News & Commentary

Computer programs that crunch data from arrest reports, court records, even social media accounts, and then spit out predictions about future crimes to stop them before they happen, promise to have policing down to a science. But hidden in the blind spots of these data-crunching algorithms lay numerous civil liberties concerns.

On June 29, Franky Gonzales left the Bernalillo County Clerk’s office with tears streaming down his face.

As renowned Native American artist Mateo Romero drove along Old Santa Fe Trail on a hot July day, he couldn’t have imagined that he’d soon be lying face down on the ground with a rifle pointed at his head.

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.

First Merrick Garland’s stolen seat, now Kennedy’s retirement. It’s a one-two gut punch that has left those of us who treasure the cause of freedom and equality deeply distressed about the direction that the U.S. Supreme Court will almost certainly take for the better part of a generation. Assuming that Trump’s pick for Kennedy’s replacement, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, is confirmed by the Republican-held Senate, the court will have a clear 5-4 majority of justices who are likely to be consistently hostile to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, privacy rights, immigrants’ rights, and the plight of the poor.

"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.”

An Interview with ACLU-NM Attorney Erin Armstrong on the Supreme Court’s Decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado

"I believe that there can be no reconciliation without admitting hard truths about the roots of our criminal justice system..."

Nine years after his release from prison, Barron Jones has become a leading advocate for criminal justice reform in New Mexico.