New Mexico lawmakers, fueled by Tuesday’s election results, said Friday they intend to introduce legislation to further limit local collaboration with federal immigration agents.
The announcement came after the interim Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee saw a presentation showing how county and city law enforcement agencies have assisted the federal government’s immigration crackdown through informal hand-offs to ICE agents of people who have been arrested.
The cases included in the presentation, all from this year, came from attorneys at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.
Among them were:
- A driver who was pulled over by Sandoval County sheriff’s deputies and turned over to federal immigration agents in a store parking lot.
- A person who exited a Carlsbad courthouse to find U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents waiting outside.
- A motorist who was followed by unmarked SUVs and then detained while driving from Gallup to Hobbs.
The New Mexico Immigrant Law Center was one of several legal aid and advocacy groups at the meeting. Others were Somos un Pueblo Unido, a labor and immigrant rights group, and Contigo Immigrant Justice, a Santa Fe-based legal aid nonprofit for immigrants.
“We are going to fill in the gaps in New Mexico,” said Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque. “It’s not who we are as New Mexicans … and Tuesday, we showed it. Voters all around the country repudiated [President Donald] Trump and his radical policies.”
No law broken
Attorney General Raúl Torrez has sued Torrance and Curry counties over their formal agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. New Mexico’s Immigrant Safety Act, signed into law earlier this year, bans formal collaboration with the federal agency. It does not address informal collaboration.
In the cases presented Friday, “there was no New Mexico law to break,” said Jessica Martínez, director of policy and coalition building for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.
“That is the problem,” she said. Along with anecdotal examples from clients, attorneys said they had requested communications with ICE from the 33 New Mexico counties and 13 cities.
Of the 13 local governments that provided responsive documents, 10 had some level of correspondence with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies, including ICE, with some having “regular communication,” said Gabriela Ibañez Guzmán, a staff attorney with Somos un Pueblo Unido.
The committee presentation and a news conference that followed came the same day as a surge in immigration enforcement in Santa Fe.
“I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is a lot of ICE activity and detention and arrests that are happening today,” Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos un Pueblo Unido, told the crowd.
Gina Auz, president of the Latino Small Business Association and a member of the city of Santa Fe’s Immigration Committee, spent the day driving to construction sites and livestreaming to her social media audience to warn local immigrants that ICE was active in Santa Fe.
“There are lots of reports, all over the city,” she said in a phone call Friday. “They’ve taken a lot of people away.”
One of her posted videos shows masked officers in vests marked “Police” handcuffing a man face down on the pavement at the Las Palomas apartment complex and putting him into an SUV.
She estimated 16 people were arrested in Santa Fe, with more in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho.
Her figure would place Friday among the days with the most heightened enforcement in Santa Fe, and comes after a series of raids on construction sites last month.
Refocusing on ‘public safety’
At the Roundhouse on Friday morning, the committee chair, Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, whose district includes a slice of Sandoval County, reflected on accounts of deputies there collaborating with ICE.
“Why are we using resources to pull over individuals suspected of perhaps having an undocumented person in the car?” she said.
Instead of addressing “public safety,” Chandler added, “they’re focusing on collaborating with ICE without any knowledge of what’s going to happen to that person.”
Rep. Cristina Pajarón, D-Albuquerque, indicated she would be among those introducing the bill to curb informal cooperation. She and Sedillo Lopez sponsored a 2025 bill, the Nondisclosure of Sensitive Personal Information Act, that bars state employees from disclosing New Mexicans’ information, including immigration status, to federal agencies in most circumstances.
The new bill would do something similar for local employees, but specifically for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
Like the Immigrant Safety Act, the 2025 law sparked conflict between state actors after a State Ethics Commission lawsuit last year alleged state probation officers had conspired with ICE agents to detain people showing up for regular probation appointments. Corrections Secretary Alisha Tafoya Lucero, a defendant in the lawsuit, told the interim legislative Courts and Criminal Justice Committee last month she expected the case to settle.
At the news conference, Pajarón, like Chandler, said her opposition was to the use of local public funds for immigration enforcement amid economic worries among residents.
“Right now, New Mexicans are struggling. They can’t afford groceries. They don’t feel safe. They can’t afford their rent,” she said. “Yet, some local governments are using a portion of local taxpayer dollars to subsidize the federal government’s ICE activities in our state.”
Support among committee members for a measure filling what several called a gap in state law was almost unanimous.
‘Blessed’ to have detention
Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, said he was concerned law enforcement in his district would be barred from cooperating with the federal government to produce someone for detention.
“If they make that call, I’m not gonna have that police officer or that sheriff’s deputy getting arrested … because they’re helping with law enforcement,” he said.
Block also lauded conditions at the Otero County Processing Center, one of three ICE detention facilities in the state that have remained open despite the passage of House Bill 9, which aimed to shut them.
“Thankfully,” Block said, that law “had literally no effect on it because it was the most ineffective piece of legislation ever passed in the history of time.”
He praised the detention facility as clean and well-kept.
“They literally have a barber shop in there,” Block said. “They have three kitchens. They have a halal kitchen. They have a kosher kitchen. They also have beautiful murals on the walls of the Maldives and other beautiful places around the country.
“I’m very blessed to have that in my county, and we hope that we can continue to deport criminal illegal aliens who are in this country illegally, who have broken laws,” he added.
He spoke to a committee audience full of immigrants and members of mixed-status families.
After Block’s comments, Rep. Marianna Anaya, D-Albuquerque, apologized to the audience “for my colleague’s words earlier.”
“Nobody’s illegal. You should know that. Also, I don’t think you guys are aliens,” she told the crowd. “The majority of this country believes in compassion and justice, and it absolutely stands with you.”
Later, at the news conference, Gabriela Carillo, an organizer with youth advocacy group The Semilla Project, said she wants “to continue growing up here, building my future here, and one day raising a family in the same community that raised me.”
But fear of becoming a target, furthered by local law enforcement’s collaboration, has kept friends and family members home instead of joining her in “going outdoors, going to parks, visiting loved ones, attending community events or attending important services,” Carillo said. “No family should have to live with fear.”
