Pushing for protections

Hundreds rally in Santa Fe at Labor Day event, calling for safeguards for workers, immigrants

Jessica Martinez’s mother came to the United States from Mexico in search of a better life; she is part of an immigrant family in New Mexico with mixed residency status.

Her family’s story is what inspires Martinez’s work as a staff attorney at the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, which is advocating for the immigrant community amid a surge in deportations under the Trump administration.

“We must continue to show that New Mexico will not stand for injustice,” Martinez told a cheering crowd of hundreds of people during a Labor Day rally Monday morning outside the state Capitol in Santa Fe.

Organized by Indivisible Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans for Peace, Third Act New Mexico and other local organizations, the rally focused on worker and immigrant rights. Participants were asked to pick up signs and information to distribute to local businesses in English and Spanish, with information about workers’ legal rights in the event of a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The materials included a sign saying, “Everyone is welcome here except I.C.E.,” which business owners will be asked to display in their windows.

Indivisible Santa Fe member Heidi Li Feldman said the organization will make a list of businesses that have been contacted — and whether or not they agreed to accept the materials.

“I want you to tell the businesses who take the materials that they will be recognized and they will be patronized,” she said, adding participants also should inform “the business person who seems reluctant to take the sign that people will know which side they were on.”

Gary Kowalski, another member of Indi

visible Santa Fe, said in an interview Friday the threat of ICE raids and other immigration enforcement activity has historically been used as a damper for labor organizing — employers can threaten to call authorities as a way to keep undocumented workers from advocating for fairer treatment.

“We see these issues of protecting immigrants and protecting workers’ rights as totally connected, and we’re trying to give citizens a chance to help build a stronger, safer community,” he said.

Along with worker protections, multiple people who spoke at Monday’s rally encouraged participants to continue to advocate for a New Mexico law banning immigration detention facilities, something that could be on the governor’s agenda for a special legislative session this fall.

“It’s past time for New Mexico to end its participation in the federal detention and deportation pipeline,” American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico attorney Becca Sheff said, drawing loud cheers and applause.

A spokesperson for the governor said this summer Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was “likely” to call a special session in late summer or early fall, though she has not yet announced a date when the Legislature will convene. A special session would be focused primarily on dealing with the impact of federal funding cuts on the state, but the Governor’s Office has said Lujan Grisham also could place a potential ban on immigration detention facilities on the agenda.

A proposal earlier this year to ban state and local governments from contracting with the federal government to detain people accused of civil immigration violations, House Bill 9, stalled in a committee.

The bill would have required counties that currently have contracts with federal agencies for detention centers to end them as soon as possible, something officials from Torrance and Otero counties told lawmakers during a recent committee meeting could have negative impacts on local economies, including hundreds of job losses.

A tour of the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, an ICE holding facility Aug. 25 garnered mixed reactions from a group of state lawmakers. Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, described the facility as clean and humanely run, while the lone Democrat who participated, Rep. Andrea Romero, told The New Mexican she was troubled by some of what she saw.

Martinez, with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, painted a grim picture of ICE holding facilities in New Mexico. She has spoken with clients who have been deprived access to medication and legal translation services and who have been placed in solitary confinement for trying to seek help, she said. “These are prisons,” she added. While not as well-attended as some other protests in Santa Fe against actions being taken by the Trump administration, Monday’s rally was well-attended enough for the crowd to spill down the walkways to the Roundhouse and into a parking lot; drivers passing by honked in support.

Many participants carried signs or other accoutrement, including Gregg Henry, who donned an Uncle Sam hat and wore a New Mexico flag as a cape; his wife, Wenda Trevathan, joked it made him easy to spot in the crowd.

The couple live close to the Roundhouse and said they have attended as many protests in Santa Fe as they could since the start of Trump’s second term. For the Labor Day protest, they brought cardboard signs reading, “We work, we vote” and “Labor made America.”

“We’re veterans of the Vietnam protests,” Trevathan said with a wry laugh. “I’m not sure how much we did then, but we showed up. We’re good at showing up.”