The city allowed la migra into the Prisoner Transport Center, where immigration agents conduct face-to-face interviews with everyone who is arrested and taken there. The city says it’s a better, less biased procedure than allowing Immigration Customs and Enforcement to look through the records at the jail and then choose to speak with those who have certain surnames or were born out of the country. When I interviewed the ICE spokesperson, she was able to tell me how many people ICE had tagged from Albuquerque’s transport center since the agreement took effect in early May, but she couldn’t say who those people were, how old they are, where they were picked up, etc. That’s a problem for advocates who say domestic violence victims who don’t speak English are sometimes arrested by mistake. Now, a victim could acquire an ICE hold in that situation. How would the advocates be able to discover something like that if information is not available about who’s been given a detainer? The Albuquerque Police Department and the city assure that people who are arrested have to have been committing some kind of crime.
Will The City’s Agreement With Ice Impact Immigrant Victims Of Domestic Violence?
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