Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo talks about his experience of being detained at the Torrance County Detention Facility during a news conference Monday, March 17, 2025, at the state Capitol. Photo by Matt Dahlseid/The New Mexican

By Esteban Candelaria
The Santa Fe New Mexican

Four dozen people have “disappeared” from three New Mexico cities after a weeklong operation by the federal government earlier this month, according to a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico on Sunday.

Little is known about the 48 people who were arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, advocates and attorneys say, including their names, where or why they are being held, the conditions they are in or if they are even still in the country.

Also unclear is whether those arrested were provided access to basic services, such as interpretation or legal aid.

“We don’t know what’s happened to these four dozen New Mexicans,” said ACLU attorney Becca Sheff at a news conference Monday morning. “They’ve effectively disappeared — our organizations haven’t heard from them or encountered them in the ICE detention facilities here in our state.”

ICE did not respond to a request Monday morning by The New Mexican for information related to the arrestees, where they were being kept and the services they had access to. 

The ACLU’s complaint, filed with two oversight offices of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was prompted by a news release published by ICE last week touting the arrests.

According to the release, the 48 people were arrested in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Roswell. Twenty of those people have faced arrests or convictions of serious felonies, including homicide, criminal sexual penetration and drug trafficking, ICE wrote in its release.

Twenty-one people had final orders of removal, ICE wrote in its release. All the people who were arrested had remained in the country despite an immigration judge previously ordering their removal or had picked up serious criminal charges while illegally being in the U.S., the agency said.

“These arrests exemplify the type of criminals living among us and highlight ICE’s commitment to our agency’s primary mission — protect public safety,” Director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in El Paso Mary De Anda-Ybarra said in the release.

But advocates argued it was not clear most of the people who were arrested had significant criminal records, parting with administration assurances that immigrants with criminal convictions would be the main focus of operations.

“We know in our communities that that is not true,” said Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, an immigrant advocacy organization. “We know that we’re all being criminalized, and that they’re putting everyone into the same category.”

In addition to the Department of Homeland Security oversight offices investigating the arrests, advocates pointed to two bills making their way through the Roundhouse that could help immigrants in New Mexico.

Those bills are:

• House Bill 9, which would bar state and local governments and agencies from entering into or staying in agreements with the federal government for detaining people for civil immigration enforcement, and
• Senate Bill 250, which restricts public agencies from using any public resources toward any part of federal immigration law enforcement.

The bills aim to draw a clear line between New Mexico and enforcement of federal laws, and to crack down on detention centers used for ICE detainees — such as the Torrance County Detention Facility, the Cibola County Correctional Center and the Otero County Processing Center — with long histories of allegations of inhumane conditions.

Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo, who said he’s been held by ICE twice, said during the news conference detention facilities in New Mexico that hold immigrants cut them off from their families, attorneys and community resources.

“I saw how these places tear you down, physically and mentally,” he said. “… These places are inhumane places, they’re really cruel places.”

But with less than a week left in the legislative session, advocates sought to light a fire under lawmakers to get those bills passed.

“We have one shot this year to ensure that this happens, and that we are safeguarding our communities — or, at the very least, not aiding and supporting the federal government in these actions,” Díaz said.

HB 9 still has a fighting chance, having passed the full House as well as its first committee on the Senate. It currently sits on the calendar of the busy Senate Judiciary Committee. SB 250, on the other hand, faces slimmer odds — the bill has passed its first two Senate committees, but has yet to be greenlighted by the full body.

At first glance, the bills appear to have conflicting language, with HB 9 requiring local governments to terminate existing agreements with the federal government to detain people for immigration enforcement while SB 250 states the bill should not affect “an existing written contract between a county government and the federal government for the housing of federal detainees.”

However, advocates said the bills would not contradict each other supposing they were both enacted, arguing they fulfill distinct purposes — SB 250 focuses on prohibiting local agencies like police departments from assisting in any part of the process of federal immigration enforcement, whereas HB 9 addresses the specific contracts counties have with the federal government

“What that provision is saying is merely that the question of what HB 9 covers is separate from the scope of SB 250,” Sheff said in an interview.