Heath Haussamen
Albuquerque mayoral candidate Darren White wants us to believe that federal immigration agents are conducting “legitimate law enforcement operations” in our neighborhoods.
But these raids, led by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and involving other federal agencies, are primarily racist roundups intended to terrorize communities and lock people up in what are effectively concentration camps.
White, a Republican, retired cop, and former Albuquerque TV reporter, was once a fairly moderate guy. But instead of siding with the conservatives who have stood up to President Donald Trump’s gestapo tactics, like former U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh, White has aligned himself with the MAGA cult and heartless extremist Stephen Miller.
“I make no apologies for my position,” White said Monday on social media in pledging, if elected, to end city policies protecting immigrants.
That puts him at odds with New Mexico and our state’s history and values. We need to defeat folks like White in every election if we are to save our democracy.
Keller takes a stand
White’s defense of ICE came in response to the incumbent mayor he’s trying to unseat, Democrat Tim Keller, making an announcement on social media earlier this month that people could call the Albuquerque Police Department to “verify if federal agents are operating in our city.”
Declaring Albuquerque an “immigrant friendly” city, Keller said, “when something doesn’t feel right in your neighborhood, you deserve to know what’s going on.”
ICE agreed to share information with police about operations in the city, APD says. The public can call (505) 242-COPS to ask about something they see happening, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Dispatchers will contact ICE and relay the answer back to the caller.
I’m skeptical that ICE will actually verify such information. Regardless, Keller’s attempt to create better transparency is a positive move.
White disagrees. He wrote a letter to the acting U.S. attorney for New Mexico, Ryan Ellison, requesting an investigation into whether Keller is violating federal law. He said publicizing the presence of law enforcement could create danger and compromise operations.
White also said Keller may be aiding immigrants without legal status who are committing crimes.
White’s request to the acting U.S. attorney is nothing more than a publicity stunt. If ICE shares White’s concerns, it can refuse to provide information to the city. It’s that simple.
‘We will not be complicit’
Albuquerque, which is a sanctuary city, has a real crime issue. But White, who promises to repeal Albuquerque’s sanctuary law, is trying to capitalize on voter sentiment about crime by throwing immigrants under the bus.
Keller signed an executive order Monday affirming and expanding city policies designed to protect immigrants, calling it “a statement of policy that we will not be complicit in anything that violates civil rights or that destabilizes our community.”
White responded by accusing the mayor of “providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, rather than prioritizing the safety and well-being of our law-abiding residents.”
Data doesn’t support the narrative that immigrants are responsible for our crime problem. In fact, U.S. citizens are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants — even those who lack legal status.
And yet, agents from ICE, the U.S Border Patrol and other federal departments are roaming our streets looking for anyone who might lack legal status. In his attempt to round up millions of people, Trump has diverted agents from finding child abusers, stopping money laundering, rooting out tax fraud and combating drug trafficking.
Agents are instead raiding restaurants, farms and Home Depots. They’re showing up to court to detain and deport people who are trying to gain legal status the correct way.
And though Trump has pledged to go after the “worst of the worst,” the data shows agents are often arresting non-criminal immigrants.
They’re shipping grandfathers who have legal status and have lived here for decades to other countries when they show up for appointments to get lost green cards replaced. They’re deporting business owners with deep roots in our communities who give money to homeless shelters, police officers and high school sports teams.
They’re also snagging U.S. citizens. They’re targeting anyone who has brown skin.
This mass deportation effort is clearly not about illegality. It’s about Miller’s white nationalism. By backing ICE, White is supporting such racism. How then would he govern as Albuquerque’s mayor?
ICE’s ‘cowardice’
Most ICE agents don’t wear uniforms or display badges. Many wear masks to hide their identities. When confronted by bystanders or protesters, they often refuse to identify themselves.
Agents recently arrested a man inside an Albuquerque Walmart. Video shows two of them wearing masks as one takes the immigrant down with a taser.
“Let me speak plainly: this is cowardice,” Kinzinger wrote in a Substack post. “You do not serve justice by hiding your face. You do not build trust with a community by terrorizing it from behind a mask. And you sure as hell do not defend the Constitution by violating it in the dark.”
How would you know if the person trying to detain you is really a law enforcement agent? ICE’s behavior creates a very real possibility that armed rapists and murderers claiming to be federal police are kidnapping people off the streets.
That’s what Keller is trying to deter.
An ‘insane’ betrayal
White doesn’t seem concerned about the possibility of criminals disguised as cops kidnapping people off Albuquerque’s streets, or about agents rounding up non-criminal immigrants instead of stopping drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans in Congress have just appropriated an additional $170 billion for immigration enforcement, including $75 billion in new money for ICE. We’ll be getting more of this dangerous behavior, not less.
Even podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, understands that this is wrong. He said Trump has “betrayed” his campaign promises by deporting migrants like construction workers and gardeners and going after international college students for expressing opinions Trump doesn’t like.
Rogan called all of this “insane.”
Federal agents are also targeting protesters, including elected officials, who oppose the immigration raids, and threatening to expand those authoritarian tactics. This creates the real possibility that ICE’s mission will grow beyond immigration enforcement into something more like a secret police force.
‘Piled on top of each other in cages’
Now the Trump Administration, aided by the State of Florida, is housing immigrants in inhumane conditions in a facility called Alligator Alcatraz.
After touring the facility, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, described “cages, wall-to-wall,” that each held 32 people. Folks were drinking water from a combination toilet and sink, so “they get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth, where they poop.”
Meanwhile, Trump hopes anyone who escapes is eaten by alligators. His administration is working to build similar facilities in other states.
Walsh, who is now a conservative Democrat, recently tweeted that it’s “cruel, inhumane, and un-American” that immigrants are “piled on top of each other in cages in a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.”
“And Trump & every Republican should lose in 2026 because of this,” he said.
Courageously resisting
How about we start with White in 2025 instead? He’s standing with an agency that is terrorizing folks instead of doing legitimate policing — an agency that didn’t exist before 2003 and shouldn’t exist at all.
Keller, on the other hand, is standing up for people and safer communities. We must defend our immigrants, our brown citizens and other folks of color, and our protesters.
There’s another Democrat in the mayor’s race who’s also trying. On social media, former U.S. attorney Alexander Uballez listed 11 suggestions the city could implement to stand up to ICE. They include publicly funding legal defense for those ICE is trying to deport. That’s a great idea — though I question whether the city could or would pay for it.
Uballez’s other proposals include requiring federal agents operating in Albuquerque to display badges and show their faces, banning immigration enforcement near schools and churches, and requiring federal agents to notify local officials when they’re operating in the city.
While Uballez said the city must do more to protect immigrants, I question whether some of his ideas would survive court challenges.
The sad reality is it’s difficult to stand up to ICE. In true bipartisan fashion, our federal politicians created a monster. Now Trump has unleashed it.
But Keller is courageously resisting. Uballez has some interesting ideas as well, and he’s pushed Keller to act. I’m grateful that both are making this a critical issue in the upcoming election.
When Albuquerque voters decide who will be their next mayor in November, I hope they reject White — and the extremism and cruelty he supports.
Excellent summarization of events quickly converging to a crisis point. Certainly not getting that kind of coverage in the USA Today Las Cruces daily, although there might be a question raised in the opinion page of the Sunday paper. And the Albuquerque Journal has Doppler red shifted to a sitting presidential regime apologist newspaper so this kind of reporting is discouraged, if not eliminated. For us oldsters who have weathered the idealogical storms of the past seventy years, we wake up every day to reports of man’s inhumanity to man not only in the Middle East and Eastern Europe but right here in our divided states of America. You raise some darned good questions and with the new edict to invade sanctuary cities, I’m afraid violence may become the norm and perhaps a well-played premise to occupy cities.
Thanks, Del. It is scary. I’m afraid the violence may become the norm, too.
You might want me to believe that ice is an agency out of control. Which is far from the truth
Your buddy President Biden has millions of illegals into our country including murders, child molestors. Gang members. And other criminals who have committed crimes in America and should have never been if your guy had not let them in. You say that coming into our country illegally is a civil offense (still a crime) but what about the people people who are trying to get in the country legally and have to wait in I think it would be fair that President Trump should be able to deport the illegal aliens as fast as Biden let them in. And if you feel so bad for them then you should go talk to the American citizens about what happened to them and their families by illegal aliens and tell them why their loved ones were killed or raped by someone who should have not been in our country to begin with. Remember “Don’t do the crime unless you can do the time)
Joe, you’re entitled to your opinion, but it doesn’t address what’s really happening. I detailed and provided links to evidence about ICE, for example, deporting people who are here legally, and even detaining U.S. citizens. When you’re ready to talk about the facts, let me know.
[…] some of the strongest protections cities can legally implement for immigrants. Las Cruces joins Albuquerque in leading the nation, further cementing New Mexico as a place of resistance to mass […]