. Engineering Eden: The It didn’t go well for the Park Service, True Story of a Violent which was found guilty of negligence. Death, a Trial, and the Forty years later, drawing on the trial Fight over Controlling transcripts, interviews and archival research, writer (and former park Nature ranger) Jordan Fisher Smith brilliantly Jordan Fisher Smith excavates an underlying debate that 370 pages, still plays out among wildlife managers: hardcover: $28. Should agencies manipulate wildlife and Crown New York, 2016. vegetation, choosing between species in wilderness — or should they do their best not to intervene, and let nature decide? In Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, a Trial, and the Fight Over Controlling Nature, Smith unearths a series of painful ironies. For one, the Park Service had already begun trying to wean grizzlies from human food in Yellowstone — an effort that inadvertently may have contributed to Walker’s death. In 1967, a new supervis- Tourists pull over to photograph a black bear in Yellowstone National Park in 1972. ing biologist named Glen Cole ordered Jonathan S. Blair/Getty the central Trout Creek garbage dump, where grizzly bears by the dozens fed, to tion in wildlife management in Yellow- Mazur leavens her detailed history be closed. stone and Yosemite with masterful grace, with lively characters, from a mule- Frank and John Craighead, two weaving together tales of fire, forestry packer who blew up a troublesome bear far-sighted biologists deeply versed in and bears. He concludes by arguing that with dynamite, to a biologist who saved Yellowstone wildlife, disagreed with the the choice between “full-on intervention” an over-tranquilized bear with mouth- closure. They saw the dump as a bear or “a healthy reticence to jump in and do to-snout respiration, to a ranger who Speaking of Bears: magnet, drawing grizzlies away from things” all depends on the environment screamed at campers careless with food. The Bear Crisis and a campsites and cabins. In a 1967 report, in question. “No natural law requires us In the end, Mazur comes back to the Tale of Rewilding from they warned that if dumps were closed to embrace one or the other.” science. Using isotopic hair analysis of Yosemite, Sequoia, and without alternate provisions for garbage- Bear biologist Rachel Mazur, who bear hides dating back to Yosemite Na- conditioned bears, “the net result could Other National Parks once supervised wildlife management tional Park’s early days, she shows that be tragic personal injury, costly damages, Rachel Mazur in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national the no-human-food policy has worked. and a drastic reduction in the number of 281 pages, softcover: parks, also tells the story of a reforma- “The proportion of human food (in Yosem- grizzlies.” $18.95. tion in Speaking of Bears, her book on ite) in bear diets decreased to the same All of which came true, sadly. Not Falcon Guides, 2015. black bears in Yosemite and Sequoia, but level as it was in the early 1900s,” Mazur only was Walker’s death attributed to the she does so in a blunter voice. Regarding concludes, even though millions of people dump closure during the trial — although Rowell’s discovery of the “ghastly spec- now visit the park each year, as opposed the ruling was overturned on appeal — tacle,” she writes that “Rowell knew the to a few thousand a century ago. but the grizzlies also suffered grievously. park had been telling the public what it For the most part, Smith agrees that In 1970 alone, 57 grizzlies died “unnatu- wanted to hear, that it was relocating all the right questions are now being asked. ral deaths” in Yellowstone, and by 1975, these bears to the high country to ‘live Both writers seem optimistic about the with just 136 bears left, the species was happily ever after,’ but here they were: co-existence of bears and visitors in na- declared endangered. dead.” tional parks. They point to an increasing- The year after Walker was killed, Rowell’s pictures infuriated the public ly sophisticated understanding of bear be- photographer and activist Galen Rowell and threw Yosemite’s management into havior, along with more sensible policies discovered a secret dumping ground a crisis. The park ultimately hired a and better techniques for dealing with for dozens of black bears euthanized by full-time biologist to research the issue of problem bears — including targeted haz- the Park Service in Yosemite. He found “problem bears.” That biologist, Dave Gra- ing. “Although no one has found a way to piles of decaying bear corpses beneath a ber, settled on a solution now familiar in rewild individual bears, and hundreds of roadside cliff, some hanging in trees, and parks around the country. Bears must not bears have tragically died along the way,” he forced the Park Service to confront the be allowed human food or garbage. There writes Mazur, “the greater population is “ghastly spectacle.” are no exceptions, and there are penalties wilder than it has been in decades.” Smith describes the ensuing reforma- for humans who violate the rules. By Kit Stolz

26 High Country News May 15, 2017 Essay | By Murr Brewster The Collector

ortland, Oregon, is damp but mild, and the tents of homeless little more stuff into the basement, but not too much. As Ruth people tend to spring up in unclaimed crevices like mush- explains it, he had already offered to share some of the base- roomsP after rain. What we call the “homeless problem” has no ment space with Tom. Tom? single solution. There are so many stories. Ruth’s is one of them. Oh. Tom was the fellow who used to live in his pickup truck Ruth is not homeless. My friend lives in a quaint 19th in the neighbor’s driveway, with the neighbor’s consent. By the century house not far from downtown. When her husband, Bob, time Ruth showed me the basement, Tom had found new living died six years ago, he left a legacy — a basement full of legacy. arrangements, and his stuff was gone. “So that part over there, Bob saved everything — nuts and fossils and pebbles and that’s probably Dennis’ stuff,” she explained. “I can tell; he’s shells and slices of wood and bits and pieces and big things and neater.” little things and parts of things. One day, a friend brought by an Dennis? old trailer he thought maybe Bob could use. Bob could, and did: Ruth is a little unclear how she accumulated Dennis, but He parked it in the yard and used it to store more stuff. Almost that’s his old Volvo parked at the curb. He sleeps in it and rises anything might prove useful some day, so he hung onto it. He early to stow his bedding in the luggage rack on top. He’s only was a collector. in his 60s, so he’s the muscle of the gardening operation. Bill, This wasn’t Ruth’s favorite thing about Bob, but she is a about 80, has lung cancer now. “Still smokes,” Ruth says, with a calm and tolerant woman. That’s her style. rare splinter of disapproval in her voice She remembers when Bob collected Bill. She was weed- Anyway, Dennis has moved 200 yards of garden soil into the whacking the yard when a stranger came up and engaged her garden, and does any other heavy lifting that presents itself. in conversation. He had a friend named Bill, and he thought He’s a math tutor, separated from his wife, and gets his two Bill could be trusted to take care of her garden for her. She teenage boys twice a week. They usually go bicycling. The bikes was only in her 80s then and plenty capable, but she gave him are in the basement. the opportunity. Bill worked hard and made a good impres- Thanks to Bill and Dennis and Sheryl, an expert gardener sion. It was only a matter of days before he began eyeing the Bill found somewhere and recruited, Ruth’s vegetation is exu- old trailer on the lot. Would it be OK, he ventured, if he were berant. A salvia the size of a Volkswagen squats in the north to sleep in it? bed. Flowers romp among the corn, tomatoes, blueberries, No, Bob said, and then maybe, and then well, I guess we strawberries and squash. It’s lush; it’s a triumph. could run out an extension cord, and then the bits and pieces “People are always having picnics here,” Ruth says. “It’s so moved out and Bill moved in, and the trailer got wired for elec- pretty, and we’ve got lots of corn.” tricity, and space was excavated in the basement of the house for People? You mean, your friends? Bill’s belongings. After all, he only came in to use the bathroom “Sometimes,” she says. She’s not too particular about it. twice a day. “But you can’t drink,” Bob insisted, “and you can’t Whether they’re her friends or not is usually a matter of time. smoke.” It’s a destination picnic spot in the heart of the city, designed “I don’t drink,” Bill said, “but every time I try to quit smok- and maintained by what some people, although nobody here, ing, I get into a fight.” might call the homeless. They know each other’s routines and Well, no smoking near the house, then. glide through each other’s lives like fish through coral. Ruth, Bill had an eye. Before long, the garden was carved into sit- living alone at 92, appreciates the value of extra eyes watching ting areas and niches, and the three massive old fig trees were over her. woven into a picnic canopy, and Bill made an extraordinary Though she wouldn’t have been afraid in any case. That’s not picnic table out of found lumber. He hemmed the flowerbeds her style. with entwined driftwood and laced the grounds with pebbled pathways and mosaics. The effect was magical. Murr Brewster is a retired letter carrier in Portland, Oregon. She A few years later, after Bob died, Bill was able to move a writes a humor blog, Murrmurrs at murrbrewster.blogspot.com.

Ruth harvests asparagus and greens from her garden, far left, while Sheryl tends to plants in the greenhouse. Katharine Kimball

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 U.S. $5 | Canada $6

HEARD AROUND THE WEST | BY Brian Calvert

Wyoming brain parasite might cure disease. Toxo- Thumbs up to the Front Street Tavern in plasma gondii infects the brains of 10 to Laramie, for its response to homophobic re- 25 percent of Americans and could help us marks by Republican Sen. Mike Enzi. Enzi, understand Alzheimer’s and other brain whose state is not yet famous for tolerance, diseases. “Toxo” can be lethal for people publicly apologized after telling a group of with compromised immune systems, but high-schoolers: “I know a guy that wears a mice infected with it showed resistance to tutu and goes to the bars on Friday night the kind of central nervous inflammation and is always surprised that he gets in found in stroke or Alzheimer’s patients. fights. Well, he kind of asks for it a little That’s all well and good, but here’s a twist: bit.” The Front Street Tavern responded by Toxo’s primary hosts are cats, and it is promoting a free well shot or Sparkle Pony believed the parasite can change brain (made with liqueurs of vanilla-raspberry chemistry in mice, to lure them to cat and chocolate) for any guy wearing a tutu, urine, Arizona Sonora News reports. And part of a broader response, #LiveAndLet- WYOMING Confident in your masculinity? it’s probably not just mice. What else can Tutu. Thumbs down, however, to a more Wear a tutu. Leah Todd/Solutions Journalism Network explain people’s affinity for cats? tone-deaf promotion: As scientists and oth- er supporters of basic facts and empirical Oregon truth assembled for Earth Day, the Wind plate cheapskates. Meanwhile, the Archdiocese It’s been a weird, wet winter for much of River Casino offered free bingo, cash prizes of Santa Fe has come out in favor of a proposed the West, especially for long-sogged Oregonians. and the chance to drive away with “a hot new 2-cents-per-ounce soda tax after one of its Astoria broke a 96-year-old record for consecu- vehicle.” That’s right: Our winners celebrated priests, Rev. Adam Lee Ortega y Ortiz, urged his tive precipitation days, 167, twice as much as the fragility of the Earth with the full-throttled Facebook followers to vote “no” on it. The arch- Portland got. “The locals are used to it — kind thrill of a new ATV. #LiveAndLetVroomVroom. diocese called the tax “a good attempt to address of,” Sharleen Zuern, a volunteer with the As- the dire conditions in which our children are toria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce, told California living.” No word on the Holy Father’s position, OregonLive. “But it’s been an extreme year, and A Pleistocene archaeological site where stone although a pro-sugar ad man once reportedly people are pretty sick of it.” On the dry eastern hammers and anvils were found alongside the quipped: “If God had wanted Coca-Cola to have side of the state, wheat farmers don’t give two remains of a mastodon may point toward human saccharin in it, He would have made it that way spits about the rain. Tumbleweeds are their big habitation of North America much earlier than in the first place.” problem. Farmers in Morrow County want to previously thought. The Cerutti Mastodon site, eradicate Russian thistle from 100,000 acres, in San Diego County, was excavated in 1992 and Idaho but they’ll need the U.S. Department of Agri- 1993, but some researchers believe the evidence A Democratic candidate for Idaho governor was culture — and a cool $7 million — for a “game indicates a possible human presence in SoCal booked and charged with a misdemeanor after changer,” the Associated Press reports. Good around 130,000 years ago, according to a study he turned himself in for the theft of a cellphone. luck prying that money loose. President Donald just published in Nature. No one has been will- Troy Minton, 39, whose gubernatorial filing Trump’s budget calls for a 21 percent decrease ing to speculate on whether killing and prepping listed his address as a local homeless shelter, in USDA funding. However, according to Politi- an entire mastodon with rocks is any harder was once a plaintiff in a suit that overturned co’s numbers, Trump could make three less trips than a typical I-5 commute. a Boise anti-panhandling law. Minton says his to Mar-a-Lago, pass $7 million to the farmers, street-life experiences make him sympathetic and still have $2 million of taxpayer money to New Mexico to struggling Idahoans, the Spokesman-Review spare. Just planting a seed, Mr. President. A $4,000 brass tabernacle stolen from the San reports. With a year to go before the election, Felipe de Neri Church in Albuquerque was let’s hope this minor legal infraction doesn’t sink WEB EXTRA For more from Heard around the West, see returned, in answer to the prayers of pastor him. After all, plenty of politicians have been hcn.org. and parishioner alike. Donations gathered for elected with far more dubious records. its replacement will now be used to purchase Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag security cameras — no doubt to the dismay of Arizona photos #heardaroundthewest on Instagram. hymn-mumblers, pew snoozers and collection- Researchers at the University of Arizona hope a

High ‘Are you excited to go on a ride along, ma’am?’ an Country officer asks me. ‘We have an average of one News “ For people who care about the West. police pursuit every evening High Country News covers the important issues and stories that are unique to the American West with a in this neighborhood.’ magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, Contributing Editor Ruxandra Guidi, in her essay, “Police, la migra and the trouble with Trump.” hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write from Writers on the Range, hcn.org/wotr.” Disponible en español. High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

28 High Country News May 15, 2017