News & Commentary

A Story of Immigration Enforcement in Trump’s America

On March 27, the American people witnessed something remarkable: the country’s Top Cop went on national TV and demanded that our state and local officials violate the constitution…or else. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to cut off federal crime-fighting funds from so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to honor immigration hold requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These immigration hold requests, often called “ICE Detainers,” ask local jails and prisons to detain certain people up to 48 hours beyond their original release date (not including holidays or weekends) so they can investigate their immigration status.

This is a scary time for immigrant families in New Mexico. The President campaigned on a virulently anti-immigrant, xenophobic platform that we’re now seeing it enacted through his unconstitutional and immoral executive orders targeting immigrants and refugees as well as increased immigration crackdowns in our communities.

Border Rights Groups Urge DHS to Investigate Widespread Dispossession of Belongings LAS CRUCES, NM— Today, civil and human rights organizations in Mexico and the United States filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on behalf of 26 people. Immigration officials confiscated and failed to return the people’s personal belongings, exposing them to severe risk of harm upon their return to Mexico. The complaint shows how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector—which covers West Texas and all of New Mexico—routinely dispossess people of their personal belongings, deporting them to Mexico without money, identification and legal documents, mobile phones, and other important personal possessions. “Deporting people without their personal belongings isn’t just wrong, it’s cruel,” said Vicki B. Gaubeca, director of the ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces, New Mexico. “Imagine being abandoned a thousand miles from home without money, ID, or a cell phone. We as Americans need to stop the wholesale robbery of people, and start treating noncitizens with the same dignity and humanity that we would want for ourselves.” The ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights, the ACLU of Texas, the American Immigration Council, the Programa de Defensa e Incidencia Binacional, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción, A.C., El Centro de Recursos para Migrantes, the Kino Border Initiative, and Senda de Vida filed the administrative complaint today with the DHS Office of Inspector General, the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility, and the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. The complaint details how CBP and ICE take individuals’ belongings and do not provide an effective process to reclaim them. When people try to reclaim their belongings, some agents have responded by threatening them with more detention time. These abuses persist despite recent national policy changes on belongings within CBP. A recent report showed that the U.S. government deports as many as one in three people to Mexico without their personal belongings. “For years, we have documented the grave consequences that noncitizens face when the U.S. government deports them to Mexico without their belongings,” said Blanca Navarrete, the Director of the Programa de Defensa e Incidencia Binacional, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. “Without money, voter cards and other identification, cellular phones, and warm clothes, these individuals struggle to return to their home communities from the border. Many continue to struggle when they return home and cannot obtain work without identity documents. The Mexican voter card is particularly important because it is the primary means that people in Mexico use to prove their identity and it requires multiple original identity documents to replace.” “The numerous case examples in this complaint underscore the failure of the existing policies and procedures,” said Mary Kenney, Senior Attorney with the American Immigration Council. “DHS and CBP must adopt procedures that work – procedures that will ensure that an individual is able to retrieve his or her belongings before being removed to Mexico.” The complaint details the experiences of 26 people whom the U.S. government deported to Mexico without their personal belongings in 2015 and 2016: 

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: