News & Commentary

DEMING, NM — The ACLU of New Mexico today announced a positive resolution to a discrimination complaint made by a group of LGBT customers against the Denny’s restaurant in Deming, NM.  The complaint arose when the individuals alleged that they were refused service because of their sexual orientation and that the group was subjected to discriminatory verbal abuse.  Jim Mathieu, the local franchise owner and operator of the Denny’s restaurant in Deming, engaged in settlement negotiations to show his support for the group and that the restaurant values all of its diverse customers.

Two days before graduating from the State University of New York-Canton with a degree in law enforcement leadership, 21-year-old Jessica Cooke was stopped in her car by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint on NY Route 37 along the St. Lawrence River’s maritime border with Canada.Ms. Cooke has driven through such checkpoints frequently, and she even completed the first phase of U.S. Customs and Border Protection physical training to apply for a CBP job. As she arrived at the checkpoint, there was no indication she’d crossed the border; indeed, she showed a driver’s license to confirm her identity and stated where she was coming from, which is more information than she’s required to provide.The last thing Ms. Cooke could have ex

We got some good news and some bad news today.

In our country we take for granted that we are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But in communities that span 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Border Patrol is flipping that presumption on its head. The ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights (RCBR) has conducted an investigation into the practices of the Border Patrol in southern New Mexico and found disturbing evidence that Border Patrol agents:

Check this out: the ACLU of Northern California just launched a new Mobile Justice app, a cool new tool that helps you to film and document encounters with police officers.With a simple tap of your touch screen, the Mobile Justice App will help you to hold police accountable by recording them when they step over the line. When you're done recording, the app will upload the video automatically to a secure server online where the ACLU can review it. That way if a police officer confiscates your phone or deletes your video, your evidence will still be preserved.

New Mexico outlaws civil asset forfeiture, aka “Policing for profit”

Last week, the politicians who run the State of Indiana loaded a gun, aimed it at their own foot, and pulled the trigger—and then limped around acting shocked that they had shot themselves in the foot.

 

SANTA FE, NM—Today, the Senate unanimously passed Representative Zachary Cook’s bill to end civil asset forfeiture—also known as “policing for profit”—in New Mexico. This unfair practice allows police to seize and keep property of citizens who haven’t even been charged with a crime, never mind convicted. Rep. Cook’s legislation would end the legal fiction of civil forfeiture—that property can be responsible for a crime—and replaces it with criminal forfeiture. Criminal forfeiture requires a conviction of a person as a prerequisite to losing property tied to the crime.“Crime should not pay,” said Paul Gessing, President of the Rio Grande Foundatio