by Roz Brown for Public News Service
New Mexico has laws to protect immigrant communities from the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation system, but analysis shows those protections only go so far.
The California-based Deportation Data Project found states with strict noncooperation policies have the lowest rates of immigration arrests in local jails. Even with the Immigrant Safety Act passed earlier this year, New Mexico is one of five states with the highest local jail arrest rate.
Marcela Díaz, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Somos Un Pueblo Unido, said the findings should be a wake-up call.
"Data suggest that parts of our criminal justice system are still functioning as a pipeline into federal immigration enforcement and unless we're curtailing this at the state level, we're going to continue to see these numbers increase," Díaz projected.
ICE agents made more than 50,000 arrests nationwide in August, a record monthly total. There is no official total available for New Mexico ICE arrests so far this year but Santa Fe immigrant advocates noted a significant uptick in operations last month. There were at least 16 arrests over several days, including a high-profile enforcement action outside a local healthcare clinic.
Unlike most states, New Mexico does not allow state and local law enforcement officers to act as immigration agents. Instead, lawmakers joined seven other states and numerous localities nationwide in rejecting involvement in what are called 287(g) agreements.
Díaz noted law enforcement personnel who work in jails and support the Trump administration's deportation policies can find ways around the state's intentions.
"You don't have to have a formal 287(g) agreement between the local jail and ICE in order to collaborate or to pick up the phone or to use public resources to turn people over to ICE or to let them know when a person is getting out so that they can be waiting for them," Díaz explained.
Data show nearly 3,500 people were apprehended by ICE in the El Paso region near the New Mexico border through Aug. 5, roughly as many as in all of 2025.
While the Trump administration initially promised it would focus deportations on undocumented immigrants with criminal records, it has since shifted to include individuals without criminal records or those with legal status.