ACLU, immigrant groups file suits after ICE, New Mexico mayor stoke racial tensions

Republicans: cops on horseback whipping refugees are heroes. 

Also Republicans: cops who defended the Capitol during Donald Trump's attempted coup are traitors. 

After being brutalized by riders on horseback in Texas some fifty Haitian asylum seekers are subjected to dire circumstances and denied access to legal counsel while detained at a private prison complex contracted in Estancia, New Mexico by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the US Marshals Service. 

In May, the ACLU and several other immigrants rights groups filed suit after refugees on a hunger strike were attacked by guards using chemical weapons. 

Tens of thousands of long-suffering Haitians have made the nightmare journey through Central America only to end up in facilities like the one owned by Tennessee-based CoreCivic in Torrance County that received a rating of noncompliance in July. ICE refuses to respond to allegations of human rights abuses and it's unknown if CoreCivic will face any consequences for its failures to meet even basic human needs. 

Now, the ACLU is threatening a lawsuit naming the Estancia board of trustees after Mayor Nathan Dial proclaimed that people need to be “legally armed” to enter town meetings.

Asylum is the legal right of people to seek protection from persecution in their home countries. To seek asylum in the United States, a claimant must show persecution based on race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social or political group. That definition has typically worked against Haitian migrants who, according to immigrant-rights advocates, suffer from a historical prejudice that they are “economic migrants” — and not asylum seekers. [Searchlight New Mexico]

An eventual confrontation between second term New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas and a self-styled militia group is about to come to a head. After a 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas AG Balderas asked the NM Legislature for funding to form a "special investigative unit to guard against hate crimes and terrorism." Enabled by spiteful, vindictive bombast from Herr Trump the hate group New Mexico Civil Guard has abandoned lawful protest and started shooting protesters. Balderas' office has also been investigating predator priests. 

ip photo: a mosaic celebrating Spanish conquest adorns a Torrance County building.

Museum of Spanish conquest went over like a lead balloon https://t.co/hGBgRHr89E

— interested party (@larry_kurtz) November 24, 2021