SILVER CITY, NM– PETER CHASE an Albuquerqueresident, has been selected as the winner in the Southwestern Chapter of the ACLU-NM’s Annual Singer/Songwriter Competition.  He has performed at, Jamm Music Fest in Jemez Springs, Glenwoodstock and Soccorofest.  In 2008 he took third place in the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Songwriting Competition, and in 2010, won Honorable Mention from the same festival.   His latest CD, "Special Deluxe," is his twelfth collection of original songs.  Peter was one of three finalists in the 2012 and 2013 competition, and has been selected to for his submission Attica, a lament on the horrific nature of prisons, this year’s theme.   This is the fifth consecutive year that the Southwestern Chapter of ACLU-NM has sponsored a competition for singer/songwriters on a topic of Constitutional Rights as part of their Annual Meeting.  This year’s competition began with performers fromNew Mexico, Southern Arizona, andWest Texas being invited to submit entries.  Peter Chase will be performing his winning entry, as well as his entries from previous years’ competitions at the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Chapter of the ACLU of New Mexico.
 
The Southwestern Chapter of the ACLU of New Mexico incorporates the counties of Grant, Catron, Luna, andHidalgo. Their Annual Meeting, open to all members and the public, will be held on Friday, October 24, 2014 at the Woman’s Club inSilverCity.  The event, beginning at 6:00 PM, will include addresses by knowledgeable speakers on the subject of Prisons and Incarceration; as well as the performance by Peter Chase.
 
MATTHEW ELWELL – The Director of theLunaCountyDetentionCenter, and the former Operations Administrator at theBernalilloCountyMetropolitanDetentionCenter.   Mr. Elwell will be discussing State and Local policies and initiatives forDetentionCentersand Prisons, as well as some of the issues being faced by them.
 
PETER OSSORIO – An ACLU-NM Board Member fromLas Cruces, an Attorney, and a former Federal Prosecutor has a unique perspective on the topic, having been a jailer prior to becoming a lawyer.  Mr. Ossorio will discuss the increasing dependence on incarceration in the State and Nation.  He will also touch on the topics of jails being used to house the mentally ill, imprisonment for Marijuana possession, and profusion of For-Profit Private Prisons.
 
The Doors will open at the Woman’s Club located at1715 Silver Heights Blvd(HWY 180) inSilverCityat 6:00 PM, and the program will begin at 6:30 PM.  Light refreshments, good music, good conversation will be available for free.
 

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LAS CRUCES, NM—Today, the Doña Ana County Board of County Commissioners voted and passed a resolution establishing the county as a “Safe Community for All Residents.” The resolution joins Doña Ana County with countless communities across the nation, including major urban centers, which have passed similar resolutions stating that routine enforcement of federal immigration law is not the job of county employees.

“We applaud the Commissioners for recognizing that local efforts to enforce immigration law undermine public safety for all of us by making our neighbors fearful of county employees, including first responders,” stated Vicki Gaubeca, Director of the ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights (RCBR). “It’s also about fairness in our community, as local police too often resort to profiling to enforce immigration law, a practice that is ineffective, unconstitutional and un-American.” 

In the last year, RCBR staff provided 79 know your rights presentations reaching over 1,500 residents throughout Doña Ana County and southern NM. 
“We can’t have a situation where a victim of domestic violence is afraid to get help because they think the police might ask about their immigration status,” said Brian Erickson, Policy Advocate with the RCBR. “We spend a lot of time out in the community, and this really is a serious worry for a lot of people. This new policy makes us all safer by ensuring that no one is ever afraid to call the police when they or someone else is a victim of a crime.”

Under the resolution, county employees will be prohibited from using county resources or funds to inquire into the immigration status of an individual, condition services based on one’s status, or collaborate with federal officials to investigate immigration status unless otherwise required by federal or state statute, regulation or court decision.
 

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WASHINGTON--The American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and National Immigration Law Center today sued the federal government to challenge its policies denying a fair deportation process to mothers and children who have fled extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution in Central America and come to the United States seeking safety.

The groups filed the case on behalf of mothers and children locked up at an isolated detention center in Artesia, New Mexico — hours from the nearest major metropolitan area. The complaint charges the Obama administration with enacting a new strong-arm policy to ensure rapid deportations by holding these mothers and their children to a nearly insurmountable and erroneous standard to prove their asylum claims, and by placing countless hurdles in front of them.
“Many of these women and children are fleeing systematic murder and unspeakable violence in their home countries,” said ACLU-NM Regional Center for Border Rights Director Vicki Gaubeca. “We cannot in good conscience allow the government to railroad them through the deportation process without giving them a fair opportunity to seek asylum.”
According to the complaint, the Obama administration is violating long-established constitutional and statutory law by enacting policies that have:

·         Categorically prejudged asylum cases with a "detain-and-deport" policy, regardless of individual circumstances.

·         Drastically restricted communication with the outside world for the women and children held at the remote detention center, including communication with attorneys. If women got to make phone calls at all, they were cut off after three minutes when consulting with their attorneys.  This makes it impossible to prepare for a hearing or get legal help.

·         Given virtually no notice to detainees of critically important interviews used to determine the outcome of asylum requests. Mothers have no time to prepare, are rushed through their interviews, are cut off by officials throughout the process, and are forced to answer traumatic questions, including detailing instances of rape, while their children are listening.

·         Led to the intimidation and coercion of the women and children by immigration officers, including being screamed at for wanting to see a lawyer.

“In America, every person is entitled to basic due process under the law,” said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. “In Artesia, our government is stripping these fundamental protections wholesale from mothers who want nothing more than a chance to protect their children from violence and atrocity. We are better than this. We must hold fast to our core American values of fairness and protection of the vulnerable.”
 
The plaintiffs include:

·         A Honduran mother who fled repeated death threats in her home country to seek asylum in the United States with her two young children. The children's father was killed by a violent gang that then sent the mother and her children continuous death threats. When she went to the police they told her that they could not do anything to help her. It is common knowledge where she lived that the police are afraid of the gang and will do nothing to stop it.

·         A mother who fled El Salvador with her two children because of threats by the gang that controls the area where they lived. The gang stalked her 12-year-old child every time he left the house and threatened kidnapping. She fears that if the family returns to El Salvador, the gang will kill her son. Some police officers are known to be corrupt and influenced by gangs. The mother says she knows of people who have been killed by gang members after reporting them to police.

·         A mother who fled El Salvador with her 10-month old son after rival gangs threatened to kill her and her baby. One gang tried to force the mother to become an informant on the activities of another gang, and when she refused, told her she had 48 hours to leave or be killed.

The lawsuit, M.S.P.C. v. Johnson, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Co-counsel in this case includes the law firms of Jenner & Block, and Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale, LLP; and the ACLU of New Mexico, ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, and ACLU of the Nation's Capital.
 
The complaint is available at: https://www.aclu-nm.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Filed-Complaint.pdf

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