During a Tuesday meeting of the Legislative Courts, Corrections, and Justice Committee, state Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces), chairman of the committee, compared federal immigration enforcement to the Ku Klux Klan. Cervantes chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee during the regular session.
The Ku Klux Klan, founded after the Civil War, is notorious as a violent white supremacist organization that lynched Black Americans and their allies, terrorized communities with cross burnings, and is widely recognized as the nation’s first terrorist group. Its bloody history of racial hatred and political violence is well documented.
In stark contrast, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are federal law enforcement officers tasked with carrying out immigration laws passed by Congress and upheld by the courts. Many ICE agents now conceal their identities in public because of doxxing campaigns, harassment, and threats targeting both them and their families. Just last month, DHS reported that in San Francisco, ICE agents and their families were credibly threatened. It has not been reported that any Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have covered their faces in New Mexico, although it is probably advisable, given the hostile legislative makeup of the state, which now equates them to the KKK.
The committee’s agenda included a presentation titled “Enforcing Immigration and Civil Liberties — State and Local Government Roles and Risks.” Speakers were primarily from organizations that advocate for illegal immigrants, including Somos Un Pueblo Unido and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. An attorney from the New Mexico Association of Counties also spoke about potential county liability, and State Ethics Commission Director Jeremy Farris discussed a lawsuit his agency filed against the New Mexico Department of Corrections. That suit alleges the department shared information with ICE about three individuals — one with a single DWI charge, another with three DWIs, and a third with three counts of battery on a police officer.
At one point, a representative of the pro-illegal immigrant groups claimed that children were being “taken in the night” and deported despite supposed exemptions. Left unsaid was that many of these children were sent north by parents who abandoned them to human traffickers and cartels. Countless minors endure abuse — including sexual violence — while being smuggled into the United States.
Committee Democrats also expressed outrage that Curry County’s sheriff had signed an agreement with the federal government to serve warrants. Vice Chair Christine Chandler (D-Los Alamos), an attorney, declared: “I think it’s not right that we’re using state or public funds to be supporting these kinds of activities. I’m proud of how we, in the Legislature, have been responding to this assault on individuals who are in this country, many of them, most of them are not criminals. We know that to be the case—young people who are attempting… who are put on ICE airplanes in the middle of the night. Children who are returning to their countries are not criminals. And it’s a lie to try to posture in those ways. We are protecting the disenfranchised, and I’m very proud of that, and if we can find other ways to make sure that happens, I think we should be working on that.”
But the most incendiary comments came from Cervantes himself. Closing out the discussion, he said: “When children are being put on planes and people are being taken in the night and people are raiding mobile home parks and they are doing it with masks and, you know, something we haven’t seen since the KKK days, right? And so we’re in a place that we don’t want to be going.” Cervantes then vowed to fight deportations with lawsuits. Notably, Cervantes is a trial attorney himself.
By equating federal law enforcement officers upholding U.S. immigration law to one of America’s most violent hate groups, Cervantes revealed the extreme partisan lens through which New Mexico Democrats are approaching immigration policy — a position that undermines both public safety and respect for the rule of law.
Cervantes never worked on any criminal actions these smugglers do. It shows.
Like the Cinderella story I worked…, a 14 year old child treated like a slave and didn’t know why for almost 13 of her 14 years she was treated that way. In the farm fields, in a one 5’x10′ concrete block room, no direct heat or air conditioning, a small bed and a backpack with two days worth of clothing. She was told to work at 4 or 5 picking Chile in New Mexico and didn’t know why she had to, other than her so called “Brothers” did…and when she couldn’t keep up, she was forced to clean the so called LEGAL IMMIGRANTS home to earn her keep, washing dishes she didn’t dirty, doing clothes she didn’t wear, sweeping a floor she would never inherit. No loving hug from a mother or a kiss on the cheek from a father, BECAUSE SHE WASNT THEIR CHILD.
Her mother gave her up, to a couple who were getting papers to cross… at like 1 year old. The couple even falsified her name as their child, then worked that little girl like a slave for 13 f’ing years until she found out she was given up by her mother to these “POS LAWFUL” immigrants. Lawful immigrants who forged the girls real identity to the federal gooberment in El Paso, obtained a so called LEGAL immigration card with a false name, until she was told who she really was, after she confided in high school in Deming to a friend what her life was and her true real name…
I was involved in that fiasco… I saw the girls worldly possessions (one red backpack with maybe 2 days worth of clothes) and her room she had to pay rent for,(bare gray concrete walls, no posters no pictures, nothing on them), from money she had to earn from like age 5 to 14 to pay the so called LEGAL IMMIGRANTS who crossed her into the USA under a false identity.
Then Attorney General Patricia Madrid under Governor Richardson were made aware of this story and many many more… by me, personally when they asked, in 2005-2006 after getting shot at by a pi$$ed off Mexican shooting across the USA-Mexico border towards me… and that resulted in the human trafficking law to come about in 2008 by King…a law that the DNC of New Mexico has balked at since its inception.
Cervantes… you are… the Piece of Sh*t the world needs to know about. Without US CUSTOMS working with me and with that victim 14 year old girl… her life may have ended in ways that you, you worthless POS NM Democrat or Dead a$$hole, could never imagine and you cannot fathom the destructive behavior you are causing.
If I was still working, I would do everything within my power to put a stop to your insane rant and demand that you remove yourself from the Democrat or Dead hazmat environment you continue to cause.
You, politician or not, are, and the Democratic Party of NM still supporting your sh*t platforms is; the PUREST FORM OF A TRUE NAZI.
Cervantes is a POS, cares nothing for NM, only making money, just an arrogant pri%k