[ACLU-NM] 2005 Legislative Session

[Kimberly Lavender]

Dear Friends:

 

Thank you for all of your work this past legislative session in reaching out
to your elected officials by taking action for or against legislation
impacting our civil liberties in New Mexico.

 

PRIVACY

Representative Danice Picraux's Genetic Protection bill was signed into law.
We will continue to educate New Mexicans about the need for stronger privacy
protections for consumers and return to the state legislature with both a
Financial bill and RFID Tag bill in 2007.

 

CHOICE, MARRIAGE, AND CURFEWS

We were successful in keeping bad legislation on the issues of Reproductive
Choice, Marriage Equality, and Teen Curfew from getting passed.  An
acceptable Voter ID bill was passed that does not require registered voters
to show their ID at the polls.

 

DEATH PENALTY

We did not repeal the death penalty as hoped this session.  We will continue
to work in coalition on this issue.

 

IMMIGRATION

After intense deliberation, the New Mexico state legislature passed Senate
Bill 103, requiring state and local police to have suspicion of criminal
activity before questioning immigrants about their immigration status.
Unfortunately, Governor Bill Richardson vetoed this bill, despite the
support it enjoyed from a broad spectrum of interests, including advocates
for domestic-violence victims, members of the Albuquerque City Council,
district attorneys, and Santa Fe police.

 

In place of SB 103, the Governor issued an executive order that seeks to
cover similar policy grounds as the vetoed bill, prohibiting state police
from questioning victims of crime about their immigration status or
investigating people whose only crime is that they are suspected of residing
in the United States in violation of federal civil immigration law.

 

We hope that the governor's executive order will create opportunities for
the ACLU and our immigrant allies to work with the New Mexico Department of
Public Safety to ensure that state police are only involved in immigration
issues that arise out of standard criminal investigations.  Any other
intervention by police needlessly terrorizes immigrant residents of our
state and diminishes the prospects of creating crime-free neighborhoods.

 

 

 

 
Kimberly Lavender
Public Education Coordinator
ACLU of New Mexico
PO Box 80915
Albuquerque, NM 87198
aclunmpr at comcast.net
go to our website at www.aclu-nm.org <http://www.aclu-nm.org/> 
 
 
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