Civil rights attorneys are sounding the alarm after 48 New Mexico residents “disappeared” after their arrests by federal immigration enforcement agents this month.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement “has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them,” according to a federal complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
They have been “effectively forcibly disappeared from our communities,” attorneys wrote.
At least 48 people ICE described as “illegal aliens” were arrested in a week-long series of operations in Albuquerque, Roswell, and Santa Fe earlier this month, according to the agency. But only 21 people had final orders of removal from the country.
“This is not just a procedural issue — it’s a serious human rights violation,” according to Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at ACLU of New Mexico.
“When the government takes people into custody and then their whereabouts are unknown and they are unreachable, it places these individuals outside the protection of the law,” she said in a statement. “Families are left in agonizing uncertainty, desperate to contact their loved ones and ensure their safety. Enforced disappearances are prohibited by both our Constitution and international human rights standards.”
ICE’s online detainee locator ostensibly lists where people are being held, as the agency typically moves people in detention from one facility to another — often in rural areas and states far from where they were arrested — before they are placed in removal proceedings.
But anyone searching the database for information about a detainee would need a name or other identifying information to know where to look.
Attorneys who provide legal assistance in the state’s three ICE detention facilities are typically only able to schedule legal visits with detainees if they identify them beforehand, according to the complaint.
“We are alarmed and disturbed that these four dozen New Mexican individuals remain unidentified and that insufficient transparency, oversight, and accountability has taken place to date regarding their whereabouts and wellbeing,” attorneys wrote in a filing demanding action from the Department of Homeland Security.
Court filings across the country have complained that the detainee locator system is slow to update to tell lawyers and families where their clients and relatives are jailed, often before it’s too late.
The database reportedly listed immigrants detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as being in Florida, according to a federal lawsuit. In the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder who was among organizers of Columbia University’s student-led protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, his attorneys have suggested that the administration may have deliberately obscured his whereabouts during his transfer to a Louisiana detention center.
“When I was detained, my family had no idea where I was for days,” said Edwin Jesus Garcia Castillo, who was formerly detained at ICE’s Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico.
“That feeling of being erased from the world — it’s terrifying,” he said in a statement. “These 48 people and their families are going through that right now. No one should face this kind of treatment in America.”
The Independent has requested comment from the Department of Homeland Security and immigrant advocacy groups in New Mexico.
The ACLU’s complaint follows a series of aggressive anti-immigration actions from Donald Trump’s administration, including the detention and attempted removal of Khalil and the deportation of an Ivy League doctor who was legally in the United States on a foreign worker visa.
The president’s secret removal of dozens of Venezuelan men who are now jailed in a notorious prison in El Salvador under a rarely used wartime authority is now under scrutiny in federal court. ICE officials have admitted in court documents that “many” of those men had no criminal record but are considered “terrorists” over their alleged connections to the Tren de Agua gang.
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