Balderas, 15 AGs denounce Trump order

The political leaders’ actions on Sunday came as New Mexicans gathered for a Stand Up For Discrimination rally protesting the president’s actions at the Albuquerque International Sunport late Sunday afternoon — one of many such demonstrations that took place at airports around the country, where some refugees are being held. KRQE-TV estimated the crowd at the Sunport to be around 2,000 people.

“It’s showing his true colors that he signed this order on Holocaust Remembrance Day,” said Jessica Montoya, a Santa Fe-based global organizer for the One Billion Rising movement who took part in Sunday’s protest. “He doesn’t have any gauge of how Americans feel. I think it’s disgusting.”

The statement from the attorneys general said in part, “We condemn President Trump’s unconstitutional, un-American and unlawful Executive order and will work together to ensure the federal government obeys the Constitutions, respects our history as a nation of immigrants and does not unlawfully target anyone because of their national origin or faith.”

Trump’s action also blocks Syrian refugees from entering the country indefinitely and sets up a 90-day blockade of citizens from seven mostly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also bars green-card holders from those countries from re-entering the United States, though they can apply for a waiver to return.

Trump’s move drew the ire of several Democratic members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation, with U.S. Sen. Tom Udall calling the president’s move “shameful and an affront to our history and our values.”

U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján hit even harder, comparing Trump’s executive order to America’s unwillingness to act during the persecution of Jewish citizens, among others, by the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 1940s.

“President Trump has not only hardened his heart against the obvious suffering of refugees fleeing persecution, destruction and carnage in their homeland, he also ignores the lessons of history,” Luján said in a statement released Sunday. “Last century, as Jews were being systematically murdered in Europe, the U.S. had a chance to admit those fleeing the Holocaust and did virtually nothing.”

And U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said in a statement that he was “sickened” by Trump’s decision, which “poses dangerous threats to the values and freedoms we all cherish. … We are not a nation that turns our back on the innocent victims of terrorism or the allies who risked their own lives so that American soldiers may live. We are not a country that discriminates based on how you pray.”

The state’s political leaders were not the only ones reacting to the news, which stunned immigration advocates around the world.

Justin Allen, 42, who said he volunteers for the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, also attended Sunday’s rally at the airport to protest.

“We have to stand against racism, discrimination, fascism,” said Allen, who comes from a long line of Italian immigrants. “I don’t like the things that are happening now.”

Jorge Gonzales, head of the board of directors for the Santa Fe nonprofit Earth Care, which fosters youth leaders to sustain the planet, said it is important for Americans to gather in such demonstrations to ensure their voices are heard.

“Our country was founded on the idea of people looking for a place to be safe,” he said Sunday. “I think we need to do that for everybody in our community: Create that space and take care and stand by one another.”

The White House issued a release over the weekend saying that the president’s actions were not aimed at any particular religion or culture, but designed to better protect America.

The Santa Fe New Mexican is a sister-paper of The Taos News. Contact Robert Nott at 505-986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com