Despite frigid temperatures, New Mexico’s Immigrant and Workers Day of Action drew more than 500 people to the Roundhouse Monday morning rallying for an end to New Mexico’s participation in federal immigrant detention.
Immigrant advocacy groups and residents from across New Mexico urged movement on House Bill 9, which if passed would prohibit local and state government entities from entering into agreements to detain people accused of federal immigration violations.
Last week, HB 9 advanced through its first committee along party lines. Recently, Republican leadership in the house has requested the federal government step in and stop it.
Monday’s rally followed Saturday’s killing in Minnesota of 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti by federal immigration agents — the second such fatal incident in that city in the last month.
New Mexico lawmakers championing HB9 legislation cited the immigration raids in Minnesota as a reason to pass the bill and resist federal immigration policy. House Speaker Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) called HB9 “a movement that will help the United States of America find its soul again.”
Source NM recently reported that dozens of immigrants arrested in Minneapolis were shipped to the Torrance County Detention Facility, which is run by private prison operator CoreCivic, in New Mexico.
One attendee at the roundhouse Monday, 26-year-old Andres Esquivel, a campaigns manager at immigrant rights nonprofit New Mexico Dream Team, said the legislation is a long time coming, citing reports of civil rights violations and abusive conditions in the facilities documented by Congress.
“I’m fighting to end federal detention immigration centers, I’m fighting for the rights of all immigrants, including myself, my parents, my friends, my whole community,” Esquivel told Source NM.
Esquivel, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, moved to the United States when he was 2 years old. He called the prospect of increased immigration detention in New Mexico “pretty terrifying” for immigrant communities.
“New Mexico has so far seemed to be under the radar, when it comes to ICE activity, which I’m glad about, but I think we need to start organizing more,” he said.
Participants and lawmakers spoke about the recent killings of Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, also 37.
Eder Lopez, 17, a New America high school student from the South Valley in Albuquerque, held a sign memorializing Pretti, calling him an “ICU nurse, neighbor and friend.”
“I’m here to represent my community, and what we stand for,” Lopez told Source NM. “This country wouldn’t be where we are without the immigrant community.”
Norma Dorado, 57, told Source NM in Spanish: “This is a fight for our country, for everything happening with our community.”
Ramon Dorado, 62, who currently works three jobs, also noted Pretti’s and Good’s deaths, and said the Trump administration’s recent actions have heightened immigrants’ fear.
“This administration is very bad, it doesn’t matter who you are,” he said. “They’ve broken the law, they’ve broken the Constitution.”
