Overview

Garza County, TX (FIPS 48169) carries a heat score of 74 despite never having been researched by this project. A fresh research pass (2026-07-03) finds that essentially none of the underlying signal reflects live ICE/private-detention activity in the county today. This note documents the audit for future scoring-methodology cleanup.

Key Details

igsa:4 — Traced to exactly two KB stub records (bscc-giles-darby-facility-garza-tx, dalby-correctional-institute-garza-tx), both sourced from the Vera Institute ICE Detention Trends dataset, both listing the identical address (805 N. Avenue F / 805 N. Ave F, Post, TX) and identical coordinates. These are name variants of one physical facility — the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Institution — counted twice, and the heat.json signal entry list shows each title appearing twice again (likely a second duplication in the scoring join), producing igsa:4 for what is actually zero currently active IGSA facilities. The facility’s federal (BOP) contract with operator MTC ended September 2024; the site was vacant through 2025; the State of Texas bought it for $110M and reopened it February 24, 2026 as a TDCJ state prison — not an ICE- or BOP-contracted detention facility. Both stub records have been corrected in this pass (status: closed, correction notes added) but not merged/deduplicated — that requires a scoring-pipeline decision, not a content edit.

287g:1 (WSO) — Confirmed real (Prison Policy Initiative, signed July 7, 2025). However, Texas SB 8 (89th legislature, 2025) made 287(g) agreements mandatory for nearly all Texas counties. This signal is very likely state-mandate compliance rather than the discretionary “cooperative sheriff actively courting ICE” pattern this KB’s 287g signal is designed to detect elsewhere. Worth a scoring note/flag for all post-SB8 Texas WSO agreements, not just Garza.

budget-distress:1 (score 3/10) — Real but weak (USDA ERS typology, “moderate” signal strength per the KB record itself). A 3/10 distress score is on the low end of what this project treats as a meaningful fiscal-desperation indicator.

ice-contract:31 / anc-contract:16 — heat.json marks both as "propagated" (31 and 16 respectively, matching the raw counts exactly — i.e., the entire signal is propagated, not county-specific). Web search found no evidence connecting the listed contractors (GEO Group, ASRC Federal entities, Akima, Aleut Technical Services, Prime Masonry, Coho Construction) to any Garza County site or activity. These read as statewide-TX federal contract records attributed to the county by the scoring pipeline’s propagation logic rather than county-specific procurement. This is very likely a methodology artifact inflating the headline score, not a real signal of detention-industry interest in Garza County specifically.

Net assessment: Of the five signal types making up Garza’s 74, only 287g and budget-distress reflect anything real and county-specific, and both are weak/structural (state mandate; low distress score) rather than indicative of active targeting. The igsa signal is a duplicate-counted stale record for a facility that is now a state prison. The ice-contract and anc-contract signals are explicitly flagged as propagated with no county-specific corroboration found. Garza County does not currently show credible signs of being pitched for new ICE/private detention capacity — its main carceral facility went the opposite direction (state DOC acquisition foreclosing a CoreCivic bid).

Why This Matters

This is a useful test case for the scoring pipeline: a high score (74, above many actively-contested counties) generated almost entirely by duplicate/stale/propagated signals rather than ground truth. Recommend: (1) deduplicate the two Dalby/Giles-Darby igsa records, (2) review how ice-contract/anc-contract propagation is computed and whether it should carry full weight in the headline score when marked propagated, (3) consider a “post-SB8 mandatory 287(g)” flag for Texas counties so that signal isn’t weighted the same as a discretionary agreement elsewhere.

Sources

• [heat.json signal payload for FIPS 48169 (this repo, hugo/data/heat.json)] — internal
• KCBD: TDCJ celebrates reopening of Giles W. Dalby Unit in Garza County (Feb 25, 2026)
• Texas Immigration Law Council: Understanding the 2025 ICE-Texas AG 287(g) Agreement / SB 8 mandate
• See also kb/industry/county-fights/garza-county-tx-dalby-state-preemption.md for the underlying facility history