By DANIEL J. CHACON
The Santa Fe New Mexican
A push to end the detention of asylum seekers in New Mexico failed Tuesday when six Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in voting against the measure and three other Democrats disappeared before the vote.
After less than an hour of debate, the Senate rejected Senate Bill 145 on an 18-21 vote.
A similar measure failed to pass the Senate in a vote of 18-20 during last year’s legislative session.
Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, an Albuquerque Democrat who carried the bill this year, looked disappointed as she prepared to leave the Capitol on Tuesday night.
“I feel strongly about the immorality of making money off of detaining immigrants who do not need to be detained and then on top of that, violating their human rights by having insufficient food, insufficient medical care and documented cases of harassment and abuse,” she said.
“That’s just wrong,” Sedillo Lopez added.
A fiscal impact report stated the bill would have prohibited local governments from entering into agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “to detain individuals for federal civil immigration violations.”
But Sedillo Lopez said the report was incorrect.
“The FIR somehow looked at all immigrants as violating the law,” she said. “When you seek asylum in this country, that is not a violation of law.”
The Democrats who left the chamber before the vote were Sens. Katy Duhigg of Albuquerque, Siah Correa Hemphill of Silver City and Liz Stefanics of Cerrillos. Duhigg was originally listed as a sponsor of the bill but later withdrew her name.
A spokesman for Senate Democrats wrote in an email Duhigg, an attorney with Sutin, Thayer & Browne, has a “professional conflict” that precluded her from carrying or voting on the bill.
The Democrats who voted against the measure were Sens. Pete Campos of Las Vegas, Joe Cervantes of Las Cruces, Roberto “Bobby” Gonzales of Ranchos de Taos, Martin Hickey of Albuquerque, George Muñoz of Gallup and Benny Shendo of Jemez Pueblo.
Cervantes and Hickey had voted to advance the bill in a committee.
Cervantes told his colleagues it was important to “acknowledge the struggle” states like New Mexico face in “the absence of federal immigration policy.”
“I think it’s important that we use the moment to challenge our federal delegation, our congressmen and congresswomen and our U.S. senators, to be part of a solution,” he said. “I hear very little, quite frankly, from our federal delegation with solutions, and that’s true of really just about everyone in Washington, D.C.”
Cervantes’ district includes the border city of Sunland Park, where he said it’s routine to see immigrants crossing the border by the dozens, if not hundreds, each week.
“This bill challenges me because I’m oftentimes replaying in my mind, ’Be careful what you wish for’ for the advocates,” he said. “Last year, El Paso opened two new facilities for asylum detainees, one of them with a capacity of 1,000 immigrants, the second with a capacity of 2,500 immigrants. These are tent-like facilities.”
Cervantes and other lawmakers expressed concerns immigrants could end up in a worse situation.
“By eliminating these facilities in New Mexico, a state which is humane and good … these detainees may end up in El Paso, they may end up in Texas, where my experience is the welcome is much less pure than it is in New Mexico,” he said.
Muñoz echoed the sentiment.
“I watched the other night on 60 Minutes where they’re just flooding in, and the National Guard is not stopping them. Where are they going to go? In the streets. Under a bridge. Beg for food,” he said.
“I’m not going to blame them for coming to a country that’s better, one of the greatest countries in the world. But we have to do something with them and if you think treatment is going to be better in Texas, then go ahead and vote for this. if you think those people are going to get better food, better treatment, more respect in Texas, go for it.”
The bill would have affected three immigrant detention facilities in Torrance, Otero and Cibola counties.
Sedillo Lopez said her bill wouldn’t put them out of business.
“One of them will lose probably about 100 people from the couple of thousand they have there. Another one will lose perhaps 250 to 300 people from the approximately couple of thousand they have there, and another one will lose about 850 people from like the 3,000 people they have there,” she said during the floor session.
Sen. Ron Griggs, R-Alamogordo, said the bill would “tremendously impact” his home county of Otero.
“Otero County has bonded for the facility they’ve got. They will owe about $22 million when that contract runs out,” he said. “This is extraordinarily difficult for us and them. It’s extraordinarily difficult for the jobs that will be lost and the people that will be unemployed, and those are New Mexico people.”
At the start of the debate, Sedillo Lopez made an impassioned plea for the bill, saying “harsh and inhumane conditions” have been documented at the three facilities, from solitary confinement to psychological abuse leading to suicide.
“These individuals have not violated any laws,” she said. “They are asylum seekers seeking refuge from various forms of persecution and discrimination, including religious, racial and sexual persecution.”
Sen. Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, questioned who was vetting the asylum seekers and where they would be housed if the detention facilities didn’t exist.
“We need to house them somewhere. Why not here?” he asked.
Sharer also said Sedillo Lopez’s bill portrayed everyone crossing the border into the U.S. as ”loving people.”
“But there’s a group of people that does absolutely scare me,” he said. “What I see coming across that border as a former infantry officer, I see military-aged men who are physically fit coming across the border in battalion-sized units, which is about 1,000 men each. They do not appear to be hungry. They do not appear to be abused. They do not appear to be running from some danger, and yet they’re showing up here. That’s the group that scares me.”
