I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the Albuquerque City Council voted down a challenge to Mayor Richard Berry’s policy of checking immigration status of everyone arrested, regardless of nationality, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
The vote was along party lines, with the council’s four Democrats hoping to halt the policy and its five Republicans voting to uphold the policy. The verdict on the policy followed a vigorous debate between opponents and supporters, writer Dan McKay tells us.
Monday’s vote came amid a burgeoning national debate over immigration sparked by Arizona’s new law that empowers that that state’s law enforcement to stop anyone on the reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally. Two New Mexicans on Monday joined a lawsuit challenging that law in federal court.
The vote also comes amid election season in New Mexico, with the state’s primary election day only two weeks away and with immigration emerging as an issue.
The city’s policy differs from Arizona’s law in that only people who are arrested will have their immigration status checked, city officials have said. It does not give Albuquerque police the power to stop anyone on the reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally, as Arizona’s law does.
The city’s new policy isn’t necessarily a surprise to those who followed last year’s Albuquerque mayoral election, when Berry criticized how Albuquerque handled immigration status questioning. The city at the time permitted officers to inquire about an individual’s immigration status only when it was pertinent to a criminal investigation. Berry repeatedly derided Albuquerque as as a ‘sanctuary city.’
Berry said during last year’s mayoral campaign that APD should instead operate under rules more like those of Bernalillo County, which allowed officers to report a suspected undocumented immigrant once an arrest is made, regardless of what the arrest was for.
