The Immigrant Safety Act is headed to the House floor after it passed the House Judiciary Committee on a party line vote Wednesday. Due to public interest in the bill, the committee hearing was held on the House floor. Members of the public who came to voice their opinions on the bill filled a majority of the seats in the House gallery. If the bill becomes law, it will prohibit New Mexico government entities from contracting with ICE detention facilities.
Since it passed the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee last week, lawmakers added an amendment that would prohibit law enforcement from collaborating with ICE agents. Rep. Andrea Romero (D-46) is a cosponsor of the bill and is vice chair of the committee. Romero said that ICE activity is eroding public trust.
"My concern is that folks will not be calling the police when there is a problem," Romero said. "If they are now worried about their local law enforcement engaging in the behaviors that we're seeing ICE engage in."
The bill's author, Rep. Eleanor Chávez (D-26) said this legislation has become even more poignant since ICE agents killed a second U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Public comment in opposition of the bill mostly focused on potential jobs that would be lost if New Mexico's three ICE detention facilities shut down. Felix Gonzales is the mayor of the Village of Milan, where the Cibola County Correctional Center is located. Gonzales said if the facility closes, 200 people will be out of a job.
"Those are 200 people that are probably moving out of our village and county," Gonzales said. "First, we lost the uranium mine, then the power plant, then the refinery and now this facility.”
Rep. Nicole Chavez (R-31) argued that eliminating ICE facilities in the state would force ICE to detain New Mexicans far from their families. And, she said, that would make it more difficult for her to aid constituents who have a loved one detained by ICE.
But Jessica Martinez of the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center pushed back on that claim during the committee meeting. Martinez said her colleagues at the law center work directly with detainees in the New Mexico facilities.
"A lot of the detainees here in New Mexico are immigrants from the interior that have been roped up and arrested by ICE agents across the country," Martinez said
There is currently no guarantee that a person detained by ICE will be held at a facility near their home or family. In the widely publicized case of five-year-old Liam Ramos, ICE detained the preschooler and his father in Minnesota yet they are currently being held 1300 miles away in Dilley, Texas.
The bill will likely be on the House floor next week.
