[ACLU-NM] ACLU Begins Project to Monitor New Mexico 'Minutemen'

[Kimberly Lavender]

American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico

Media Relations Office

PO Box 80915

Albuquerque, NM 87198

Tel: 505-266-5915 

Fax: 505-266-5916

 

 
 
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NEWS

ACLU Begins Project to Monitor New Mexico 'Minutemen'

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Monday, August 22, 2005


CONTACT: 



Kimberly Lavender, Communications Manager, ACLU of New Mexico at
505-266-4622 Ext. 6

 

ALBUQUERQUE - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is
organizing concerned citizens to keep an eye on vigilante groups that
are forming on New Mexico's southern border. The first legal observer
training will take place in Albuquerque on Wednesday, August 24 at
5:30pm at St. Francis Xavier Church on 820 Broadway SE.  

 

This week the ACLU will begin training teams of volunteer "legal
observers" to follow, photograph, and videotape the 'Minutemen' who are
expected to begin hunting for undocumented immigrants on the border in
October.  The legal observers will gather evidence for possible civil
rights lawsuits.  Trainings in El Paso and Las Cruces are soon to
follow.  

 

"Nothing good can come from people-civilians-who are racially-motivated
trying to take the law into their own hands," said ACLU-NM Executive
Director Peter Simonson.  "The situation only gets worse when they start
carrying firearms.  By monitoring the vigilantes, we hope to dissuade
them from falsely arresting people who, because of their skin color,
they assume to be undocumented immigrants."

 

Simonson added, "The strategy was pretty successful in Arizona."

 

Ray Ybarra, an Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellow with the national ACLU,
will conduct the two-hour-long training.  Last spring, Ybarra organized
130 volunteers to keep an eye on the Minutemen in Arizona.  Observers
are instructed not to converse or otherwise engage with the Minutemen in
order to avoid confrontations.   

 

"My hope is that like slavery and racial segregation, future generations
will look back upon the Minuteman Project, and this period on the border
as whole, with outrage and with disbelief," said Ibarra.

 

The ACLU supports fair and constitutional immigration laws that are
enforced by the proper authorities.

 

###

 
Kimberly Lavender
Communications Manager
ACLU of New Mexico
PO Box 80915
Albuquerque, NM 87198
klavender at aclu-nm.org
go to our website at www.aclu-nm.org <http://www.aclu-nm.org/> 
 
 
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