Latest news with #ImmigrantSafetyAct
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Mexico Legislature passes 23 bills over weekend
Students look over a gathering for African American Day at the Legislature on Feb. 14, 2025. (Photo by Julia Goldberg / Source NM) Nearly two dozen pieces of legislation advanced through chamber votes or committee hearings in the New Mexico Legislature over the weekend. The House of Representatives on Friday night passed House Bill 9, known as the Immigrant Safety Act, which would prohibit state agencies and local governments from entering into agreements used to detain people for violations of civil immigration law, and would require any existing agreements to end as soon as possible. The legislation still needs to pass through the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee before reaching a vote in the full Senate. 'Behind each detention bed is a human being—parents separated from children, workers torn from their communities, and asylum seekers who fled violence only to face new trauma in detention,' New Mexico Immigrant Law Center Director of Policy and Coalition Building Jessica Martinez said in a statement. 'By passing the Immigrant Safety Act, the House has chosen to stand on the right side of history. We urge the Senate to act swiftly to complete this important work and end New Mexico's complicity in this harmful system.' On Saturday, the House passed House Bill 255, which would expand community-based services already provided to young people exiting juvenile detention to include children and young adults in the Children, Youth and Families Department's custody; and extend how long someone remains on supervised release from juvenile detention. 'Evidence shows us that focusing on intervention and rehabilitation will lead to better outcomes for our children, while addressing the root causes of juvenile crime in our state,' lead sponsor Rep. Liz Thomson (D-Albuquerque) said in a statement. 'HB 255 helps us guide our at-risk youth down a better path, by providing them with key resources proven to be more effective at deterring crime and reducing recidivism than punitive measures alone.' On Saturday morning, the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee passed Senate Bill 52, which would align mileage reimbursements for lawmakers and their staff with the U.S. General Service Administration rate; a substitute version of Senate Bill 118, which would require the Motor Vehicle Division to distribute to other state agencies' organ donor application materials; Senate Bill 318, which would regulate firearms and destructive devices under consumer protection law; Senate Bill 352, which would make confidential photographs taken by medical investigators; Senate Bill 377, which would create a special license plate for New Mexico's professional soccer team, New Mexico United; Senate Bill 408, which would raise the threshold for when a state agency needs to seek competitive bids on a contract; Senate Bill 413, which would allow the State Investment Council to spend more on the Private Equity Investment Program; Senate Bill 422, which would set aside $5 million for grants to nonprofits providing affordable or transitional housing and other services for homeless people; and Senate Bill 460, which would allow the State Investment Council to make zero-interest loans to film production companies. The Senate Finance Committee on Saturday morning passed Senate Bill 219, which would establish a program for medicinal use of psilocybin mushrooms. Later on Saturday, the Senate passed Senate Bill 169, which would set aside $24 million for preparing sites for business development; Senate Bill 353, which would ensure potential search-and-rescue incidents are reported to the Department of Public Safety; and Senate Bill 81, which would provide property insurance to homeowners and businesses who struggle to get private insurance due to high risks from things like wildfires. The Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 480, which would require the Public Education Department to track all school-aged people who haven't graduated from high school within four years from entering ninth grade; Senate Bill 39, which would prohibit prior authorization or step therapy, when insurance companies and pharmacy benefit management companies refuse to cover a specific drug until after the patient has tried cheaper alternatives, for off-label medications or therapies for rare diseases; and Senate Bill 252, which would allow all licensed social workers to provide telehealth services. On Saturday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Senate Bill 78, which would allow certified nurse anesthetists to practice independently; Senate Bill 303, which would remove the need for gaming machines to meet standards set by Nevada and New Jersey and instead require them to meet standards set by the state; Senate Bill 457, which would set aside $20 million for civil legal services to low-income people; Senate Bill 302, which would strengthen background checks for Gaming Control Board contractors; and Senate Bill 375, which would allow early discharge for people who comply with probation and makes other changes to parole. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A search for asylum: Bill to ban civil immigration detainment contracts passes House
Mar. 7—SANTA FE — At 19 years old, when Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo had one foot on the U.S. side of the border and one foot on the Mexican side, he couldn't pull himself to cross. And that was before knowing cartel members would kidnap him multiple times in Mexico, and he'd end up back in the U.S. seeking asylum and ultimately helping hundreds of immigrants in a New Mexico detention center understand their rights. When federal officials released him from detainment to await his asylum hearing with his family in Tennessee, he was happy. But he also had to leave behind about 300 men in what he described as an unsanitary and inhumane facility, none of whom spoke English. "Even dogs at dog shelters get treated better," Garcia Castillo said, tears in his eyes. The House on Friday, after a three-hour debate, voted 35-25 to pass the Immigrant Safety Act, which would bar public bodies from entering into or renewing agreements to detain immigrants for civil violations. The bill would shut down the three private detention centers in New Mexico — in Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties — that operate via intergovernmental service agreements between local counties and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE held Garcia Castillo at the Torrance County Detention Facility. Now 26, Garcia Castillo's life has been a grueling one — but also one where he's made it out alive. Not everyone can say the same, said Jessica Inez Martinez with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. The duo is working together to advocate for immigrant-related legislation in the Roundhouse, some of which have failed time and time again. But, Martinez said, the efforts carry a heavier consequence this year because of the mass deportations the Trump administration has promised. "This bill is our ability to disentangle ourselves from this very corrupt scheme that exists," Martinez said, "because we know that private companies are using our local governments to bypass procurement processes so that they can sign these intergovernmental service agreements without ... disclosing conditions." New Mexico has five times more detention center bed space per capita than the average state, according to Martinez. The state's three detention centers have the capacity to hold 2,000 people and all are full, according to the Immigrant Law Center. "We are basically putting our people up on a platter for this laboratory for cruelty," Martinez said. Rep. Rod Montoya, R-Farmington, on the floor, failed to amend the bill to institute an automatic repeal of it after 30 days in the event that a federal employee, agency or entity notifies a loss of federal dollars as a result of the Immigrant Safety Act. He specifically brought up the loss of Medicaid money, which New Mexico relies heavily on. Bill sponsor Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, rebutted the amendment by saying the Trump administration could use a slew of reasons to take money away from New Mexico, not just HB9. Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park, said she feared a loss of jobs and economic dollars, an argument that's come up in past years of the bill's debates. Garcia Castillo said valuing money over human lives is what "crosses the line between humans and animals.""Life is precious, he said. "You only get one." Martinez brought up the case of Roxana Hernandez, a transgender immigrant who sought asylum from Honduras. On May 9, 2018, Hernandez requested admission into the U.S., according to ICE. She died on May 25 after about two weeks in detainment. Immigrant advocacy groups attributed the death to medical neglect while in detainment, though ICE said it provided thorough medical services. Martinez said Hernandez could've died as a result of deportation for her identity as a trans woman but ended up dying in the U.S. anyway seeking safety. Martinez said it's reflective of the bill's changed name this year. Formerly known as the "Dignity Not Detention" bill, it's now dubbed the Immigrant Safety Act. "The facility made 50 cents at the time (from Hernandez) — it's an average of 50 cents per day per detainee. They made like $5 on her life to be complicit in her death," Martinez said. "And so when we're talking about the economic impacts, I think it's important to acknowledge that they're not generating a whole lot of money, yet that has outweighed the cost of human life." Martinez said the bill is on a strong legal footing, as specific as possible to uphold in court. HB9 heads to the Senate now, where the bill has failed to pass multiple times in the past. "The real question of this bill is much deeper: Now that we know that immigrants are under siege, will New Mexico take the stance to protect immigrants?" Other immigration protection bills are also making their way through the Roundhouse, including a measure to bar the state and political subdivisions from using public resources to help identify and arrest immigrants without legal status residing in the U.S. The legislation, Senate Bill 250, passed the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee on a 5-4, party-line vote Wednesday, much to the dismay of Republicans who said it's unjust to enforce some laws and not others. "We must resist mass deportation to continue protecting belonging in New Mexico," said Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma. 'We're not criminals, but we are in a jail' Garcia Castillo was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. His parents legally immigrated to the U.S. when he was about 1 year old, and he obtained a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program status. Six years ago, Garcia Castillo was arrested in Tennessee on an accusation of domestic assault. Despite his accuser dropping the charges, the court held him on a misdemeanor for provocative actions and sent him to a Louisiana detention center for several months. A judge ultimately revoked his DACA status and deported him. Garcia Castillo recalled what a change of worlds it was to physically cross into Mexico, a country he hadn't been to since he was a baby. "I remember that I got to the borderline and I didn't want to cross. ... I had one foot on one side and the other foot on the other side, and then an immigration officer was walking towards me, yelling at me that he was going to have me arrested for illegally crossing if I didn't get the other foot on the other side. "And one of the people ended up grabbing me and pulling me. I entered, and I remember the sun hit me differently. The air hit me differently," he said. A few days later, cartel members kidnapped him. His parents paid a ransom for his release, around half a million pesos, but before Garcia Castillo could leave, he was forced to watch the torture of a competing cartel member from Chihuahua, where he was on his way. "They told me when I get to Chihuahua to make sure I let them know that this is a cartel they don't want to mess with," Garcia Castillo said. "I still have dreams about that to this day. I still hear that man screaming, and it's something that will be with me forever." He said the person who escorted him to Chihuahua upon his release was a federal police officer. Garcia Castillo said he ended up getting kidnapped by cartel members three times during his four years living in Mexico, targeted for having American money and a relatively good-paying job in Mexico. The final time, he escaped on U.S. soil, where he asked border officials for asylum. He spent a few days in a shelter in El Paso, Albergue las Carpas, before officials transferred him to New Mexico's Torrance County Detention Facility. His recounted experience there reflects that of 2022 reports from the federal Office of the Inspector General: staffing shortages, delayed access to medical care, unsafe and unsanitary facility conditions and insufficient access to legal services. Garcia Castillo said, as someone who spoke English and relatively understood immigrants' rights, he became a sort of advocate for those who didn't know any better — people who were being deceived into signing English documents for their deportation, people who hadn't been outside in months because of the staffing issues. "A lot of these people that I met were doctors, were lawyers, were painters, were mechanics, were chefs, kids in universities, kids in high school. I met a father and son. I met two brothers. I saw a lot of older folks and (people from) different countries," he said. "Met two men from China that were fleeing because they didn't want to be the religion that their country was trying to make them be or just their sexual orientation that wasn't accepted." The best thing he did, Garcia Castillo said, was save five men, all around his dad's age in their late 40s or early 50s, from committing suicide. "We're not criminals, but we are in a jail," Garcia Castillo said. "It's just really hard because people are coming to this country to help them to live a better life, to live a safe life, and the first thing (the U.S. does) is ... lock them up, make them go through these processes. It breaks them down, mentally and physically," he added. He spent 14 days at Torrance before officials released him pending an asylum court hearing in July. "When I left, I was happy because I was going to see mom and dad, brother and sister. And at the same time, it was really hard because I was leaving a lot of men behind," he said. A lot of immigrants are afraid of persecution if they speak up about their experiences, Garcia Castillo said, but he's not. "I don't have any fear anymore," he said. "I lost that a long time ago."
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
New Mexico again considers ban on immigrant detention
Jessica Inez Martinez (right), director of policy and coalition building for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, departs from the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Feb. 18, 2025 after the committee approved a bill to ban state and local governments in New Mexico from collaborating with the federal government to do immigrant detention. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM) A proposal to ban state and local governments in New Mexico from collaborating with the federal government to do immigrant detention passed its first committee on Tuesday afternoon. The House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday afternoon voted 4-2 to pass House Bill 9, known as the Immigrant Safety Act. The legislation would prohibit state agencies and local governments from entering into agreements used to detain people for violations of civil immigration law, and would require any existing agreements to end as soon as possible. It doesn't affect enforcement of criminal law. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is holding approximately 1,500 people inside the three immigration detention centers in New Mexico, said Sophia Genovese, asylum and detention managing attorney with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center and an expert on the bill. 'We have the power to hold the line in New Mexico and not let the Trump administration and ICE use our state as a laboratory for cruelty,' said Jessica Inez Martinez, director of policy and coalition building for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, and another expert on the bill. The proposal comes as conservative cities and states increase cooperation with the federal government's deportation plans. Reps. Eleanor Chávez (D-Albuquerque), Angelica Rubio (D-Las Cruces), Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe) and Christine Chandler (D-Los Alamos) are sponsoring HB 9. Chávez told the committee on Tuesday she is concerned that the federal government is using New Mexico counties as 'pass-throughs' and 'shields' in a scheme to detain immigrants. She said rather than directly hiring the private prison corporations, ICE enters into contracts with New Mexico counties, who turn around and subcontract with the companies to run the detention centers under documents called Intergovernmental Service Agreements. ICE does this in order to avoid the Competition in Contracting Act, Chávez said, which requires the federal government to competitively select contractors. 'Agreements with local public entities like New Mexico's counties create a loophole through the competition and transparency that is otherwise required in federal contracts,' she said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Democratic senators have twice joined Republicans to reject similar legislation last year and the year before, in starkly different political climates. HB 9 would also prevent any local government from passing an ordinance that would contradict the law. It would give the New Mexico Attorney General and local district attorneys the authority to enforce the law through a civil lawsuit. Federal oversight officials in 2022 told ICE to move everyone out of the Torrance County detention center in Estancia after finding conditions inside to be unsafe and unsanitary. ICE responded less than a month later by moving even more people into the detention center. That August, a Brazilian asylum seeker named Kesley Vial died by suicide while being held in Torrance. If not for systemic failures in medical and mental health care, almost all of the people who died in immigration detention in the U.S. between 2017 and 2021 could still be alive today, according to a report released last summer. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bill would bar N.M. counties from entering agreements with immigrant detention centers
About 1,500 people facing deportation are being held in three New Mexico detention centers that have long been accused of inhumane conditions, according to New Mexico Immigrant Law Center managing attorney Sophia Genovese. Immigration detention at those facilities is based on intergovernmental agreements between the federal government and Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties. The counties in turn hire private contractors to actually manage the detention centers. It's an arrangement that lets the federal government sidestep normal procurement processes with the private contractors — and, Genovese said, allows those facilities to operate with less transparency. 'Essentially, we have counties acting as the middlemen here,' Genovese said in an interview. As newly inducted President Donald Trump pushes policies to broaden the detention and deportation of those not in the U.S. legally, a number of state House Democrats are looking to close that contracting loophole. House Bill 9, dubbed the Immigrant Safety Act, would bar state and local governments from entering agreements with other agencies for the purpose of detaining people for federal civil immigration violations and require them to cancel any existing ones. 'This is not a private prison ban, it only regulates New Mexico state and local government,' one of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Eleanor Chávez, D-Albuquerque, told lawmakers of the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday. 'It gets New Mexico's public bodies out of the business of immigration detention.' U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been looking in recent months for more space to hold immigrant detainees in the region, according to earlier reporting, with a possible deal with Lea County on the horizon. Genovese and other advocates said they believe HB 9 would stymie that deal as well. Similar iterations of HB 9 have failed in recent legislative sessions, often on the Senate floor. On Tuesday, the measure cleared its first committee, passing the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on a 4-2 party-line vote, with Democrats voting in favor. Genovese said the bill would target three facilities in New Mexico: the Torrance County Detention Facility, the Cibola County Correctional Center and the Otero County Processing Center. Each has faced allegations of inhumane conditions over the years. For example, in December, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center argued asylum seekers at the Cibola County Correctional Center faced widespread medical neglect, contributing to 'systemic, needless suffering' of detainees.' In 2022, detainees said they faced retaliation from staff at the Torrance County Detention Facility for engaging in hunger strikes to protest conditions. That echoed interviews published in 2019 by The New Mexican of asylum-seekers who said authorities had used solitary confinement as punishment for their hunger strikes at Otero and Cibola counties detention centers. Spokespeople for Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. Republicans on the committee — whose districts encompass or are near to the Torrance County and Otero County facilities — expressed concerns with the bill, arguing the measure could mean lost jobs in areas with few to go around. 'You're going to take away jobs, and there's really no other jobs out there,' said Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park, whose district encompasses the Torrance County facility. Rep. John Block, R-Alamogordo, questioned if sending detainees along was the best practice, arguing that if 'we are looking for the betterment of these folks' lives, I don't think pushing them just to another facility in another state … would be the most efficient way to do this.'
