In the first week of March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested four dozen New Mexico residents as part of immigration raids in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Roswell.
Now those people are unaccounted for, according to an American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico civil rights complaint filed Sunday, which alleges all 48 “have been forcibly disappeared.”
“What we know is people in our community are gone, workers are gone, family members are gone, our neighbors are gone,” said Marcela Díaz, founding executive director of Somos un Pueblo Unido.
According to ICE’s own announcement, it arrested most of those people not for criminal convictions, but for violations of civil immigration law, such as illegal entry or re-entry after deportation. Díaz said Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Roswell’s mayors told members of her organization that they didn’t know the arrests would happen, and that ICE had assured them they would only be going after people with criminal convictions.
According to the complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, ICE hasn’t identified any of the 48 people they arrested, nor indicated where or in what conditions they’re being detained, whether they have access to attorneys or which agency is holding them.
“We don’t know what’s happened to these four dozen New Mexicans. They’ve effectively disappeared. They’re gone,” said Becca Sheff, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, during a Monday news conference at the New Mexico Legislature.
The complaint states that neither ACLU-NM nor any other legal service providers have made contact with any of the people arrested. ICE’s online detainee locator only allows people to be located by their names, dates of birth, countries of origin or numbers assigned to them by DHS, it states.
Attorneys who help people held New Mexico’s three ICE detention facilities – the Otero County Processing Center, the Cibola County Correctional Center and the Torrance County Detention Facility – are typically only able to conduct pre-representation or representation legal visits with detainees if they are able to identify them beforehand, the complaint states.
The complaint also notes that arbitrary and enforced disappearance is unlawful under the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law.
“No one here in New Mexico should have to live with this kind of fear that they or their loved ones could be picked up and effectively disappeared,” Sheff said.
The complaint calls on the civil rights and detention ombudsman offices to investigate, ensure the disappeared people’s physical and psychological well-being, ensure no retaliation occurs against them for the complaint’s submission and “pursue accountability for all personnel and contractors” involved.
“We are alarmed and disturbed that these four dozen New Mexican individuals remain unidentified and that insufficient transparency, oversight, and accountability has taken place to date regarding their whereabouts and wellbeing,” the complaint states.
Sheff told reporters on Monday the offices with which the ACLU filed the complaint have their own authority under the law separate from ICE, and she had not yet received confirmation that they have received the complaint.
The Trump administration is developing Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, into a “deportation hub” and considering Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque as a possible military detention site for undocumented immigrants, the New York Times reported on Feb. 21. New Mexico’s all Democratic congressional delegation on March 5 wrote a letter to Trump and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth objecting to the plans.
When Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo, a fellow with the New Mexico Dream Team, was detained in the Torrance detention center in 2019 and in 2024, he said his family didn’t know where he was or what was happening and the guards denied him access to a phone to call them or a lawyer.
“I saw how these places tear you down, physically and mentally,” he said at the news conference. “These places are inhumane places, they’re really cruel places.”
The arrests and the complaint come as the New Mexico Legislature debates two legislative proposals that would limit state and local collaboration with federal immigration enforcement and detention.
Garcia Castillo encouraged lawmakers to pass one of them, House Bill 9, saying “it will save lives.”
For immigrant New Mexicans to feel safe calling and interacting with state or local police, they cannot be perceived to be involved with enforcement of federal immigration law, said Gabriela Ibañez Guzmán, staff attorney at Somos un Pueblo Unido.
“There must be a clear and distinct line between who is enforcing federal immigration law and who is in our community to keep us safe,” she said.
Senate Bill 250 would ensure that distinction by prohibiting local and state jurisdictions from using public funds; personnel time; property and office space; or equipment to help federal agencies enforce immigration law, Ibañez Guzmán said.
New Mexico Immigrant Law Center Director of Policy and Coalition Building Jessica Martinez said any reduction in the number of ICE detention beds in New Mexico would make communities safer, because research shows ICE is more likely to conduct raids and make arrests closer to where they have existing detention beds.
With a decrease in border crossings, she said, ICE will fill detention centers by separating immigrants from within the U.S. from their families.
Martinez said HB9 and SB250 complement each other and are “critical” to ensure immigrants’ safety in New Mexico.
Less than one week remains for lawmakers to pass bills and send them to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who would need to sign them into law. Díaz said people need state lawmakers, and state and local agencies, to step up.
“We’ve seen a lot of good bills already die,” Martinez said. “Ours are still standing because we are organized and time is of the essence.”
At the news conference, New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops Executive Director Allen Sánchez called on the New Mexico Senate to pass both bills, and cited a letter by Pope Francis from last month about the dignity of every human being, and Jesus Christ’s identity as an immigrant.
“Some votes – and not all votes, but some votes – follow you to the gates of heaven, and these are one of them,” Sánchez said.
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