News & Commentary

Governors, attorneys general, mayors, and other local officials are starting to vocally say no to President Donald Trump’s radical and dangerous agenda. Here’s why their roles are so crucial for our democracy and the state of civil liberties today.

As the dust settles on an incredibly challenging legislative session, we wanted to share our collective work over the past 60 days.

By Rebecca Sheff, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico & Zoe Bowman, Supervising Attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center 

Yofer Fernando Orozco-Herrera, from Barinas, Venezuela, dreamed of a career in public service. Instead, he was forced to flee his homeland in search of safety and opportunity.

Junior is one of the hundreds of people held on any given day in immigration detention in New Mexico. His experience illustrates the systemic abuses that plague these facilities.

This summer, Colorado College students working with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the ACLU of New Mexico sat down with people detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Otero County Processing Center.

The ACLU urges a potential Harris-Walz administration to deliver on its campaign promise to create a clear pathway to citizenship for longtime residents while also moving to end harmful detention policies and improve asylum access.

In this interview, our Border and Immigration Policy Advocate Leonardo Castañeda shares how the ACLU of New Mexico and the Border Humanity Project (a group of ACLU affiliates in New Mexico, Arizona, San Diego, Imperial Counties, Texas, and the ACLU National Office) worked together to issue a travel advisory in response to extremist laws passed by Texas lawmakers that target immigrants and people of color.  

The White House announced an impending executive action that will severely restrict the legal right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.