The lawyers are playing the alarm on the unknown whereabouts of 48 people after immigration raids swept three cities in New Mexico in March.
The American Union of Civil Liberties of New Mexico said in a civil rights complaint that the absence of families looking for loved ones who were taken is an anomaly. They are asking for an investigation into the whereabouts and well -being of the “missing persons” in the complaint filed on Sunday before the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the Department of National Security.
People were “snatched” in Santa Fe, Roswell and Albuquerque, and ACLU and other organizations have not been able to locate them since the raids of a week that ended on March 8, said Rebecca Sheff, the main lawyer of ACLU New Mexico.
“We have no one and those are exactly the concerns, which have been effectively” missing. “
“Disappeared” is a word that has been used more frequently in reference to the persons secreted by the Army or the Police in repressive regimes in Latin America and other regions.
NBC News did not immediately receive an answer after asking the DHS about the whereabouts of those arrested and if anyone had been deported or released.
On March 12, ICE issued a statement by saying that the arrests of 48 people had made “illegal foreigners” in the country with deportation orders or who were accused or convicted of serious crimes. He said that 21 had final extraction orders and the charges and convictions were for crimes that went from homicide to sexual crimes, robberies, aggression and others.
The statement added that others were arrested for entering the country illegally or re -entered without authorization.
Several years ago, ICE created a location system for detainees because the agency often considers them and keeps them in rural places far from where they were arrested or living. But names or other identification information are needed for the system to be used, said Acu New Mexico in your complaint.
Commonly, groups that work in immigrant communities and their leaders will listen to families looking for their relatives, spouses and others. But Sheff said the groups are not receiving information. It is not clear why families are not coming, but concerns about deportation and immigration status could be a factor.
Sheff said he was in a room full of defenders of the community “committed to protecting our communities on the edge of tears” on Monday morning because they had little or no information about arrested people.
“They do not listen to any family to say, hey, my person disappeared,” he said, adding that the situation is scary, particularly in the context of President Donald Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Law.
Trump invoked the law of 1798 to deport Hundreds of people who the administration said they were suspicious members of the Trena de Aragua gang. The deportations occurred despite the fact that the order of a judge blocked them and ordered that the airplanes in the air turned around. The administration has said that the planes that lead the deported people landed before the order was issued and, therefore, did not happen challenging the judge’s order.
“I used to work internationally … and we would find ourselves routinely in circumstances in which people were collected and effectively disappeared, they kept incommunicado, mistreated, they were not available, families did not know where they were,” said Sheff.
“Being in a situation now in which the appropriate word for what is happening here, indeed, are the disappearances, should pause everyone,” he said.
