House Speaker Javier Martínez, right, marches with members of Somos Acción and other demonstrators along Paseo de Peralta while heading to the state Capitol Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, during an Immigrant and Worker Day of Action rally. Photo by Matt Dahlseid/The New Mexican
By CLARA BATES
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Undeterred by subfreezing temperatures, hundreds of immigrant rights advocates from across New Mexico gathered at the state Capitol in Santa Fe on Monday to call for a ban on local government-contracted immigration detention centers, stricter privacy protections and workforce development investments.
Participants in the Immigrant and Worker Day of Action rally chanted in Spanish, “The people united will never be defeated” and held signs urging an end to the widespread federal immigration crackdown.
“From Albuquerque to Minneapolis, stop ICE terrorism,” one said.
The Santa Fe event came two days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot the second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti. His death follows the fatal shooting earlier this month of Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three. Good was also 37. Their deaths, captured on video, have spurred protests nationwide.
“The American people saw with their own eyes a U.S. citizen shot and killed by President Trump’s federal agents,” U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement Monday. “Yet this administration continues to lie and cover up what happened. What must happen now: a full and independent investigation.”
“We are under a state of siege,” said Marcela Díaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a nonprofit that helped organize the event.
“Against Americans in general, but certainly immigrants in the United States who are here as an essential part of our community,” Díaz said in an interview Monday, adding, “we need to do all the things that we can at the local level and at the state level to ensure that we are not in any way cooperating with that threatening behavior against our communities.”
Brenda Vara, a 20-year-old University of New Mexico student, was among the attendees at the Capitol rally. She is the daughter of immigrants and president of the UNM chapter of the New Mexico Dream Team, an immigrant youth-led advocacy organization.
“I realized if someone else is scared to speak, I could speak,” said Vara, who has been going to the Capitol regularly during the session that began last week to advocate for immigrant rights legislation.
Legislation that would restrict local governments in New Mexico from entering into contracts for ICE detention centers is currently making its way through the state House and cleared its first committee on a party-line vote last week.
“It’s really showing to the country that us, as a state, can come together to show our values and beliefs and protect everyone no matter their legal status,” Vara said.
Her mother was worried when she left early in the morning to catch a 6 a.m. train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe for the demonstration, Vara said, after having seen the violence protesters are facing elsewhere.
A way to focus despair
Monday’s demonstration started with a march that began at Railyard Park and ended with a rally outside the Roundhouse. Protesters hailed from around the state, including Las Cruces, Farmington, Gallup and Taos. Drivers showing support blared their horns as the demonstrators marched, many of whom carried signs with an array of messages, often in Spanish:
Rise up Santa Fe!
We’re 15% of the labor force.
We are here and we are not leaving.
Businesses in Santa Fe depend on the hands of workers.
One woman had a small paper sign safety-pinned to her pink winter cap, urging “no more violence!”
Felipe Rodriguez Romero, co-director of the Dream Team, said the organization brought around 100 high school kids, mostly from Albuquerque.
“It’s very easy to fall into despair for any young person that is on social media, getting the same videos that we’re all watching,” he said, with no way to “process” that despair.
For those young immigrants or family members of immigrants, he noted, rallying can be a way to “focus” that despair.
“We might not be able to change the immigration laws, but there’s small interventions that we can do at the state level, at the local level and even at the school level that can make things better for immigrant families,” he said.
Romero estimated the turnout was similar to last year’s Day of Action, when participation swelled due to policies announced by Republican President Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration. Trump promised mass deportations and a crackdown on border security.
Putting ‘immigrants first’
When Monday’s crowd reached the state Capitol, several lawmakers, including House Speaker Javier Martínez, addressed them in English, Spanish or a combination of the languages.
Martínez, who was born in El Paso and raised in Ciudad Juárez until he was 8, said this is “about our country losing its way.”
“And what we saw this weekend in Minneapolis, we saw two weeks ago in Minneapolis, and what we’ve seen the last several months with this federal paramilitary force — I don’t know how else to describe it — untrained, unleashed on the American people,” he said.
Martínez told what he called the “sea of people” before him the New Mexico Legislature would do all it could to “put immigrants first.”
He told the crowd he expects a ban on public contracting for federal immigration detention to pass the Legislature this year — drawing cheers and whistles.
New Mexico is home to three detention facilities that contract with ICE — in Cibola, Otero and Torrance counties.
Developments surrounding the Lea County Correctional Facility in Hobbs also have fueled speculation a fourth ICE detention center in the state could be in the works. The city of Hobbs plans a land swap with Geo Group, the prison’s private owner-operator, giving the company the government-owned land where the facility sits.
The land swap likely would allow Geo Group to contract directly with ICE rather than involving the city or Lea County in such a deal.
The proposed ban on such deals with local governments, which Democratic lawmakers have said they hope to see pass, could turn out to be one of the most controversial of the session and, if adopted, could put the state on a collision course with the Trump administration and its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts.
Republicans have vowed to fight the bill, arguing it would devastate rural economies that lack other major employers and would only outsource detention to other states. GOP state Sen. Jim Townsend, R-Artesia, last week sent a letter requesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s “attention and intervention” in the legislation.
‘New Mexico is the light’
Deb Haaland, the former congresswoman and U.S. interior secretary who is running for governor, told Monday’s crowd “New Mexico is the light,” with the Zia symbol on its flag representing the sun.
“We are the leaders. We’re a multicultural state,” said Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo.
State Sen. Cindy Nava, who was previously undocumented, told demonstrators, “If you have never lived with that fear every day, you can’t tell me that you understand the fear that my family faces and your family faces. … These are times of desperation, and we need to be unified.”
Elaine Duncan, 70, of Santa Fe said she comes to nearly every rally at the Capitol and has for a decade.
She held a sign reading “MAGA is Unamerican,” referring to the Make America Great Again movement.
“It should have never have happened. I never thought I’d see it — I’m 70 years old, and I never thought I’d see this,” she said, referring to the violence in Minnesota. She said she was struck by the fact Pretti, who she said was “executed,” was the same age as her son.
“It’s terrifying,” she said. “But it also gives me more resolve to fight.”