President Donald Trump’s "Big Beautiful Bill" includes $145 billion for border security and immigration enforcement. It represents a major financial and policy shift in the United States.
KUNM spoke with Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico, Jennifer Moore, about the legality behind the administration's anti-immigration efforts and how New Mexicans are responding.
MOORE: While I wouldn't say that there are no New Mexicans who are supportive of Trump's deportation policies, a lot of New Mexicans are in mixed families who are very frightened about ICE raids, but also feel that it is against the culture of New Mexico to be rounding up people suspected to be non-citizens or undocumented, that that is not who we are. A significant percentage of New Mexicans of any legal status, are impacted by the ‘fear focus’ of federal policies. It's really about scaring people and about otherizing folks that New Mexicans regard as fellow New Mexicans.
KUNM: What is the legality of detaining someone with no criminal convictions?
MOORE: There's the law, and then there's the policy. The policy and the rhetoric around the policy of the Trump administration is that we are getting rid of violent criminals, and so regardless of the law, if we are raiding Walmart parking lots and picking up brown people who look like they are delivering groceries, we are not following a policy that is meant to focus on violent criminals in terms of whether you can pick up people who are not violent criminals. Yes, if it is known that a person is undocumented, that person can be arrested and detained, but that person has a right to a hearing to explain why they are in the country. For a host of reasons, we have numerous humanitarian protections against deportation in this country that are still law. Asylum is only one of them.
KUNM: From your perspective as someone educated in human rights, what are the ethics, or lack thereof, in detaining and disappearing these people?
MOORE: Some of the rules that are core to international human rights law that apply in every context, war, peace, everything in between, but certainly apply to immigration raids and law enforcement of any kind, are basic due process, the right to legal personality, which means to be treated as a person under the law, which includes the right to a hearing, to hear charges against you or to hear why the government wants to do something to you, whether to convict you for a crime or to deport you, the norm against torture and other forms of inhuman treatment, and then the rule against arbitrary detention, which includes detention without charge. Most immigrants in detention have not been charged with a crime, and in some cases they have been charged with a civil infraction, meaning being undocumented. But in the case of people that are disappeared, they may not have been formally charged with anything.
KUNM: How long can ICE or law enforcement detain someone who has legal papers and legal status?
MOORE: That is not an easy question. If somebody is detained for being here without authorization, and they know that, and they have an opportunity to have a lawyer, and they have a hearing date, they can be detained until their immigration hearing under US law. Mia, this is so complicated. Another problem is we don't have enough immigration judges, and supposedly the big, so-called Beautiful Bill is going to have more money for immigration courts, but there's a provision in a related piece of legislation that is limiting the number of new immigration judges by like 100 more, and we have such a backlog in our immigration hearing calendars around the country that 100 extra immigration judges is not going to do anything. I think it's chaotic by design. I think either there is a lack of awareness on the part of certain people in the administration, or they don't care that what in fact is happening is more enforcement but less adjudication, and that situation leads to prolonged detention, underfunded circumstances, you know, not enough health care, not enough food, not enough access to attorneys, and all of this is happening at the same time.
