"The agents didn’t say anything about where they were going to take my son,” said Samuel*, from behind a glass partition. “They just took him away.  And then they told me I was going to jail. I’ve never been to jail. This has never happened before.”
 
Three fathers, Samuel, Javier, and Mauricio, sat across from us choking back tears as they told us how the agents took their children.  With tired and wet eyes, they told us how much they missed their children. How no one from the government would tell them when they would see their children again or why they took them away. In June when Nia Rucker, ACLU-NM Policy Counsel and Regional Manager, and I visited the Otero County Processing Center, a private ICE detention facility in southern New Mexico where these fathers are being held, they had not seen their children in weeks. 
 
Samuel last saw his six-year-old son in a hielera — a temporary holding cell so cold that they are known as “iceboxes” in Spanish. He wept as he recalled lying on the cold, concrete floor with his son. Border Patrol agents came in and made the children line up against a wall opposite from the parents and then took them away. Powerless to stop them, all Samuel could do was hold his son in his gaze until he disappeared out of sight.
 
Samuel knew his son was detained somewhere in a children’s shelter. But when we met him, Samuel had only spoken with his young son twice, in part because he couldn’t afford the steep rates the for-profit prison charges for calls.  
 
When the Border Patrol agents came for Javier’s sevenyear-old, he tried to spare his young son by telling him agents were taking  him to play with other kids. In the weeks since he was taken away, Javier has only been allowed one call with his son—who he believes is somewhere in Phoenix.
 
For his part, Mauricio was struck by the coldness with which Border Patrol agents told him they were taking his 13-year-old son. 
 
“You will go to a prison for zero to six months,” the agent gruffly told Mauricio. “The boy will go to a shelter.”
 
At the time we met, Mauricio had not spoken with his child and didn’t even know where he was.
 
We’ve met with more than a dozen parents detained in Otero, Cibola, and El Paso detention facilities over the last few weeks, gathering testimony to support the ACLU’s class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s practice of forcibly separating asylum-seeking parents and their young children.
 
Every parent we spoke with was consumed with grief. They were exhausted from sleepless nights spent in detention, listening to the echo of clanging metal doors and worrying about their children. And they were devastated by their own powerlessness to help them.
 
As the mother of a young son myself, my heart breaks for these parents. No parent should ever have their children taken from them and kept in prison-like conditions. But this is what our government has done to thousands of immigrant parents. No child should ever experience the terror and trauma of being ripped from their parent’s arms and taken away by uniformed strangers. But because of the Trump administration’s unspeakably cruel immigration policies, thousands have been.   

 

No child should ever experience the terror and trauma of being ripped from their parent’s arms and taken away by uniformed strangers. But because of the Trump administration’s unspeakably cruel immigration policies, thousands have been.   

 
By now, you too have doubtless glimpsed fragments of this calamity from the leaked audio recordings of young children crying for their parents, photographs of kids sleeping in chain-linked cages, and news stories of families fleeing persecution only to be torn apart. These heartrending stories have humanized this issue and fueled public outrage, leading to widespread condemnation from all sides. Even in deeply divided times such as these, the vast majority of Americans agree that tearing a child away from their parent is wrong.
 
The ACLU has been on the frontlines in fighting this administration’s unconscionable family separation policy every step of the way, filing a lawsuit in February on behalf of a Congolese mother who was separated from her seven-year-old daughter when she arrived in the U.S. to seek asylum. As a result of this lawsuit, a federal district court judge ordered the administration on June 26th to stop separating families and to reunite detained parents with children younger than five within 14 days, and older than five within 30 days. 
 
But the fight is far from over. 
 
With court orders and widespread public outrage blocking Trump’s preferred policy of family separation, the Trump administration has pivoted to a scheme of mass family detention where children and their parents would be detained together. Make no mistake, any solution that puts nursing mothers and children behind barbed wire is not a humane alternative. In a recent executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Defense to provide “any existing facilities available” to house the thousands of migrant and refugee families he intends to detain. This opens up the possibility that New Mexico’s numerous military facilities could be used as detention camps for parents and small children.
 
The Trump administration filed an emergency motion seeking changes in a 1997 settlement known as the “Flores Agreement,” which established strict limits on how long and under what conditions the government can keep children in immigration detention. Fortunately, Federal District Court Judge Golly Dee blocked the motion, calling the move, “a cynical attempt... to shift responsibility to the judiciary for over 20 years of congressional inaction and ill-considered executive action that have led to the current stalemate.” T
 
The truth is, despite what the Trump administration may say, ending family separation doesn’t require mass family detention as an alternative. It is a false choice that we reject.
 
Although family separation and family detention have focused the nation’s attention on how cruel our immigration policies can be, these are only the most extreme and visible symptoms of an immigration system that is fundamentally at odds with the values and constitutional protections our nation claims to hold dear. Our country claims to be a place of refuge, but when people fleeing violence come to our door seeking shelter, we lock them away in for-profit prisons. Our country claims to offer constitutional protections to everyone, but denies basic due process to asylum seekers.
 
People detained on immigration charges and people seeking asylum often spend months, if not years, separated from their families while they wait for their cases to wind their way through the courts. The detention facilities that they are held in are often located in extremely isolated areas, hours away from the nearest immigration attorney. Consequently, many immigration detainees do not have access to counsel at all. Indeed, the U.S. government sees no problem with detainees as young as three-years-old representing themselves in their own immigration cases. 
 
Sometimes problems like this can seem too big, too daunting for us as individuals to tackle. But we can’t let up. Here in New Mexico, we must hold our public officials accountable for the trauma and harm the Trump administration and private prisons are inflicting on immigrant families in our state. On July 16, our state legislators took an important first step by holding a hearing on how our state government can oversee private prisons that detain immigrants in New Mexico. 
 
We’ve got a long way to go, but every step we take towards blocking inhumane immigration policies and dismantling the current system of injustice has an impact on people’s lives—people like Samuel who we met in detention. Samuel’s wife Elena called a couple of nights ago from Honduras. 
 
“Samuel heard that he and our son are going to be reunited soon. Ojalá que sí,” said Elena. 
 
We hope so too. The last time we saw him, Samuel said that when he and his son are reunited, he would send us a photograph of his son, and I promised that I would send him one of mine.
 
*All of the fathers’ names in this story have been changed to protect their identities.
 

This article originally appeard in the 2018 spring edition of The Torch. 

 
 
 

 

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Sunday, August 19, 2018 - 2:45pm

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On June 29, Franky Gonzales left the Bernalillo County Clerk’s office with tears streaming down his face.  The reserved 52-year-old Albuquerque resident had walked into the office disenfranchised, barred from voting for more than a decade due to past felony convictions, and walked out with his voting rights restored, voiceless no more.
 
Ever since completing the probation that followed his five year prison sentence for armed robbery, he has worked to restore his voting rights under a New Mexico law that reenfranchises ex-offenders who have served their sentences and completed parole or probation. But every time he started the process, he was turned away and told he needed more documentation to prove he was no longer on probation or parole. While some aspects of living with a felony conviction became almost normal for Franky—losing jobs because of his record, getting rejected for housing after a rental office ran a background check—he never got used to not being able to vote. 
 
“For four years they gave me the same run around,” he said. “I called probation and parole. I called Santa Fe. It was frustrating. To some people, voting rights aren’t a big deal, but for me it is huge. It makes you feel like you matter. Without the right to vote you get this less-than feeling.”
 
Franky regained his voting rights, in part, thanks to his involvement in the ACLU of New Mexico’s Smart Justice campaign, part of an ambitious nationwide effort by the ACLU to reform our broken criminal justice system. The Smart Justice Campaign is working to reform unfair and extreme sentencing laws, overhaul an unjust bail system that creates income-based incarceration, challenge prosecutorial abuse, and end the collateral consequences that are imposed on people living with a criminal record. The campaign seeks to center the stories and voices of people like Franky Gonzales, whose lives and families are personally affected by our criminal justice system.
 
Franky got involved with the ACLU’s Smart Justice project because he wants to work toward reforms that address the underlying causes of criminal activities like addiction and mental health issues. Part of Smart Justice’s strategy to eliminate racial disparities in the criminal justice system and reduce the number of people in our jails and prisons involves promoting evidencebased strategies, such as access to drug treatment and mental health services, to reduce crime and make communities safer.
 
Franky is heavily involved with a 12-step program, and spends much of his time spreading messages of hope and recovery to other addicts.
 
“It is cheaper to treat the disease of addiction and behavioral health issues than to incarcerate,” he said. “It would make the community safer, save taxpayers some money, and get people the help they need.”
 
He counts the restoration of his voting rights as an example of what one can achieve with a little patience and perseverance.
 
“It is something I can take back to other addicts who are incarcerated,” he said. “Now, I am getting things restored.”
 
Struggling to restore voting rights or navigate the countless other obstacles created by a felony conviction isn’t unique or uncommon. Franky’s situation is only unique in that his involvement with Smart Justice meant he worked in close contact with ACLU of New Mexico Senior Policy Strategist Paul Haidle, who, as an expert on criminal justice issues, was able to accompany Gonzales to the county clerk’s office to help answer any questions or explain what may have led to the denial of Franky’s voting application.
 
“I’m really happy for Franky and relieved that he can finally vote, but it shouldn’t have taken having a lawyer with him to make this happen,” said Haidle. “For people with a record, registering to vote is too complicated in New Mexico and keeps many people like Franky from having a voice in our political system. Part of Smart Justice’s goal is to tear down the barriers that keep people from moving forward with their lives, such as housing, employment, and restoration of voting rights.”
 
These issues affect a broad swath of New Mexicans. One in three New Mexicans have a criminal record, which translates to approximately 530,000 people who must deal with the 680 collateral consequences that often accompany a criminal record or conviction in the state. While the most common collateral consequences created by a criminal record may be loss of voting rights and difficulty in finding safe housing and gainful employment, a conviction can also make it hard to adopt a child, obtain a professional licensure, attend school and execute an estate.
 
Albuquerque resident Rory Wolf knows all about these obstacles. Since the mid-80’s, Rory has been in and out of prison five times. He believes he has finally found a way forward that will provide him enduring stability — a career path in social work. He chose social work because he believes that with his lived experiences and academic understanding, he could effectively help people to address addiction and other issues that lead to incarceration.
 
However, he may have to reevaluate his current career path after New Mexico Highland’s University officials denied his application for the school’s social work program. Although school officials didn’t give a reason for their denial, Rory believes it had something to do with his criminal record.
 
Rory, who is in his early sixties, said his situation highlights the need for criminal justice reforms that would remove barriers obstructing those working to transition from the custody of the state’s penal system to that of a productive community member. Besides making it easier for people to find jobs and go to school, removing those barriers would be a good first step to making communities safer.
 
“If this would have happened 20 years ago, I would have said (expletive) it and went back to getting high and breaking the law,” he said. “But now I don’t give up. If the door is closed, I will find a way to wiggle it open.”
 

 

This article originally appeard in the 2018 spring edition of The Torch. 
 
 
This article originally appeard in the 2018 spring edition of The Torch. 
 

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Wednesday, August 22, 2018 - 2:45pm

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Rory Wolf at the July BBQ hosted by Smart Justice NM in Albuquerque.

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"I'm doing better than I’ve ever done throughout the 18 years of my incarceration,” wrote Tremaine from the Roswell Correctional Center. “The freedom is unbelievable. I can literally go outside at 10 p.m. and go pray under the stars if I choose to. Thank you so much.”
 
It was mid-May and Ramadan was just beginning. For weeks prior, Tremaine was consumed with worry that he and his friends would be denied participation in the holy month, a time when Muslims deepen their faith through fasting and communal prayer.
 
But as he prayed beneath the stars, his fear turned to relief.
 
Tremaine had reached out to the ACLU of New Mexico on a number of occasions concerning the barriers he faced in practicing his faith while incarcerated, and encouraged many of his friends experiencing similar barriers to do the same.  In response, ACLU-NM Legal Director Leon Howard sent a letter to wardens at state prisons in advance of Ramadan to remind them that inmates have a constitutional right to exercise their religious beliefs while incarcerated.
 
That letter appeared to have sparked change at the Roswell correctional Center.
 
It was a stark contrast from Tremaine’s last Ramadan, when he was still at Lea County Correctional Facility (LCCF) in Hobbs. He spent much of the month pleading with prison staff to allow him and his fellow Muslim inmates to pray together and to eat proper halal meals at the appropriate times. But most of his pleas fell on deaf ears. The warden didn’t even allow them to participate in Eid-Al-Fitr, the festival that marks the close of Ramadan and the end of fasting.
 
What should have been a time of peace and an opportunity to deepen his devotion and faith, was instead a time of frustration and despair. But Tremaine never gave up hope that his next Ramadan would be better. And he never stopped fighting to exercise his constitutional right to practice Islam — the faith he says saved his life.
 
“I came from a really dark place and after realizing how dark that place truly was, I never wanted to go back. So I turned on the lights,” said Tremaine when I visited him last summer at LCCF.

“I came from a really dark place and after realizing how dark that place truly was, I never wanted to go back. So I turned on the lights.”

 
At a young age, having little direction and guidance from the adults in his life, Tremaine joined an LA street gang, chasing wealth and power down an ever more dangerous path that eventually landed him behind bars at just twenty-one. But when he found Islam, he found peace. 
 
It’s because of his faith that he maintains hope for the future, even after enduring nearly two decades of incarceration.
 
When I last spoke to Tremaine on the phone in May, I could hear that hope in his voice. He was convinced Leon’s letter spurred the prison administration to finally approve his proposal for Muslims’ observance of Ramadan, which allowed them to exercise their right to fast, pray, and follow a religious diet.
 
Here at the ACLU, we were overjoyed to hear the news. We know that when inmates are allowed to practice their faith, it can improve rehabilitation outcomes, and can even lower chances of reoffending. 
 
We also know, as Leon so eloquently put it, “Religious accommodations are more than rights afforded to inmates by the First Amendment– for some, faith is the sole source of hope in a grim environment where the prospects for a better life are, at times, remote.”
 
When Tremaine goes to sleep at night, he gazes up at magazine cutouts of snow-capped Colorado mountains taped to the top of his bunkbed. He dreams of Mount Rushmore and touching an iPhone – technology that didn’t exist when he was locked up. More than anything, he dreams of becoming a motivational speaker for troubled youth to prevent young people from following in his footsteps.
 
In just a few years, Tremaine will be leaving prison and I, for one, am glad that when he’s out, he won’t be a member of a gang, but a member of a religious community that will support his continued rehabilitation.
 
“Change is hard,” says Tremaine. “I’m still changing every day, but I’m more grounded with Islam. I know I’ll be fine on the other side because it’s helped me to get through all these years.”
 

 

 
This article originally appeard in the 2018 spring edition of The Torch. 
 

 

Date

Tuesday, August 21, 2018 - 2:30pm

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