Advocates Denounce Low-Profile Tactics by ICE Against Santa Fe Immigrants: 'Never Seen People More Terrified'

A recent detention in Santa Fe, New Mexico is prompting renewed warnings from advocates who say Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations are expanding quietly across the city, leaving immigrant residents increasingly fearful, as a new sprawling report from The New Mexican explains.

Before dawn in late October, Noe Isaac Armas Hernandez, 48, was walking near his midtown home on his way to work at a laundromat when two vehicles — one equipped with police lights — surrounded and arrested him, a relative said. Armas Hernandez, a native of El Salvador with no known criminal record in New Mexico, was deported six days later. "Immigration is in our neighborhoods. They are deporting our people," the relative said.

Advocates told The New Mexican say such arrests, which lack large-scale enforcement operations seen elsewhere, are happening with little public awareness. "We are not being spared at all," immigration attorney Allegra Love said. "It's sort of happening under the cover. But it is happening."

Love said she has assisted numerous families whose relatives have been picked up while leaving home, getting into cars, or being stopped by agents using emergency lights. "People pull over, and it's ICE, and they're gone," she said. In 15 years practicing in Santa Fe, she added, she has "never seen people more terrified to engage."

Some immigrant families report arrests occurring without advance notice, with little time to prepare for legal proceedings. Armas Hernandez was briefly held at a facility near El Paso before being removed to El Salvador, relatives said.

Amid the rising perceived threat, State Rep. Marianna Anaya recently introduced a website, AGUAS-NM.com, to collect and verify reports of ICE activity statewide. She told Source NM the project grew from "frustration and hope that when we shine a little bit of light that hopefully transparency wins." The site allows anonymous submissions of photos, video, and descriptions of potential arrests, which remain unverified until community groups confirm details.

Anaya said the tool is not designed to interfere with law enforcement, but to document activity in a state where data is scarce. "It's more about transparency," she said, adding that New Mexico "is not immune from what's happening across the nation."