Federal immigration agents raided a housing construction site in Santa Fe on Tuesday morning and arrested several people, part of what builders said was a spate of visits to construction sites and other locations across the city for immigration enforcement.
“I spoke to a couple other builders. They’ve gone to quite a few construction sites in the city,” Vincent Pizzonia, founder and owner of Twilight Homes, said Tuesday.
His company is one of a few developers of the Los Brios site off of Agua Fría Street on the city’s immigrant-dense south side. A social media video captured a few men being walked off in handcuffs by agents marked with “ICE” and “ERO,” referring to Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Pizzonia said he was unsure if the video was of his contractors or those from another company at the housing development.
“It’s not just us,” he said, “all the building sites in Los Lunas, Rio Rancho, Albuquerque — and now Santa Fe.”
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to emails Tuesday seeking confirmation of the arrests in Santa Fe and further information about the people detained by the agency.
Arrests of immigrants have increased nationwide to historic levels in recent months, with the arrest totals released by the Department of Homeland Security in July and August reflecting all-time records. Data from September has not yet been disclosed.
‘Ghost town’ at big developments
The increase in immigration arrests and raids in some of New Mexico’s largest cities is taking a toll not only on construction workers and their families but on the homebuilding industry as it seeks to fill wide gaps in housing in the state, said New Mexico Homebuilders Association CEO Miles Conway.
Conway pointed to recent ICE raids at construction sites in Los Lunas and Albuquerque, part of what he said appears to be an uptick in immigration-related arrests in the region.
“This is going to be reflected not only in the lives of families that are residing in New Mexico, but it’s going to be reflected in our economy, because individuals are not coming to work, and the work of building housing in New Mexico is not moving forward,” he said.
“I’m hearing some of my builders saying that it’s just a ghost town out on these major building projects,” he continued. “Individuals that may absolutely have status — that may absolutely have paperwork to be in this country legally — are still feeling fear and reacting to what’s going on by not not going to work.”
The National Association of Home Builders has taken what has been called a rare and strong stance against the national surge in immigrant detention. The organization has also issued guidance to its members to inform them of their rights in situations where immigration agents show up at worksites — either for a raid or as part of an administrative audit, which includes advance notice.
Still, when a raid occurs, the situation can be “chaotic,” Conway noted, and subcontractors or employees could be at a site alone and unprepared to invoke their rights.
“I mean it’s such a human rights issue and a human dignity issue that we’re experiencing right now that it feels a little odd to be pointing towards our state’s economy, but you will see this reflected in the economic measurements of this summer in Santa Fe,” Conway said. “Just the people not going to work because they’re fearful of being displaced from their families.”
‘They’re in many places’
Following the Los Brios arrests around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Santa Fe Rapid Response, a team of civilian volunteers who respond to reports of ICE activity, had already dispatched teams around the city.
“It was a lot of activity today,” said member Sharon Argenbright. “More than I’ve ever seen. We kept getting messages and sightings.”
Argenbright was one of around eight responders who spent the morning warning local construction workers and nearby schools. She noted the group received a flurry of reports surpassing even the surge of arrests in August, which attorneys and advocates said ended with at least 15 people arrested over roughly a week.
At a separate construction site following the Los Brios arrests, she said volunteers found immigration authorities and pressured them out of the neighborhood before they could make any arrests.
“We noticed them, honked our horns and they drove away,” she said.
Gina Auz, president of the Latino Small Business Association, filmed the Los Brios arrests, with the video garnering more than 400,000 views on Facebook on Tuesday. In her video, she asks the men arrested to say their names “so we can tell your families.”
Following the video, Auz, who runs a local social media group popular for sharing Spanish-language news, filmed a livestream for her over 9,000 followers in which she urged construction and landscaping workers to stay home, joked they should start a new Netflix series instead of going to work and fielded questions from hundreds of concerned commenters.
“Gina, is it true they came to Las Palomas apartments?” one wrote.
“Are schools safe?” asked another.
“They’re in many places,” Auz said. “They’re in many places.”
