News & Commentary

Inside the fight to protect every vote.

Our immigration detention system is complex and opaque by design. If you don't understand how it works, you're not alone.

Now is an excellent time to take a good hard look around at which politicians and elected leaders are undermining our democracy with word, deed, or silence - and remove them from positions of power and influence at the first available opportunity.

For the past seven months, rarely has a day gone by that the ACLU hasn’t received a desperate call or email from someone who has a family member or loved one locked up in one of our state’s jails or prisons. They are mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses – all terrified that someone they love will get sick because our state has abdicated its responsibility to prevent the unchecked spread of a deadly virus inside its detention facilities.

Just when we thought U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s record of abuse couldn’t get much worse, a nurse at Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia provided testimony showing the agency is capable of more cruelty than we knew.

Common Cause New Mexico is teaming up with the ACLU of New Mexico to run a nonpartisan voter protection program this year to assist voters who encounter problems in voting, either by mail or in person.

During the recent special legislative session, the ACLU and its allies achieved something that six months ago seemed like an absolute long-shot: passing a law that requires every law enforcement agency in the state to adopt body-worn cameras. While the law does give us a new tool to strengthen police accountability in the state, it is by no means a cure-all for police excessive use of force. If we’re ever going to put an end to police violence, we will need to use every tool at our disposal to reform police culture and reduce the potential harm of police-citizen interactions.

In fact, instead of improving public safety, COVID-19 has shown us that our addiction to incarceration is an urgent threat to public health. There is a clear path forward.

Police brutality is not new, nor is systemic racism in policing. Police forces in the United States were used to catch runaway slaves and later to enact a campaign of terror against Black people during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Police were employed to brutally suppress striking factory and farm workers in the 20th century. Police were used to violently disperse protesters during the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements. Police are the front line soldiers in the ongoing “War on Drugs” that has led to the over policing of communities of color, mass incarceration, and the highest rate of officer-involved shootings in the developed world.