WED: ICE arrested an Albuquerque man. He ended up in the hospital. Now no one knows where he is, +More
By KUNM News
June 11, 2025 at 6:11 AM MDT
ICE arrested an Albuquerque man. He ended up in the hospital. Now no one knows where he is. – Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Last Saturday around 8 a.m., as she followed her husband to a mechanic in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Daniela Marina Diaz-Ortiz says she and her 5-year-old daughter watched, terrified, as federal immigration agents leapt out of four SUVs and pulled her husband to the ground.
“They stopped him and took him out of the car. They didn’t ask him for any identification. They didn’t tell him he was under arrest or anything like that,” she told Source in Spanish in an interview outside her home Monday afternoon. “They just pulled him out of the car, threw him on the ground, putting their feet on his back and head. At that moment, they also lifted him up by his neck and forced him into the truck.”
Jesus Jose Carrero-Marquez, 30, was hospitalized at the Presbyterian Hospital emergency room for hours, potentially due to injuries sustained in the arrest, his wife and others told Source NM.
Agents who waited outside Carrero-Marquez’s room told hospital workers that the detainee was a violent gang member, according to New Mexico Rep. Eleanor Chavez (D-Albuquerque), who advocates on behalf of working conditions for healthcare workers across the state. Chavez said she learned of the arrest from a hospital worker and relayed to Source what the worker told her.
Diaz-Ortiz adamantly denied her husband is violent or a criminal or in a gang. Source’s review of state and federal criminal records for Carrero-Marquez showed only a local traffic ticket in January.
Instead, Diaz-Ortiz said he is a father and husband who makes a living as a Doordash delivery driver, while seeking asylum on behalf of himself and his family after being injured in a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro several years ago. The lawyer representing his appeal did not respond to requests for comment.
Diaz-Ortiz showed Source photos the family is using in its asylum appeal that show what appear to be injuries to Carrero-Marquez’s leg and back, which left him with a punctured lung and a limp, she said.
Source could not determine why federal immigration authorities arrested Carrero-Marquez on May 31; why they purportedly took him to the hospital; where he is being detained; or whether he’s been deported.
A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions from Source about Carrero-Marquez’s arrest, their alleged use of force or his current location. A spokesperson said the agency would respond but had not as of publication time after multiple requests. Source will update the story as necessary.
Advocates, including Chavez and immigration lawyers, have tried since May 31 to find him, including enlisting the help of U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich’s office. A Heinrich spokesperson said the office had made efforts to find him but that “ICE is not providing timely or helpful responses to our inquiries.”
A recent change to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention policies has made it difficult to determine whether someone is in jail and, if so, at which detention center, said Sophia Genovese, a lawyer for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center who joined efforts this week to find Carrero-Marquez.
Following his arrest, Carrero-Marquez called his wife from detention somewhere in El Paso, Diaz-Ortiz said, and described severe pain in his head and back from the arrest, she said.
The last time she spoke to him, on Sunday, her husband “told me that they were taking him away, that he didn’t know where they were going, that he hadn’t seen a judge to decide whether he would be ordered to leave the country or not.”
When she hadn’t heard from him again on Tuesday, Diaz-Ortiz told Source she felt certain he was gone.
“I believe my husband has already been deported,” she said, because otherwise, “I believe he would have called me.”
On Wednesday morning, Diaz-Ortiz said she woke up after a long night of making deliveries to check ICE detention records for updates, which she’s done multiple times a day since his arrest.
She discovered, and Source confirmed, he was no longer listed in custody as of Wednesday morning. And he still had not called her, she told Source..
“I still don’t know anything about what happened to him,” she said.
"IT JUST SAYS TEXAS"
Carrero-Marquez’s arrest follows the pattern of recent ICE detentions, which leave little trail for lawyers or advocates to follow, said Genovese with the Immigration Law Center.
After being arrested and hospitalized, Carrero-Marquez called his wife from his hospital bed, she said. But hospital workers would neither confirm he was there nor allow her to see or speak with him in the emergency room, she said.
While the hospital would not confirm that Carrero-Marquez was hospitalized, a spokesperson said it has “Do Not Announce” protocols as part of federal patient privacy regulations and that patients may be under that protocol “for many reasons.”
The hospital staff had no choice but to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the hospital worker told Chavez, the state representative. A spokesperson for Presbyterian told Source that, while it cannot discuss specific patients, it is legally required to cooperate with all law enforcement agencies.
“We do not have policies designed to help or hinder any law enforcement or other governmental agencies,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement Friday.
The officers took Carrero-Marquez to jail, likely to the Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, Genovese said, though jail records never showed him being held there.
Diaz-Ortiz was the first person to hear from him, a few days after the arrest, when he called from El Paso, she said.
Before Wednesday, when his name disappeared completely, ICE records didn’t say where he’s being held, and instead only said “Texas,” instead of a facility name and address. According to Genovese, he could have been held at either the El Paso Service Processing Center or at a nearby former Border Patrol holding facility intended for short-term use that ICE recently took over.
The ICE takeover of the holding facility has resulted in confusion and difficulty for lawyers seeking to speak to their clients. It also means no one knows where detainees are being held.
“This is like a new trend, where we’re seeing a lot of people have the exact same situation where… it just says, ‘Texas.’ It doesn’t provide a detention facility,” Genovese said.
'THOUSANDS' OF ARRESTS PER DAY
As for why he might be in jail in the first place, Genovese said ICE agents increasingly have less discretion about detaining people who, like Carrero-Marquez, are appealing denials of asylum claims.
According to online records and a document provided by Diaz-Ortiz, a judge denied Carrero-Marquez’s asylum request in February. Records also show he is appealing that denial, and that the appeal is pending.
While he has not yet received a final removal order, ICE has discretion to detain him during “removal proceedings,” his current status., Genovese said.
That said, given the sheer number of people currently in “removal proceedings” with pending appeals, ICE typically would not find and detain people until a final removal order is issued, Genovese said.
ICE, “for very real capacity reasons, given the limited number of beds nationwide and the millions of cases pending at immigration court, frequently exercised discretion in the form of releasing people on their own recognizance pending their removal proceedings,” Genovese said
But President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportation has removed ICE’s choice about when and where to arrest people, she said.
“It’s changed now under the Trump administration, where there is a mandate, a requirement, that ICE make thousands of arrests per day,” she said. “And they are targeting people with active removal proceedings, many of whom do not have any sort of interaction with law enforcement which would trigger mandatory detention.”
'WE CAME HERE FOR A BETTER FUTURE’
Carrero-Marquez’s daughter recently celebrated graduation at a South Valley school. His wife shared a picture showing the three of them smiling, with her in a graduation gown.
Since witnessing her father’s arrest, the girl is depressed, Diaz-Ortiz said, and afraid of anyone who looks like a police officer.
Diaz-Ortiz doesn’t know whether ICE will come next for her or her daughter, whether she should enroll her daughter back in school or what to do next. But she still has to work.
On Tuesday, she took her daughter along with her as she made deliveries for DoorDash, she said, suddenly the sole caregiver and sole income earner in her family.
Amid the confusion and uncertainty about her husband’s whereabouts, Diaz-Ortiz said she is terrified about the prospect of him being deported back to Venezuela due to his injuries and the government’s repressive policies.
“In Venezuela you can’t speak freely or say what you want because they attack you,” she said. “We came here for a better future.”
Green chile worker ‘caught’ in machine – Josh Lee, nm.news
A worker injury at one of the state’s largest green chile producers highlights the life-threatening consequences that can occur when companies ignore safety regulations.
Young Guns Chile Co. was recently cited by the New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED) Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) for failing to follow safety regulations, resulting in a serious injury that reportedly landed one employee in the hospital.
According to the OHSB citation, the Hatch-based company violated a number of safety regulations, including failing to provide proper machine guarding to protect workers from rotating parts. At least one employee suffered a serious injury in August 2024 when they were “caught by machine parts.” That injury resulted in a hospital stay.“
Every New Mexico business has the responsibility to protect its workers, chiefly by following OHSB regulations,” says Bob Genoway, Deputy Director of Compliance and Enforcement at OHSB. “When businesses don’t follow the rules, employees are the ones who pay the price. This case is a prime example of that.”
Young Guns Chile is considered one of the largest players in the New Mexico green chile game, processing approximately 40 million pounds of chile during the summer harvest season out of a 60,000-square-foot facility in Hatch. The company’s fresh and frozen green chiles are a regular sight in grocery stores across the nation, and it also supplies a number of nationwide foodservice providers. Its products can be found in big-name stores like Kroger, Smith’s Food and Drug and even on Amazon.
With that much experience under its belt, it may come as a surprise that the company failed to provide basic protective equipment to keep its employees from having their limbs injured, but that’s exactly what state inspectors discovered.
Worse yet, the inspection took place in October, around 66 days after the incident—and there were still no methods of machine guarding in place.
According to state regulations, the company was also required to report any accident that results in amputation, loss of an eye or inpatient hospital admission within 24 hours. But inspectors said Young Guns never reported the incident, and the state only learned about it during the October inspection.Inspectors found two other serious violations in October as well.
Young Guns was dinged for failing to certify periodic machine inspections of equipment that utilized the state’s energy control procedures. These procedures are in place to keep equipment from accidentally release of hazardous energy during maintenance. It was also hit for failing to properly train employees on the procedures, “due to inadequate and conflicting training material and policies.”
The inspectors also found that fire extinguishers on the property were not inspected monthly, although it designated this an “other than serious” violation.
The company was hit with five citations in all, but penalties were only given for the three serious violations—each costing $14,464 for a grand total of $43,392.
Young Guns Chile did not respond to requests for comment.
State environment department adds terms for Los Alamos National Lab radioactive gas release — Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
The New Mexico Environment Department says Los Alamos National Laboratory will need to meet additional conditions before the state will sign off on a release of radioactive gas, and lambasted the lab for allowing the problem to mount over decades.
The issue concerns four containers the lab packed in 2007, which contain radioactive gas tritium and some hazardous waste, and require pressure release by 2028 in order to be transported and disposed of. LANL has requested state officials sign off on a plan to release small amounts of gas over time to relieve the pressure, and said the releases will not harm the environment and human health.
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, can be naturally occurring or a byproduct from nuclear research, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA characterizes the gas as a lower threat, emitting radiation that often cannot penetrate the skin and leaves the body quickly when consumed as tritiated water.
In a June 9 letter to officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration and private contractor Triad National Security, which operate LANL, NMED Secretary James Kenney decreed the lab will need to hire an independent technical reviewer for the plan; hold public meetings and tribal consultations; and submit to an audit of hazardous waste disposal operations, before approval will be given.
“In closing, the historical gross mismanagement of these waste streams by DOE and NNSA have placed NMED in an untenable situation. Now, the risk of inaction poses a far greater threat than a technical solution, but no technical solution is free from risk,” Kenney wrote. “Your disregard of state laws and rules governing these wastes for almost 20 years greatly exacerbated this situation and put New Mexicans, tribal communities, and our environment at risk.”
The state believes the laboratory can conduct the steps needed for approval within three months, New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection Division Director Rick Shean said in an interview with Source NM Tuesday.
He said the time pressure from LANL on the plan could have been mitigated in the years since the waste containers were found in 2007.
“If they had dealt with that closer to that discovery time, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now,” Shean said. “So it was their lack of action when the problem was identified that has made this problem worse.”
The letter accompanied a complaint the New Mexico Environment Department filed over a failure of the federal government to fund the state’s independent oversight of national lab activities. While the funding was eventually restored, the complaint said, the department incurred a little more than $8,400 in administrative costs and jeopardized water, air and soil monitoring programs — including for tritium releases.
The complaint requests that federal officials sign a commitment for future funds, issue reports to Congress on the funding and explicitly request the NNSA be named as a responsible party.
Federal officials have the chance to appeal the complaint in a hearing process before NMED.
Source NM emailed officials at Triad and the NNSA for comment late afternoon Tuesday, and will update the stories with further statements as needed.
State workers say they were gaslit by top brass over hazards at Albuquerque office — Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
Workers at a state-leased office building in Albuquerque have faced health issues and frustration after several workplace issues were largely ignored by top agency officials, according to labor union leaders.
The issues include a gas leak at the Homestead Building that caused employees to be sent home on paid administrative leave for four business days last month. Employees were later sent home early on another day when the problem persisted.
Dylan Pell, a Department of Health employee and the Communications Workers of America local union’s agency vice president, said the gas leak incident came after a toxic spray used in the building during work hours in April caused several employees to seek medical attention.
“There are a large number of workers who just don’t feel safe in the building,” Pell said this week.
The issues prompted CWA to file a grievance with Health Secretary Gina DeBlassie, in which the union’s president accused DOH officials of having “systematically endangered” its workforce by downplaying employee concerns and retaliating against whistleblowers.
Specifically, the grievance claims DOH initially responded to concerns about the toxic spray by asserting it did not pose a hazard to employees, while also instructing workers not to talk to one another about workplace safety issues.
A DOH spokesman said this week the agency has followed proper protocols in responding to the gas leak, including reporting the incident to the state Occupational Health and Safety Bureau.
DOH spokesman Robert Nott also said the agency has contracted with an outside company to perform an environmental assessment of the building to ensure the safety of its occupants, even after the leak was fixed.
“The New Mexico Department of Health takes these concerns very seriously,” Nott said in a statement. “We value the lives and contributions of all our employees.”
But another DOH employee, Jenn Schusterman, said top DOH officials have not been forthcoming about the workplace issues, including failing to initially say why the building was being evacuated after the gas leak was detected.
She also said she suffered from a headache and dizziness after the toxic spray incident, and was forced to work in a conference room instead of her usual desk space.
“They never were transparent with us to let us know what happened,” said Shusterman, who is an epidemiologist and CWA union steward.
“They’re not treating us like humans,” she added. “They’re treating us like cogs in a wheel.”
The Homestead Building is leased by the state for employees from two different agencies — DOH and the state Health Care Authority. Combined, the two agencies pay about $98,000 per month for the 30,000-square foot facility, according to General Services Department records.
In all, about 200 DOH employees are based at the building, according to the agency.
Meanwhile, the dispute over workplace safety comes more than two years after New Mexico state employees were ordered to return to in-person work by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration in February 2023.
That directive rescinded a telework policy negotiated during the COVID-19 pandemic, after it drew scrutiny from legislators and the public. Remote work is currently allowed only in limited circumstances to comply with federal law, meaning the DOH employees who were sent home after the gas leak was detected were not allowed to work while on leave.
Proposed RENT Ordinance aims to rein in unfair rental practices- Justin Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
The Albuquerque City Council is set to consider sweeping new rules that would overhaul the rental process citywide, aiming to protect tenants from hidden fees, housing instability and unresponsive landlords.
The bill, known as Renter’s Empowerment and Neighborhood Transparency (RENT) Ordinance, would enshrine several protections around almost every part of the renting experience. The bill addresses nearly all aspects of the rental process and would impact every landlord and renter in the city. Statistics from the American Community Survey show that about 44% of households in Albuquerque rent.
But it’s far from guaranteed to pass.
“I think that this council has proven in the past that they’re not interested in helping renters very much,” said Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn, who is sponsoring the bill on behalf of the mayor’s office. “But recently, we did get two pieces of tenant protections passed.”
Those two pieces were an ordinance mandating landlords provide cooling for tenants and a bill that created a code enforcement position to respond directly to renters’ issues.
The bill also faces opposition from landlord advocates.
“While the stated intent of this legislation may be to protect tenants, in practice, it burdens responsible landlords, increases operational and legal risk, and would discourage housing investment in Albuquerque,” said Alan LaSeck, executive director of the Apartment Association of New Mexico.
LaSeck went on to say the proposals ignore the realities of managing rental housing and would lead to reduced availability, higher costs and greater conflict.
“Rather than fostering cooperation between tenants and owners, they threaten to drive housing providers out of the market, shrinking our housing supply, increasing rents and worsening the very problem we’re trying to solve,” LaSeck said.
What's in the RENT Ordnance?
Shanna Schultz, policy and government affairs administrator for the city, said the bill comes at a time when Albuquerque continues to grapple with a housing crisis.
A 2024 Denver-based Root Policy Research report, titled “Albuquerque Region Housing Needs Assessment,” found a significant shortage of units for low-income renters. The same report found that residents were spending more than a third of their monthly income on housing and that occupied units, such as apartments and single-family homes, often had more residents than rooms available.
“I think we know that building more homes is essential, but that’s not enough on its own. It’s not the only tool in the toolkit,” Schultz said. “We also need to protect the people who are already living in homes.”
Schultz, who authored the policy proposal, noted that the bill’s transparency provisions were among its most significant changes.
The RENT Ordinance would require landlords to disclose all costs of a rental agreement in plain language in their published listings. That includes anything on a background check that could disqualify an applicant, as well as minimum credit score or income requirements.
“This can help renters avoid surprise charges and do things like budget more confidently, which is very important in this economy right now,” Schultz said.
There are several other key provisions, including those around repairs. The ordinance grants the tenant the right to arrange for necessary maintenance by a licensed and insured professional. The tenant can also deduct the cost of the repair from their rent payment or receive reimbursement from the landlord when the landlord fails to make a repair.
Landlords would also be prohibited from charging fees and additional rent for companion animals, defined in the bill as typical pets not used for commercial purposes.
In all, the bill makes changes to rules around security deposits, relocation assistance, the rental application process, evictions, credit reporting requirements, move-in and move-out procedures and methods of payment.
It’s set to go before the Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee on June 11. If it advances, it’s unlikely to go before the full council until at least August, Schultz said.
“Why would landlords also be interested in this? And I think the answer to that is that clear rules reduce confusion and conflict,” Schultz said.
Last Saturday around 8 a.m., as she followed her husband to a mechanic in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Daniela Marina Diaz-Ortiz says she and her 5-year-old daughter watched, terrified, as federal immigration agents leapt out of four SUVs and pulled her husband to the ground.
“They stopped him and took him out of the car. They didn’t ask him for any identification. They didn’t tell him he was under arrest or anything like that,” she told Source in Spanish in an interview outside her home Monday afternoon. “They just pulled him out of the car, threw him on the ground, putting their feet on his back and head. At that moment, they also lifted him up by his neck and forced him into the truck.”
Jesus Jose Carrero-Marquez, 30, was hospitalized at the Presbyterian Hospital emergency room for hours, potentially due to injuries sustained in the arrest, his wife and others told Source NM.
Agents who waited outside Carrero-Marquez’s room told hospital workers that the detainee was a violent gang member, according to New Mexico Rep. Eleanor Chavez (D-Albuquerque), who advocates on behalf of working conditions for healthcare workers across the state. Chavez said she learned of the arrest from a hospital worker and relayed to Source what the worker told her.
Diaz-Ortiz adamantly denied her husband is violent or a criminal or in a gang. Source’s review of state and federal criminal records for Carrero-Marquez showed only a local traffic ticket in January.
Instead, Diaz-Ortiz said he is a father and husband who makes a living as a Doordash delivery driver, while seeking asylum on behalf of himself and his family after being injured in a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro several years ago. The lawyer representing his appeal did not respond to requests for comment.
Diaz-Ortiz showed Source photos the family is using in its asylum appeal that show what appear to be injuries to Carrero-Marquez’s leg and back, which left him with a punctured lung and a limp, she said.
Source could not determine why federal immigration authorities arrested Carrero-Marquez on May 31; why they purportedly took him to the hospital; where he is being detained; or whether he’s been deported.
A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions from Source about Carrero-Marquez’s arrest, their alleged use of force or his current location. A spokesperson said the agency would respond but had not as of publication time after multiple requests. Source will update the story as necessary.
Advocates, including Chavez and immigration lawyers, have tried since May 31 to find him, including enlisting the help of U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich’s office. A Heinrich spokesperson said the office had made efforts to find him but that “ICE is not providing timely or helpful responses to our inquiries.”
A recent change to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention policies has made it difficult to determine whether someone is in jail and, if so, at which detention center, said Sophia Genovese, a lawyer for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center who joined efforts this week to find Carrero-Marquez.
Following his arrest, Carrero-Marquez called his wife from detention somewhere in El Paso, Diaz-Ortiz said, and described severe pain in his head and back from the arrest, she said.
The last time she spoke to him, on Sunday, her husband “told me that they were taking him away, that he didn’t know where they were going, that he hadn’t seen a judge to decide whether he would be ordered to leave the country or not.”
When she hadn’t heard from him again on Tuesday, Diaz-Ortiz told Source she felt certain he was gone.
“I believe my husband has already been deported,” she said, because otherwise, “I believe he would have called me.”
On Wednesday morning, Diaz-Ortiz said she woke up after a long night of making deliveries to check ICE detention records for updates, which she’s done multiple times a day since his arrest.
She discovered, and Source confirmed, he was no longer listed in custody as of Wednesday morning. And he still had not called her, she told Source..
“I still don’t know anything about what happened to him,” she said.
"IT JUST SAYS TEXAS"
Carrero-Marquez’s arrest follows the pattern of recent ICE detentions, which leave little trail for lawyers or advocates to follow, said Genovese with the Immigration Law Center.
After being arrested and hospitalized, Carrero-Marquez called his wife from his hospital bed, she said. But hospital workers would neither confirm he was there nor allow her to see or speak with him in the emergency room, she said.
While the hospital would not confirm that Carrero-Marquez was hospitalized, a spokesperson said it has “Do Not Announce” protocols as part of federal patient privacy regulations and that patients may be under that protocol “for many reasons.”
The hospital staff had no choice but to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the hospital worker told Chavez, the state representative. A spokesperson for Presbyterian told Source that, while it cannot discuss specific patients, it is legally required to cooperate with all law enforcement agencies.
“We do not have policies designed to help or hinder any law enforcement or other governmental agencies,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement Friday.
The officers took Carrero-Marquez to jail, likely to the Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, Genovese said, though jail records never showed him being held there.
Diaz-Ortiz was the first person to hear from him, a few days after the arrest, when he called from El Paso, she said.
Before Wednesday, when his name disappeared completely, ICE records didn’t say where he’s being held, and instead only said “Texas,” instead of a facility name and address. According to Genovese, he could have been held at either the El Paso Service Processing Center or at a nearby former Border Patrol holding facility intended for short-term use that ICE recently took over.
The ICE takeover of the holding facility has resulted in confusion and difficulty for lawyers seeking to speak to their clients. It also means no one knows where detainees are being held.
“This is like a new trend, where we’re seeing a lot of people have the exact same situation where… it just says, ‘Texas.’ It doesn’t provide a detention facility,” Genovese said.
'THOUSANDS' OF ARRESTS PER DAY
As for why he might be in jail in the first place, Genovese said ICE agents increasingly have less discretion about detaining people who, like Carrero-Marquez, are appealing denials of asylum claims.
According to online records and a document provided by Diaz-Ortiz, a judge denied Carrero-Marquez’s asylum request in February. Records also show he is appealing that denial, and that the appeal is pending.
While he has not yet received a final removal order, ICE has discretion to detain him during “removal proceedings,” his current status., Genovese said.
That said, given the sheer number of people currently in “removal proceedings” with pending appeals, ICE typically would not find and detain people until a final removal order is issued, Genovese said.
ICE, “for very real capacity reasons, given the limited number of beds nationwide and the millions of cases pending at immigration court, frequently exercised discretion in the form of releasing people on their own recognizance pending their removal proceedings,” Genovese said
But President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportation has removed ICE’s choice about when and where to arrest people, she said.
“It’s changed now under the Trump administration, where there is a mandate, a requirement, that ICE make thousands of arrests per day,” she said. “And they are targeting people with active removal proceedings, many of whom do not have any sort of interaction with law enforcement which would trigger mandatory detention.”
'WE CAME HERE FOR A BETTER FUTURE’
Carrero-Marquez’s daughter recently celebrated graduation at a South Valley school. His wife shared a picture showing the three of them smiling, with her in a graduation gown.
Since witnessing her father’s arrest, the girl is depressed, Diaz-Ortiz said, and afraid of anyone who looks like a police officer.
Diaz-Ortiz doesn’t know whether ICE will come next for her or her daughter, whether she should enroll her daughter back in school or what to do next. But she still has to work.
On Tuesday, she took her daughter along with her as she made deliveries for DoorDash, she said, suddenly the sole caregiver and sole income earner in her family.
Amid the confusion and uncertainty about her husband’s whereabouts, Diaz-Ortiz said she is terrified about the prospect of him being deported back to Venezuela due to his injuries and the government’s repressive policies.
“In Venezuela you can’t speak freely or say what you want because they attack you,” she said. “We came here for a better future.”
Green chile worker ‘caught’ in machine – Josh Lee, nm.news
A worker injury at one of the state’s largest green chile producers highlights the life-threatening consequences that can occur when companies ignore safety regulations.
Young Guns Chile Co. was recently cited by the New Mexico Environment Department’s (NMED) Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) for failing to follow safety regulations, resulting in a serious injury that reportedly landed one employee in the hospital.
According to the OHSB citation, the Hatch-based company violated a number of safety regulations, including failing to provide proper machine guarding to protect workers from rotating parts. At least one employee suffered a serious injury in August 2024 when they were “caught by machine parts.” That injury resulted in a hospital stay.“
Every New Mexico business has the responsibility to protect its workers, chiefly by following OHSB regulations,” says Bob Genoway, Deputy Director of Compliance and Enforcement at OHSB. “When businesses don’t follow the rules, employees are the ones who pay the price. This case is a prime example of that.”
Young Guns Chile is considered one of the largest players in the New Mexico green chile game, processing approximately 40 million pounds of chile during the summer harvest season out of a 60,000-square-foot facility in Hatch. The company’s fresh and frozen green chiles are a regular sight in grocery stores across the nation, and it also supplies a number of nationwide foodservice providers. Its products can be found in big-name stores like Kroger, Smith’s Food and Drug and even on Amazon.
With that much experience under its belt, it may come as a surprise that the company failed to provide basic protective equipment to keep its employees from having their limbs injured, but that’s exactly what state inspectors discovered.
Worse yet, the inspection took place in October, around 66 days after the incident—and there were still no methods of machine guarding in place.
According to state regulations, the company was also required to report any accident that results in amputation, loss of an eye or inpatient hospital admission within 24 hours. But inspectors said Young Guns never reported the incident, and the state only learned about it during the October inspection.Inspectors found two other serious violations in October as well.
Young Guns was dinged for failing to certify periodic machine inspections of equipment that utilized the state’s energy control procedures. These procedures are in place to keep equipment from accidentally release of hazardous energy during maintenance. It was also hit for failing to properly train employees on the procedures, “due to inadequate and conflicting training material and policies.”
The inspectors also found that fire extinguishers on the property were not inspected monthly, although it designated this an “other than serious” violation.
The company was hit with five citations in all, but penalties were only given for the three serious violations—each costing $14,464 for a grand total of $43,392.
Young Guns Chile did not respond to requests for comment.
State environment department adds terms for Los Alamos National Lab radioactive gas release — Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
The New Mexico Environment Department says Los Alamos National Laboratory will need to meet additional conditions before the state will sign off on a release of radioactive gas, and lambasted the lab for allowing the problem to mount over decades.
The issue concerns four containers the lab packed in 2007, which contain radioactive gas tritium and some hazardous waste, and require pressure release by 2028 in order to be transported and disposed of. LANL has requested state officials sign off on a plan to release small amounts of gas over time to relieve the pressure, and said the releases will not harm the environment and human health.
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, can be naturally occurring or a byproduct from nuclear research, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA characterizes the gas as a lower threat, emitting radiation that often cannot penetrate the skin and leaves the body quickly when consumed as tritiated water.
In a June 9 letter to officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration and private contractor Triad National Security, which operate LANL, NMED Secretary James Kenney decreed the lab will need to hire an independent technical reviewer for the plan; hold public meetings and tribal consultations; and submit to an audit of hazardous waste disposal operations, before approval will be given.
“In closing, the historical gross mismanagement of these waste streams by DOE and NNSA have placed NMED in an untenable situation. Now, the risk of inaction poses a far greater threat than a technical solution, but no technical solution is free from risk,” Kenney wrote. “Your disregard of state laws and rules governing these wastes for almost 20 years greatly exacerbated this situation and put New Mexicans, tribal communities, and our environment at risk.”
The state believes the laboratory can conduct the steps needed for approval within three months, New Mexico Environment Department Resource Protection Division Director Rick Shean said in an interview with Source NM Tuesday.
He said the time pressure from LANL on the plan could have been mitigated in the years since the waste containers were found in 2007.
“If they had dealt with that closer to that discovery time, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now,” Shean said. “So it was their lack of action when the problem was identified that has made this problem worse.”
The letter accompanied a complaint the New Mexico Environment Department filed over a failure of the federal government to fund the state’s independent oversight of national lab activities. While the funding was eventually restored, the complaint said, the department incurred a little more than $8,400 in administrative costs and jeopardized water, air and soil monitoring programs — including for tritium releases.
The complaint requests that federal officials sign a commitment for future funds, issue reports to Congress on the funding and explicitly request the NNSA be named as a responsible party.
Federal officials have the chance to appeal the complaint in a hearing process before NMED.
Source NM emailed officials at Triad and the NNSA for comment late afternoon Tuesday, and will update the stories with further statements as needed.
State workers say they were gaslit by top brass over hazards at Albuquerque office — Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
Workers at a state-leased office building in Albuquerque have faced health issues and frustration after several workplace issues were largely ignored by top agency officials, according to labor union leaders.
The issues include a gas leak at the Homestead Building that caused employees to be sent home on paid administrative leave for four business days last month. Employees were later sent home early on another day when the problem persisted.
Dylan Pell, a Department of Health employee and the Communications Workers of America local union’s agency vice president, said the gas leak incident came after a toxic spray used in the building during work hours in April caused several employees to seek medical attention.
“There are a large number of workers who just don’t feel safe in the building,” Pell said this week.
The issues prompted CWA to file a grievance with Health Secretary Gina DeBlassie, in which the union’s president accused DOH officials of having “systematically endangered” its workforce by downplaying employee concerns and retaliating against whistleblowers.
Specifically, the grievance claims DOH initially responded to concerns about the toxic spray by asserting it did not pose a hazard to employees, while also instructing workers not to talk to one another about workplace safety issues.
A DOH spokesman said this week the agency has followed proper protocols in responding to the gas leak, including reporting the incident to the state Occupational Health and Safety Bureau.
DOH spokesman Robert Nott also said the agency has contracted with an outside company to perform an environmental assessment of the building to ensure the safety of its occupants, even after the leak was fixed.
“The New Mexico Department of Health takes these concerns very seriously,” Nott said in a statement. “We value the lives and contributions of all our employees.”
But another DOH employee, Jenn Schusterman, said top DOH officials have not been forthcoming about the workplace issues, including failing to initially say why the building was being evacuated after the gas leak was detected.
She also said she suffered from a headache and dizziness after the toxic spray incident, and was forced to work in a conference room instead of her usual desk space.
“They never were transparent with us to let us know what happened,” said Shusterman, who is an epidemiologist and CWA union steward.
“They’re not treating us like humans,” she added. “They’re treating us like cogs in a wheel.”
The Homestead Building is leased by the state for employees from two different agencies — DOH and the state Health Care Authority. Combined, the two agencies pay about $98,000 per month for the 30,000-square foot facility, according to General Services Department records.
In all, about 200 DOH employees are based at the building, according to the agency.
Meanwhile, the dispute over workplace safety comes more than two years after New Mexico state employees were ordered to return to in-person work by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration in February 2023.
That directive rescinded a telework policy negotiated during the COVID-19 pandemic, after it drew scrutiny from legislators and the public. Remote work is currently allowed only in limited circumstances to comply with federal law, meaning the DOH employees who were sent home after the gas leak was detected were not allowed to work while on leave.
Proposed RENT Ordinance aims to rein in unfair rental practices- Justin Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
The Albuquerque City Council is set to consider sweeping new rules that would overhaul the rental process citywide, aiming to protect tenants from hidden fees, housing instability and unresponsive landlords.
The bill, known as Renter’s Empowerment and Neighborhood Transparency (RENT) Ordinance, would enshrine several protections around almost every part of the renting experience. The bill addresses nearly all aspects of the rental process and would impact every landlord and renter in the city. Statistics from the American Community Survey show that about 44% of households in Albuquerque rent.
But it’s far from guaranteed to pass.
“I think that this council has proven in the past that they’re not interested in helping renters very much,” said Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn, who is sponsoring the bill on behalf of the mayor’s office. “But recently, we did get two pieces of tenant protections passed.”
Those two pieces were an ordinance mandating landlords provide cooling for tenants and a bill that created a code enforcement position to respond directly to renters’ issues.
The bill also faces opposition from landlord advocates.
“While the stated intent of this legislation may be to protect tenants, in practice, it burdens responsible landlords, increases operational and legal risk, and would discourage housing investment in Albuquerque,” said Alan LaSeck, executive director of the Apartment Association of New Mexico.
LaSeck went on to say the proposals ignore the realities of managing rental housing and would lead to reduced availability, higher costs and greater conflict.
“Rather than fostering cooperation between tenants and owners, they threaten to drive housing providers out of the market, shrinking our housing supply, increasing rents and worsening the very problem we’re trying to solve,” LaSeck said.
What's in the RENT Ordnance?
Shanna Schultz, policy and government affairs administrator for the city, said the bill comes at a time when Albuquerque continues to grapple with a housing crisis.
A 2024 Denver-based Root Policy Research report, titled “Albuquerque Region Housing Needs Assessment,” found a significant shortage of units for low-income renters. The same report found that residents were spending more than a third of their monthly income on housing and that occupied units, such as apartments and single-family homes, often had more residents than rooms available.
“I think we know that building more homes is essential, but that’s not enough on its own. It’s not the only tool in the toolkit,” Schultz said. “We also need to protect the people who are already living in homes.”
Schultz, who authored the policy proposal, noted that the bill’s transparency provisions were among its most significant changes.
The RENT Ordinance would require landlords to disclose all costs of a rental agreement in plain language in their published listings. That includes anything on a background check that could disqualify an applicant, as well as minimum credit score or income requirements.
“This can help renters avoid surprise charges and do things like budget more confidently, which is very important in this economy right now,” Schultz said.
There are several other key provisions, including those around repairs. The ordinance grants the tenant the right to arrange for necessary maintenance by a licensed and insured professional. The tenant can also deduct the cost of the repair from their rent payment or receive reimbursement from the landlord when the landlord fails to make a repair.
Landlords would also be prohibited from charging fees and additional rent for companion animals, defined in the bill as typical pets not used for commercial purposes.
In all, the bill makes changes to rules around security deposits, relocation assistance, the rental application process, evictions, credit reporting requirements, move-in and move-out procedures and methods of payment.
It’s set to go before the Land Use, Planning and Zoning Committee on June 11. If it advances, it’s unlikely to go before the full council until at least August, Schultz said.
“Why would landlords also be interested in this? And I think the answer to that is that clear rules reduce confusion and conflict,” Schultz said.