The Metropolitan Detention Center announced Friday at around 7:20 p.m. that Lumen internet service had been restored at the facility.
According to the statement, the jail resumed releasing people incarcerated there Friday afternoon "at a delayed pace." Access to custody and release lists was also restored.
MDC confirmed that some aspects of the booking process, including medical assessment, had been moved to the Prisoner Transport Center during the outage, where they will remain until Monday "as a precaution."
The jail said that, despite several services being interrupted, "there were no safety or security threats" during the outage.
The outage began Thursday afternoon and affected New Mexico customers west of Albuquerque, including MDC.
MDC announced Thursday that, among other service disruptions, it had stopped releasing people from the jail and would not resume releases until service it was restored. Spokesperson Candace Hopkins confirmed the outage continued on Friday but declined KUNM’s request for an interview. She did not respond to questions by email about how many releases were being held up.
Spokesperson for the ACLU of New Mexico Carla Palacios declined to comment on the jail holding people who were eligible for release, saying her team did not yet know enough about the situation.
Emmeline Knowlan, a spokesperson for the jail’s internet service provider, Lumen, confirmed the outage, saying the company was, “working to fix a fiber cut affecting some customers in New Mexico.” They said they did not know how many customers beyond the detention center were being impacted or how the fiber line was damaged.
Road construction is a common source of fiber cuts, but New Mexico Department of Transportation Communications Director Kristine Mihelcic said the outage, which originated east of Grants, was not related to a DOT project.
Hopkins said in a statement Thursday that, in addition to suspending releases, the process of booking people into the jail remained open but “delayed.” She did not respond to questions about how long of a delay those who were arrested encountered.
Hopkins said the jail was using paper forms for processes that usually require internet access, so custody and release lists were unavailable during the outage.
A county-wide ransomware attack in 2022 that knocked out the jail’s internet also impacted its security camera system and inmates’ ability to contact their attorneys.
This story has been updated to reflect that the Friday evening announcement from MDC that internet service was restored.
