OPINION: City shouldn't use resources to collaborate with ICE

For 25 years, Albuquerque has strengthened our community and economy as an immigrant-friendly city.

The numbers tell a clear story: Immigrant workers and families are the backbone of our city. They make up 18% of Main Street business owners, 33% of construction workers and 33% of post-secondary teachers. That equates to billions in economic output. But numbers don’t tell the whole story: Immigrants also shape our cultural traditions, civic life and shared identity.

Immigrants are the roofers working under 100-degree heat to fix our homes, the home health aides caring for our aging parents, the child care workers we entrust with our kids, the children playing with ours on the playground and our neighbors. They are Burqueños.

That’s why we’re deeply disappointed to see three city councilors threatening to introduce an amendment that would force agencies like the Prisoner Transport Center to collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This would undermine the trust we’ve worked hard to build.

We need to be clear about the chaos and terror ICE has been reigning across the nation and here at home. Unidentified masked agents are targeting our neighbors at Walmarts, detaining workers on their way to work and tearing people from families who have been here for years contributing to our community. The vast majority of the people being targeted have never committed a crime, much less a violent crime, yet are being denied due process.

ICE’s chaotic and violent deportation activities are having a chilling effect. Parents are afraid to send their kids to school. Survivors of domestic violence hesitate to report abuse. Witnesses to crimes stay silent. Business owners and workers fear leaving their homes. In no way does this make us safer.

This isn’t just a threat to immigrants — it’s a threat to public safety and health, to our education system and to our local economy. The terror ICE creates echoes far beyond the families they detain.

At a time when our immigrant neighbors are already living in fear, it’s alarming that anyone on the council would propose deepening that fear by inviting more ICE activity — and asking our city to be complicit in funding it. Albuquerque’s public safety dollars are limited. They should be used to serve and protect residents — not to aid in family separation. We should be exploring how to expand protections, not feed Trump’s deportation machine.

As leaders, it is our responsibility to stand up for the values of inclusivity, justice and compassion that our city represents, and to protect due process enshrined in our Constitution. We are tasked with addressing the root causes of public safety — not perpetuating a cycle of fear and mistrust. We owe it to our children, our neighbors and our future to ensure that Albuquerque remains a place where everyone, regardless of country of origin, feels safe, supported and at home.