Two relatives of people whom federal immigration agents arrested Wednesday in Santa Fe spoke out at a news conference Thursday, during which New Mexico elected officials decried the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s tactics in what they described as a spree of immigration arrests in the city this week.
Madeline Pernillo, 18, and Yajaira Gutierrez, 19, described ICE’s arrests of their relatives in two separate events Wednesday. Their relatives are two of as many as 16 arrests that local immigrant advocates have identified in Santa Fe and surrounding communities recently, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
Pernillo’s description matches one of the more high-profile arrests this week in the parking lot of La Familia’s Alto Street clinic, which resulted in the father of an 11-year-old girl being arrested.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Source NM on Thursday that agents “conducted a targeted enforcement operation” against a man they identified as Edgar Chacon-Miranda when they saw him park at the medical center.
Pernillo said the man ICE arrested is her uncle. He had just stepped out of the car Wednesday with his 11-year-old daughter before a medical appointment at La Familia’s Alto Street clinic when ICE agents approached their car.
“Just as they were getting out of the car, they were surrounded by ICE agents,” Pernillo said in Spanish. “The agents began questioning the girl, asking for her father’s name, how many siblings she had and if she knew her mother’s name. When she innocently gave her mother’s name, she became upset and started crying.”
After that, agents began threatening to break the car’s windows if Chacon-Miranda did not get out of the car. Chacon-Miranda complied and agents arrested him, Pernillo said.
“As the agents handcuffed him, my 11-year-old cousin was left traumatized,” she said. “She now wakes up crying at night.”
The statement from the unnamed DHS spokesperson described Chacon-Miranda as a “criminal illegal alien” with an extensive criminal history, including arrests for battery against a household member, criminal sexual penetration, child abuse and child abandonment.
Court records show Chacon-Miranda was accused of those crimes in Santa Fe in 2018, but the charges were later dropped due to the case not being prosecuted within time limits.
Immigration attorney Allegra Love, who is representing Chacon-Miranda, blasted ICE in a phone interview with Source NM for suggesting her client was violent or a criminal when he’s never been convicted. She noted he successfully applied to receive lawful permanent resident status after the charges were dropped.
“He actually qualifies for a green card in the United States despite these charges because he was never convicted of them,” Love said. “That has to mean something, but it doesn’t mean something to ICE. It doesn’t mean anything to ICE.”
The arrest at the clinic parking lot has sparked outrage from local elected officials, who said ICE should not make immigration-related arrests at medical facilities, as well as other community locations such as churches and schools. U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.), who convened the Thursday news conference, has introduced legislation to prohibit ICE from arresting people at what she referred to as “sensitive places” like the clinic.
“ICE should stay away. They used to stay away under the Biden administration. They used to stay away when it was Obama,” Leger Fernández said. “It was Trump and his cruel and corrupt policies that have decided, ‘No, there is no safe and sacred place from their raids,’ and so we are also calling upon ICE to start respecting the Constitution.”
Pernillo said her uncle, a father of three, was “simply fulfilling his duty as a father” when ICE arrested him.
“At that moment, my cousin should have been thinking about school, not the moment her father was torn away from her,” she said.
As for the second arrest, Gutierrez said she was with her mother-in-law, whom she identified as 43-year-old Adriana Ruiz, on the way to a medical appointment for Gutierrez’s 2-month-old baby, who was hooked up to an oxygen machine.
Gutierrez said they were getting into their car when ICE agents approached.
“We asked for the paperwork required for such stops, but they refused to show it and gave us false information,” Gutierrez said in Spanish. “They claimed they were looking for a car that didn’t even match my mother-in-law’s vehicle. We tried to reason with them, but all we got were threats.”
Ruiz stepped out of the car and agreed to be arrested “for the sake of my daughter,” Gutierrez said.
“She did it for her granddaughter because we want safety for our families. We just want to live a normal life like any other human being,” she said. “No one is different, and everyone has rights, but apparently, that doesn’t apply in this case.”
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment about Ruiz’s arrest Thursday. Gutierrez told Source NM after the news conference that she is very concerned about her mother-in-law, who has health problems. Gutierrez said she and other relatives still do not know where ICE agents took Ruiz or whether she is receiving medical care.
“We are just worried,” she said.
State House Majority Floor Leader Rep. Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe) and advocates Somos Un Pueblo Unido, an immigrant advocacy organization, also spoke at the news conference. Szczepanski touted the state Legislature’s recent enactment of a bill that bans public entities from helping ICE detain immigrants, and she said lawmakers are actively considering more immigration-related proposals.
All speakers said they are working on fighting back against Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
“No one in Santa Fe or in New Mexico or in this country should have to decide between taking their children to school or to a medical appointment for fear of exposing their families to immigration enforcement,” said Gabriela Ibańez Guzman, an attorney with Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
The City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County issued a joint statement Thursday that both governments “reaffirm our commitment to the safety, dignity, civil liberties and rights of everyone who calls Santa Fe home,” and noted that neither city police nor the county sheriff participated in the federal immigration agency’s arrests.
Protesters took to the streets in Santa Fe Thursday evening by the state Capitol in response to the ICE arrests.
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