‘¡SÍ, SE PUDO!’
Council unanimously approves resolution reaffirming city as friendly to immigrants, refugees
With the debate over immigration enforcement sharply escalating under President Donald Trump, Santa Fe’s mayor and City Council unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday night reaffirming the city as a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees, drawing roaring applause from a standing-room-only crowd and etching a stark line of defiance against the president’s hard-edged policies.
The vote came after emotional testimony from nearly 60 speakers, including parents, teachers, clergy, attorneys and some immigrants who spoke only Spanish. All of them urged the governing body to approve the resolution and send a message to the federal government and the rest of the world that Santa Fe is a city where everyone belongs.
The youngest speaker, a girl named Destiny, took a deep breath before addressing the elected body.
“My parents are immigrants,” she said. “I’m just scared if I lose my family here because of Donald Trump.”
After the vote, audience members started chanting “¡Que viva Santa Fe! ”and“¡Sí, se
pudo!” which means “Yes, we could” in Spanish, a slightly different spin on the decadesold “Sí, se puede” motto of the United Farm Workers that was repopularized by former President Barack Obama in his first presidential campaign.
“No one in our community deserves to live in fear of deportation and experience their families being torn apart,” Councilor Joseph Maestas, the lead sponsor of the resolution, told the crowd, which filled every inch of the council chamber and spilled over into a hallway filled with people watching through
windows and listening through a speaker system.
“Today’s council vote will be remembered as a landmark decision that further solidifies our community’s reputation as a welcoming community for everyone and a beacon of light under darkening skies,” Maestas added, generating applause.
While no one spoke against the resolution, Santa Fe’s immigrant-friendly position has sparked antipathy from Trump supporters who believe illegal immigration should be sharply curbed.
Pamela Canyonrivers of Pecos said undocumented immigrants are already feeling the pressures of the Trump administration’s new immigration rules.
“I have hired, over the years, many immigrants to work for me — small jobs and big jobs on my property,” she said. “Right now, my cleaning lady has disappeared. I can say that not only do I miss her, I recognize that many people are going underground.”
The City Council in 1999 first adopted a policy against using city resources to help enforce federal immigration laws and directed police not to give unnecessary attention to a person’s immigration status.
In addition to reaffirming Santa Fe as a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees, the resolution adopted Wednesday calls for a series of policy changes designed to keep residents’ personal information private, including preventing city employees from inquiring about or disclosing someone’s immigration status “except as required by law.”
At stake for the city with Wednesday’s vote is potential backlash from the Trump administration in what could amount to millions of dollars in funding for police, roads and community development block grants, among other federal funds.
“Trump and his friends have tried to blackmail cities by threatening to withhold federal funds if they declare themselves a sanctuary city,” said Tracy Neal, a longtime Santa Fe resident who used to own two landscaping businesses that employed immigrants. “But, even worse, they are trying to make every immigrant in this country afraid to go to work, afraid to show their faces, afraid to keep their kids in school. The word for that is terrorism. Let’s show them we will not be terrorized.”
Councilor Renee Villarreal, who cosponsored the resolution, said she wasn’t too concerned Santa Fe would draw the ire of the Trump administration by touting its sanctuary city status. Under the policy, the city refuses to use local law enforcement resources to help identify undocumented immigrants for deportation, except in cases involving criminal activity.
“I actually think it will draw positive attention because there will be other cities that realize a legally defensible position that we can take for our communities,” Villarreal said, adding that Santa Fe is already “on the radar anyway because of the mayor being on national TV” defending sanctuary city policies.
But the governing body’s action comes as the Trump administration announced new immigration enforcement policies that will put an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally under the threat of deportation.
A U.S. Homeland Security Department memo signed this week by Secretary John Kelly states that any undocumented immigrant who is charged or convicted of a crime, or even suspected of one, will be an enforcement priority. The new directives are not limited to violent criminals and people who recently crossed the border unlawfully, as had been the case in recent years.
“We’re living in dark times, and I think resolutions like this shine a light into that darkness,” Steve Allen, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, told the governing body. “The city of Santa Fe has been a leader on this incredibly important issue. These are our neighbors and friends and family that are under attack here. We appreciate your leadership on this, and we very much support this resolution.”
The initial resolution the governing body considered explicitly called for reaffirming Santa Fe’s sanctuary city status. Maestas and Villarreal stripped the word “sanctuary” from the entire document to make it more palatable to some of their colleagues, who had expressed concern about picking a fight with the Trump administration.
Much to the chagrin of some of his colleagues, Maestas described the original proposal as an effort to thumb Santa Fe’s nose at the new administration.
The resolution cleared multiple city committees before Wednesday’s council vote with a vocal push by advocacy groups led primarily by the Santa Fe-based immigrant advocacy group Somos Un Pueblo Unido.
Approval of the resolution comes as the City Attorney’s Office, with the governing body’s blessing, researches legal options and strategies for dealing with an executive order in which Trump might threaten to withhold federal funds from cities that don’t cooperate in enforcing federal immigration laws. A lawsuit is among the options Santa Fe is considering.