Rapid Response Funding Campaign

NMILC supporters are a lifeline to unaccompanied children. NMILC is the only legal service provider in New Mexico providing comprehensive legal services to unaccompanied minors for free. These young people are especially vulnerable, often navigating the complex immigration system without a lawyer and with limited understanding of their rights. NMILC ensures that these children receive the comprehensive legal services they need to protect their rights. But 1.5 million dollars in federal funding for the services we provide to children has been cut.

Without continued support, these children could lose access to critical legal representation leaving them to face the immigration system alone, a system which does not recognize the inherent harm of institutional settings and separation from family and community. 

NMILC has taken the leadership role as the New Mexico outpost for the National Immigrant Legal Responders Alliance (NILRA). We are the affiliate with this national coordination effort. NILRA’s overarching objective is to increase the capacity to provide emergency legal services in preparation for and response to immigration raids resulting in large scale immigration arrests and immigrant detention.  

New Mexico has three privately operated ICE detention facilities that have the capacity to detain upwards of 2,000 people. In addition, the southern New Mexico facilities of the Ft. Bliss military base will soon become operationalized to detain family units. With the news of military bases being used for detention and deportation, creative litigation strategies are more important than ever to ensuring the rights of people in detention. Detainees in these facilities are subjected to inhumane conditions, inadequate medical care, violations of their legal rights, and severe deprivation, including inadequate food, lack of hygiene supplies, and even sewage spills. NMILC seeks to challenge the systemic abuses occurring in New Mexico’s ICE detention facilities and work toward the closure of those facilities. We aim to hold both the federal government and private prison companies accountable for their actions, ensuring that immigrant detainees are no longer subjected to inhumane conditions and violations of their legal rights.