PUBLIC BANKS AND POT | FORCED POOLING LAWS | FACT-CHECKING TRUMP High Country ForN people whoews care about the West 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.