Attorneys are sounding the alarm about the unknown whereabouts of 48 people after immigration raids swept through three New Mexico cities in March.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico said in a civil rights complaint that the absence of families searching for loved ones who were taken away is an anomaly. They are calling for an investigation regarding the whereabouts and well-being of the “disappeared individuals” in the complaint filed Sunday with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
The people were “snatched up” in Santa Fe, Roswell and Albuquerque, and ACLU and other organizations have been unable to locate them since the weeklong raids ended March 8, said Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU New Mexico.
“We don’t have anybody and that’s exactly the concerns, that they’ve been effectively ‘disappeared.’ We have yet to learn any of their identities or whereabouts or the authorities under which they were held or conditions of their detention. We don’t know if they’ve already been deported,” Sheff said.
“Disappeared” is a word that has most often been used in reference to people secreted away by military or law enforcement in repressive regimes in Latin America and other regions.
NBC News did not immediately receive a response after asking DHS about the whereabouts of those arrested and whether any had been deported or released.
On March 12, ICE issued a statement saying it had made the arrests of 48 people it described as “illegal aliens” in the country with deportation orders or who were charged or convicted of serious crimes. It said 21 had final orders of removal and the charges and convictions were for crimes ranging from homicide, to sexual offenses, burglary, battery and others.
The statement added that others were arrested for entering the country illegally or reentering without authorization.
Several years ago, ICE created a locator system for detainees because the agency often shuffles them around and holds them in rural places far from where they were arrested or living. But names or other identifying information are needed for the system to be used, ACLU New Mexico said in its complaint.
Commonly, groups that work in immigrant communities and their leaders will hear from families searching for their relatives, spouses and such. But Sheff said the groups are not getting information. It is unclear why families are not reaching out, but concerns around deportation and immigration status could be a factor.
Sheff said she was in a room full of community advocates “committed to protecting our communities on the verge of tears” Monday morning because they had little to no information on the people who were arrested.
“They are not hearing from any family saying, hey, my person disappeared,” she said, adding that the situation is scary, particularly against the backdrop of President Donald Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump invoked the 1798 act to deport to El Salvador hundreds of people who the administration said were suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua. The deportations occurred despite a judge’s order blocking them and ordering planes in the air to be turned around. The administration has said planes carrying the deported people landed before the order was issued, and thus did not occur in defiance of the judge’s order.
“I used to work internationally … and we would encounter routinely circumstances where people were picked up and effectively disappeared, held incommunicado, mistreated, made unavailable, families didn’t know where they were,” Sheff said.
“To be in a situation now where the appropriate word for what is happening here, effectively, is disappearances, should give everyone pause,” she said.
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