A new article from far-left outlet Truthout is openly confirming what many suspected all along: New Mexico’s so-called “Immigrant Safety Act” was designed to obstruct federal immigration enforcement, cripple ICE detention capacity, and serve as a model for other blue states seeking to undermine deportation operations.
In the piece, titled “New Mexico Becomes the Latest State to End Cooperation With ICE Under New Law,” activists and legal architects behind the legislation admit that the law’s purpose is to interfere with President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda by cutting off detention space needed for removals.
Sophia Genovese, an attorney who worked on both the New Jersey and New Mexico campaigns, told Truthout plainly: “Ending local and state cooperation with ICE is an important way of throwing sand in the gears of the Trump administration’s mass deportation machine.”
She added the clearest admission of all: “There cannot be mass deportations without detention.”
That statement confirms the law was never merely about public safety or local control. It was crafted specifically to obstruct deportations by reducing ICE’s access to detention facilities in New Mexico.
Truthout’s reporting further shows New Mexico’s legislation is being celebrated nationally as a template for similar anti-ICE laws across the country.
“We see a tremendous upswelling of this type of legislation being proposed in different states across the country,” said Rebecca Sheff of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, who helped draft the law.
Sheff said the current political climate is “a time to make the most of the political willingness to take bold action,” making clear activists see New Mexico as a launching pad for broader national efforts.
Truthout reports that comparable “Dignity, Not Detention” laws are already in place in California, New Jersey, Washington, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland, while organizers in New York are actively pushing similar legislation. New Mexico is now being held up as the newest success story in that campaign.
The article also makes clear that New Mexico’s law is intended to force ICE out of existing detention contracts in counties like Torrance and Cibola.
“These agreements will no longer be legal,” Truthout states, noting the law requires public entities to terminate those contracts as soon as permitted.
That means New Mexico counties will lose detention-related jobs, revenue, and economic activity tied to those contracts—all while ICE simply shifts detainees elsewhere.
Rather than ending detention, the law pushes illegal immigrants into facilities in neighboring states such as Texas, where ICE maintains other detention infrastructure, including facilities like Camp East Montana. New Mexico loses the economic benefits while other states receive the detainees and federal dollars.
Truthout also reveals the ideological extremism driving the law.
One activist quoted in the piece described immigration detention as “literally kidnapping and disappearing folks into these systems.” Another said the goal is to “abolish immigration detention” altogether.
Those statements expose the broader agenda behind the legislation: not reform, but dismantlement of the immigration enforcement system itself.
The article further praises New Mexico for using state authority under the 10th Amendment to resist federal immigration enforcement and “withhold state involvement in ICE detention,” as Sheff put it.
In short, Truthout’s own reporting makes the purpose of New Mexico’s anti-ICE law unmistakable: the state is being used as a pawn in a national progressive campaign to obstruct deportations, dismantle ICE detention infrastructure, and export radical anti-enforcement policy to other states.
What supporters marketed as an “immigrant safety” bill is, by their own admission, a strategic effort to jam the machinery of federal immigration enforcement—while New Mexico counties and taxpayers bear the cost.
NM dont need no stinking law and order. we need anarchy , chaos, and hand outs, not hand ups. Viva La Revolution. Eat the rich and gimmee my freebies.
You’re right, Jack Off- NM wants a return to the Wild West.
Congressman Vasquez has made it clear that he wants ICE facilities shut down NmM and everywhere in the country. But he doesn’t say what would happen to detainees or the fearful
people in the community, once detainees are released.
Best thing to do is for everyone to vote democrat in the primary and check the box against Haaland. She is just an Obama marionette and will further drive the state into ruin.
It should be a matter of time before the federal government takes federal funds away from states that do not support ice and other programs like providing voter roles for review. I say take federal funds away, all of it, disregard NM votes (so we lose or federal representative to other sates.) I already only have a voice at the county level, as there is no representation at the state or federal level for conservatives (at least my part of the county) . Let’s see how long the NM libtards and socialist last when the state pays for all the roads, all the food stamps, all the schools, ……… My guess the democrats in weirdo Santa Fe will be fine with it, but when they run out of NM money the people may change on them.
Federal judges wont let the money stop flowing. The quiet secret is that when a dem wins the presidency in 2028 they are going to financially bail out cities like Chicago, LA, Baltimore, etc, that are in financial distress. Those cities are unable to balance their books because of pension obligations and freebie programs that they will not change.
Not surprised in the least. What do you expect from demoNcrats?
Time to go to Texas law and order