Border and immigration

NM may become among first states to seek oversight on immigration detention centers

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After spending five months locked up inside two different Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons in New Mexico, Manuel Gonzalez will soon be among the first ICE detainees in the country to have state legislators formally learn about his experience. On July 16, members of the Legislature’s Courts, Corrections and Justice committee will have the chance to hear from former detainees like Gonzalez, as well as immigrant communities and their advocates. The committee hearing at the Roundhouse, which will include an hour for public comment,  is intended to educate lawmakers, some of whom hope to start a conversation about whether to exert more state oversight on private prisons in New Mexico that incarcerate immigrants. A 51-year-old father of six, Gonzalez has lived in the United States for 38 years — decades he’s spent working in New Mexico’s oil and construction industries. As for what compelled plainclothes ICE agents to show up at his home in Roswell and arrest him in June 2017, Gonzalez says he still has no idea.

2018 Election

As immigration debate rages, private prison operators spread cash to NM pols

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Two of the nation’s largest private prison companies have given nearly $33,000 to New Mexico’s congressional representatives and state lawmakers over the past year and a half, a review of campaign finance records by New Mexico In Depth shows. The two operators — the GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic, which have maintained a major presence in New Mexico for decades — have come in for criticism over the years from immigration attorneys and advocates for warehousing immigrants under multiple presidential administrations. The focus has sharpened as the nation debates the Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement policies at the border. Across the country the two private prison operators have spent considerable money to influence government policy and have made sizable profits from detaining immigrants in their facilities, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The institute is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide.

For NM’s undocumented, a cloud of fear

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LAS CRUCES — The morning after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, 6-year-old Anabell woke up with a pressing question for her mother: “Does that mean we’re leaving the country?’”

“No,” Nayeli Saenz reassured her daughter. “You were born here. You are a U.S. citizen.”

But Saenz, 34, is not. She was brought illegally from Mexico as a 9-year-old girl and has lived most of her life in the shadows. Las Cruces is where she graduated high school, got married and divorced, and raised three children.

Border and immigration

Las Cruces Dream Team rallies to urge DACA deal now

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A group of individuals in neon orange t-shirts stood in the Las Cruces downtown plaza Friday afternoon singing “Olé Olé Olé Olé,” a Mexican chant usually heard at soccer games. This time, however, the singers changed the lyrics. “Olé Olé Olé Olé… Dream Act! Dream Act!”

Border and immigration

Las Cruces City Council affirms immigrant friendly policies

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Las Cruces city councilors unanimously voted Monday to affirm the city’s policy prohibiting police from questioning people about their immigration status unless doing so is necessary in a criminal investigation. A resolution, presented by Police Chief Jaime Montoya and City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown, affirmed the city’s current Human Rights ordinance as well as several existing policies of the police department which prohibit law enforcement officers from asking people to show proof of citizenship when responding to a domestic dispute, a traffic violation or other types of interactions with the public. Before voting for the resolution, city councilors focused their questions on policing and enforcement of federal immigration law. “We enforce criminal law, we do not enforce administrative law, which is immigration law,” Montoya explained to Councilor Gabriel Vasquez. Councilor Yvonne Flores questioned Montoya about procedures during routine traffic stops, particularly related to warrants for deportation violations, which she noted are federal felonies.

Border and immigration

Churches emerge as important refuge for immigrants

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Martha Lorena Rivera of Alamogordo had been checking in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since 2011 to renew a stay of removal she said she’s been given annually for humanitarian reasons. In past years she received approval in the mail, but this year was different. On the morning of Oct. 10, her “world came down,” she said in an interview with New Mexico In Depth. When she presented her application in late September at the El Paso ICE processing center, agents gave her a follow-up appointment for two weeks later.

Criminal Justice

“A black hole of due process” in New Mexico

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In December 2016, a 24-year-old small business owner, who asked to be identified as “Boris,” joined a protest in his native Cameroon. The country’s English-speaking minority of nearly 5 million people had begun coalescing into a movement for equal rights, “to tell the government our griefs, to make them understand that we have pain in our hearts,” Boris, who was recently granted asylum after five months inside Cibola County’s immigrant detention center, tells New Mexico In Depth. Teachers and lawyers led the first wave of dissent that October. The educators fought for their students to learn in English. The attorneys argued their clients should stand before judges who spoke their own language.

Hopes and fears: One DACA recipient’s story

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Off to the side of Highway 10, somewhere in between Las Cruces and El Paso, Michel Nieves lives in a house with his parents and four siblings. Nieves, 20, and two older siblings have protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. His 16-year-old sister is awaiting approval. His 5-year-old sister is the only U.S. citizen in the household. Nieves and his two siblings are three of more than 7,000 recipients in New Mexico and up to 800,000 across the nation affected by the Trump administration’s Sept.

border

New deportation rules claim mother, with no chance for goodbyes

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Jeff Taborda lives in a faded green trailer in an old, but neatly kept mobile  home community in north Las Cruces. Taborda, 23, graduated in December from New Mexico State University with a degree in criminal justice, with ambitions to go into law enforcement and eventually join the FBI. He is lean and muscular, working out regularly with his younger brother, Steven. The home Taborda shares with his girlfriend is sparsely furnished, clean dishes in a rack in the sink. “As soon as I eat, I do the dishes,” he told visitors on a recent 100-degree  afternoon.