Grants prison suffers rodent infestation, lawsuit says

Ex-inmates tell of feces in food, rodents in kitchen, cells

SANTA FE — Rodents running around the kitchen, feces in food and their rotting bodies found inside food storage areas are just some of the conditions former inmates at the Western New Mexico Corrections Facility say they had to live with.

After receiving repeated reports about the alleged ongoing rodent infestation at the state women’s prison in Grants, the New Mexico Prison and Jail Project filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Susie Zapata and Monica Garcia, who were both released from the prison in 2019, names the food provider at the prison, Summit Food Service, and other prison officials as defendants. The suit asks for monetary damages for Zapata and Garcia due to inhumane conditions of confinement and negligence.

“It shouldn’t take a lawsuit to make a difference, but that’s the reality we live here in New Mexico,” said Matthew Coyte, attorney and project steering committee member. “The prison system doesn’t do anything unless you sue them for it.”

Eric Harrison, a spokesman for the New Mexico Corrections Department, said the department doesn’t comment on active litigation.

Garcia and Zapata worked in the prison’s kitchens and were required to remove rodents caught on glue traps, put them in a plastic bag and stomp on them until they were dead, the lawsuit says.

Despite the inmates’ efforts, rodents still ran rampant in the kitchen. There were holes chewed in dry storage bags and feces in food, the lawsuit says.

In one instance, Zapata and Garcia said they found a dead rodent in stew about to be served. Their Summit Food Service supervisor told them to scoop the rodent out and serve the stew anyway, according to the lawsuit. Another time, a dead rodent was found in a pot of oatmeal that was being served, Zapata and Garcia said. Several women had already consumed the food and began throwing up.

Rodents can cause multiple potentially fatal diseases in people, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One such disease is hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and Cibola County has the fourth-highest rate of hantavirus in New Mexico, project Director Steven Robert Allen said.

The New Mexico Environment Department also never had an opportunity to properly inspect the facility, the lawsuit says. Usually, the department’s inspections are random and unannounced, but the Corrections Department required the Environment Deparment to give advance notice. Despite such notice, the Environment Department still found several rodent-related violations.

And the infestation extended beyond the kitchen. According to the lawsuit, women regularly saw rodents running through the cafeteria when they were eating and in the two cellblock units closest to the kitchen. Garcia and Zapata lived in one of the units near the kitchen and regularly had rodents in their cell. They tried to block their doorway, but the rodents would still get in.

“They want their own justice in court,” Allen said. “They’re doing this partly for the women that they left behind in this prison. They still have friends there that are as close to them as family.”