Welcome news this morning: Albuquerque Public Schools have affirmed the 2006 policy banning immigration officials from its campuses:
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Hailey Heinz of the ABQ Journal writes:

The ban on immigration officials was laid out in a policy adopted in 2006 but has been inconsistent in the district's written rules.
The policy was adopted during APS's negotiations with lawyers for three Del Norte High School students from Chihuahua, Mexico, who were detained by the U.S. Border Patrol outside the school in March 2004.
That incident prompted a policy that banned school employees from investigating students' immigration status or offering any information about a student to immigration officials. The same rule also said school employees must initially deny immigration agents access to students on campus.
The 2006 policy directs school employees to ask administrators whether any request for information about or access to students by immigration officials is lawful before providing it.
The policy, which deals with keeping students safe on campus, currently requires "close monitoring" of all campus visitors, including law enforcement, social services and immigration officials. The proposed revision would strike that language and add a sentence that explicitly says, "Immigration officials shall not be permitted on school campus at any time."
Board member Lorenzo Garcia, who often speaks about the rights of immigrant students, said strengthening the language is a positive move. "The important thing is to keep children safe," he said, adding that schools should establish an environment where students and parents feel secure.
Read the rest of the story here.

The ACLU of New Mexico wholeheartedly applauds the formalizing of this policy. No child, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid of attending school. Publicly and affirmatively stating that our schools are safe places for learning and growth will make children from undocumented families less likely to drop out of school—a significant risk factor for delinquency and an enormous impediment to future economic stability.
Education is a public good. The more educated our population is, the more prosperous, safe and culturally vibrant our communities become. It is heartening that, even in this time of high anti-immigrant sentiment, Albuquerque remains committed to providing educational opportunities for all burqueños, regardless of immigration status.
Other communities in New Mexico would do well to follow Albuquerque’s lead in making their public schools safe zones for all young people to learn. The ACLU of New Mexico has received troubling reports from communities in the southern part of the state. Elena Araiza, Director of Programs with the Women’s Intercultural Center in Anthony, NM, reported that sometimes U.S. Border Patrol vehicles will park outside of public schools. Not surprisingly, this has a negative effect on attendance among children in the immigrant community. The ACLU of New Mexico has also received reports that the U.S. Border Patrol frequently stakes out schools and bus stops in Mesquite, NM, ten miles to the North.
Emily Carey, Program Coordinator for the ACLU-NM Regional Center for Border Rights, says a particular incident stands out in her mind from a recent visit to Chaparral, NM. After learning about the ACLU’s work, an eleven-year-old student approached her at a community meeting and said that many of her peers stay home from school when the local sheriff’s department visits the school for safety presentations.
Some children in New Mexico are afraid to go to school. Why? Because of the presence of the very people who they are supposed to trust to protect them. Our state constitution proclaims that a “uniform system of free public schools sufficient for the education of and open to all children of school age in the state shall be established and maintained.” How can we be faithful to New Mexico's founding document if we create an educational environment in which only some children are comfortable?
We face enough challenges in our education system in this state; why create more? APS should be commended for exercising common sense by banning immigration enforcement from where it doesn’t belong. Hopefully, other communities around New Mexico will follow their example.
By Micah McCoy
Communications Specialist

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Things are just starting to get ridiculous.
Many of you no doubt read about the Region III Narcotics Task Force heroic raid on the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, NM where officers in bullet-proof vests without visible insignia demanded to inspect their green house, expecting to find a marijuana grow operation. They didn't find Marijuana. What they did find...was organic tomatoes.
Although I'll be the first to admit that home-grown tomatoes taste so good they ought be a crime, I find it downright disturbing that our local Narcotics Task Force is operating with such sloppiness that they subjected grade-school children to the high-drama of a narcotics raid, complete with National Guard helicopter.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican:

We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower," she [Patricia Pantano, education director] said. "Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating."
After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school's driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.
Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school's greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.
"As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story," she said.
Read the full story

Law enforcement throughout the state has become increasingly aggressive in their search for illegal marijuana grow operations lately. The ACLU has received complaints from people in Madrid who say helicopters have been buzzing their homes incessantly, low and loud, looking to bust the various small-time grow operations that dot rural NM.
These sorts of tactics should raise the hackles of any privacy or civil liberties-minded person. If a Montessori school is subject to narcotics raids, who isn't? Should gardeners everywhere resign themselves to periodic investigations of their backyard gardens by the National Guard and narcotics officers? Perhaps one could make an argument that this is the price we pay for having a safe, drug-free society...if that's indeed what we had. In fact, the Drug Policy Alliance says it's had the opposite effect:

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.
Few public policies have compromised public health and undermined our fundamental civil liberties for so long and to such a degree as the war on drugs. The United States is now the world's largest jailer, imprisoning nearly half a million people for drug offenses alone. That's more people than Western Europe, with a bigger population, incarcerates for all offenses. Roughly 1.5 million people are arrested each year for drug law violations - 40% of them just for marijuana possession. People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other debilitating illnesses are regularly denied access to their medicine or even arrested and prosecuted for using medical marijuana.

With deep budget cuts already in place and state employees on furlough, how can New Mexico afford to continue funding this drug war--a war that is disastrous for our civil liberties and the health of our communities?
We've tried prohibition, once with alcohol and then again with drugs. It's been an utter failure by any standard. It's time to try something else.
- Micah McCoy, Communications Specialist
For more information on the ACLU's work to change U.S. drug policy, visit the National ACLU's Drug Law Reform page.