Commentary: LAS CRUCES -- On Monday, August 28, a coalition of immigrant rights, civil rights, and wildlife organizations will host a community town hall at the border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico to oppose President Trump’s FY 2018 DHS budget request, which includes a down payment on the administration’s proposed border wall.
The event organized by the ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights (ACLU-NM RCBR), Comunidades en Acción y de Fe (NM CAFÉ), New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and Southwest Environmental Center (SWEC) will bring together over 100 community members and include testimony from local elected and community leaders as well as ceremonial prayers and dance led by tribal leaders indigenous to New Mexico’s borderlands.
What: No Wall Town Hall
When: Monday, August 28 at 6pm
Where: End of Anapra Road in Sunland Park, NM
Who: Testimony from NM State Representative Angelica Rubio, Doña Ana County Commissioner Billy G. Garrett, and community leaders from ACLU-NM RCBR, NM CAFÉ, NM Wildlife Federation and SWEC, among others.
In September, Congress will vote on whether to fund President Trump’s request to construct news sections of the border wall, hire 1,500 new ICE and Border Patrol agents, expand upon already record-levels of immigrant detention, and further deploy surveillance technologies developed for theaters of war.
These proposals directly threaten the lands, wildlife, civil and human rights, and unity of families who have called New Mexico home for generations and helped make the border region among the safest, biologically diverse, and economically vital communities in the nation.
Conservation organizations, including the National Wildlife Federation, have voted to oppose a contiguous border wall and statewide affiliates such as the New Mexico Wildlife Federation have also strongly opposed efforts to trade state or federal land to facilitate construction of the border wall.
Since April, ACLU-NM RCBR, NM CAFE, NM Wildlife Federation and SWEC have joined together to urge members of Congress refuse to provide a single penny to support President Trump’s unnecessary proposals to expand the border wall, discriminatory policing or mass incarceration that undermines American values of fairness and justice.