CHAPARRAL, N.M. — State Sen. Jay Block, R-Alamogordo, used a tour of the Otero County Processing Center this week to launch a broader attack on Democratic officials and what he called a false media narrative around ICE detention, arguing conditions at the facility undercut criticism from the left.

In an extended video posted to Facebook, Block described detainees at the Chaparral facility with access to religious services, a law library, an on-site immigration court, a dentist and daily recreation time, and said staff eat the same meals served to those in custody. He put the facility’s population at roughly 902 detainees, with an average stay of about 120 days before deportation or release — figures that could not be independently verified as of this writing.

But Block’s sharpest language was reserved for Democrats, particularly U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., who toured Otero in an earlier oversight visit and said he was denied access to detainees and found broken phones and non-functioning toilets.

“The narrative that the media puts out is complete horse****,” Block said.

Block accused Vasquez of manufacturing a political narrative rather than reporting honestly on what he saw. “He didn’t even want to hear anything except what he was told to hear from his narrative,” Block said. “It was just an awful visit, and Gabe Vasquez should be ashamed of himself of how he treated the staff.”

He went further, accusing Vasquez of dishonesty outright: “Do you know why? Because Gabe Vasquez wants to lie to you. That’s what he does.”

Block extended the criticism beyond Vasquez to Democrats broadly, calling them “these other far left… Democrat socialists of America, real scumbag people, that hate what these great people here are doing with respect [and] dignity.”

He dared Democratic officials to see the facility for themselves rather than rely on secondhand accounts. “If you’re an elected official on the opposite side of me, I dare you to come in here, and take a look, and have your eyes open to what really is going on, instead of leaving some bull**** narrative from your own party or from the media,” Block said.

The senator also drew on his own background to frame the facility favorably, saying detainees “are being treated with respect and dignity, and, by the way, they’re in better facilities than I had in the military being deployed to Afghanistan.” He said the facility compared favorably even to one he worked to improve as a Sandoval County commissioner.

Block’s account stands in sharp contrast to that of U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., who said she was blocked from speaking with detainees during an Aug. 19 visit to the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia — a separate facility roughly 140 miles north of Otero. Leger Fernández said the facility appeared to have been cleaned ahead of her arrival.

“You could smell the cleaner as you were walking,” she told Source NM. “They had sanitized the place and emptied the hall, so that we were not able to actually see anybody.”

CoreCivic, which operates Torrance under a direct contract with ICE, said ICE — not CoreCivic — determines who detainees may speak with. ICE said in a statement that Leger Fernández had signed a visitation agreement requiring detainee meetings to be scheduled in advance and that she attempted to speak with detainees without prior consent.

Leger Fernández’s visit came as she sought answers about an ICE arrest days earlier in the parking lot of La Familia Medical Clinic in Santa Fe, an action which took an accused abuser off of the streets pending deportation.