{"id":76406,"date":"2025-10-17T13:03:35","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76406"},"modified":"2025-10-17T13:03:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:03:35","slug":"albuquerque-police-chief-fears-ice-recruitment-ads-undermine-public-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=76406","title":{"rendered":"Albuquerque Police Chief Fears ICE Recruitment Ads Undermine Public Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Peter Schurmann<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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ICE is spending millions on recruitment ads aimed at police officers in sanctuary cities like Albuquerque, breaking trust between the agencies and the public, says Chief Harold Medina.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n

Albuquerque Chief of Police Harold Medina was sitting at home enjoying\u00a0Saturday afternoon football on TV when he was startled to see an ICE recruitment ad specifically urging officers in his department to jump ship and sign up with ICE.<\/p>\n

\u201cA commercial comes out about how Albuquerque police officers are not allowed to do their job,\u201d Medina recalled. \u201cVery specific. Albuquerque. Because they took an oath and they are not allowed to enforce immigration law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Albuquerque is a sanctuary city, meaning local law enforcement is barred from working directly with federal immigration agents.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy officers felt betrayed,\u201d Medina said. \u201cThey asked me, \u2018Why is a fellow law enforcement agency calling us out? Why are they pointing to us, saying we are not able to do our jobs, when we do our jobs every day?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Medina spoke at a\u00a0recent conference<\/a>\u00a0organized by Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) and Migration Policy Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center. Noting\u00a0that he speaks to officers across the country, Medina worries about \u201cthe relationships that are being strained with our federal partners at this time\u2026let alone in three years and four months\u2019 time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Albuquerque Chief of Police Harold Medina.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

ICE is\u00a0spending millions on recruitment ads<\/a>\u00a0like the one Medina saw, targeting police officers in sanctuary cities like Albuquerque. The effort is part of a $30 billion initiative\u2014paid for with funds from the GOP\u2019s Big, Beautiful Bill spending package signed in July\u2014to hire 10,000 new ICE agents by the end of the year to support the president\u2019s mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n

When asked about the ad by local reporters, Medina\u2019s initial reply was, \u201cMy officers chose to take criminals to jail, not chase people around dairy farms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, he says, to date not a single Albuquerque police officer has taken ICE up on its offer. \u201cOur officers are happy and believe in the mission and goal that we have,\u201d he said. \u201cI have not heard of one officer that applied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medina is a lifelong cop. He rose through the ranks, spending years working night shifts patrolling the streets of a city where crime rates have long topped the national average and where, he says, two-thirds of residents stand opposed to the president\u2019s immigration policies.<\/p>\n

Those policies have led to the arrest and detention of nearly 70,000 individuals nationwide, the overwhelming majority (at least 70%) of them having no prior criminal record despite the president\u2019s repeated insistence that they are targeting the \u201cworst of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social media platforms, meanwhile, are inundated with a barrage of images and videos showing masked ICE agents tackling men, women,\u00a0public officials<\/a>, dragging parents off in unmarked vehicles as they take their children to school or\u00a0descending on apartment buildings<\/a>\u00a0in scenes more akin to far flung war zones.<\/p>\n

Medina says beyond the strained ties with federal law enforcement, the president\u2019s increasingly militarized deportation agenda is chipping away at the very trust that local law enforcement agencies like his have worked to build with communities since the Covid pandemic and George Floyd protests in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were forced to evolve. We had to make changes to build public trust across this country,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cSo much of what is going on now with immigration eats away at the public trust that we developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the minds of community members, Medina explains, distinctions between masked ICE agents, National Guard troops in fatigues and local police officers fade, with fear and apprehension replacing confidence, familiarity. Multiple studies have shown a\u00a0link between stepped up immigration enforcement and a decline in crime reporting<\/a>\u00a0as communities withdraw from engaging with local police.<\/p>\n

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An ICE recruitment ad posted to the Department of Homeland Security website.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Jason Houser is a former ICE Chief of Staff who served under the Obama and Biden administrations. Like Medina, he says the administration\u2019s approach has undermined efforts to combat crime and secure public safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe volume of these at large arrests and the tactics being used provides no real public safety outcome,\u201d said Houser, speaking during a virtual press conference on October 16 organized by America\u2019s Voice. \u201cIt makes the work of focusing on public safety and national security threats harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0New York Times op-ed<\/a>, Houser wrote that\u00a0 \u201cNearly 14,500 law enforcement agents have been pulled off their investigations to do civil immigration work, including agents taken off the border. Nearly 3,000 F.B.I. agents were reassigned to civil immigration enforcement, instead of focusing on their mission of national security and public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is to allow \u201cfentanyl traffickers, child predators and foreign intelligence threats to operate with less scrutiny,\u201d while federal prosecutions for drug violations \u201chave dropped\u00a0significantly<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calling the president\u2019s approach \u201ccrisis construction,\u201d Houser says the administration\u2019s aim is to foment chaos on city streets to justify further escalation, including the deployment of national guard troops to cities including Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, and Portland.<\/p>\n

Both men insist there are alternatives.<\/p>\n

In April, New Mexico\u2019s governor authorized the deployment of the state\u2019s National Guard to help combat rising crime in the state. Medina says the decision\u2014while not without controversy\u2014has been a success.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it in a way that works for us,\u201d he said, describing efforts to ensure the community knew and understood what was happening. Soldiers were given six weeks of de-escalation training, were forced to wear polo shirts instead of military garb and were limited to auxiliary roles, including scene security, traffic direction, and watching cameras to report crime.<\/p>\n

Recent data show that crimes in Albuquerque across the board are down, with homicides at a three-year low and violent crime and auto theft also decreasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the officers I speak to\u2026 didn\u2019t sign up to enforce immigration law. They signed up to investigate criminal activity, to serve their community,\u201d says Medina. And to do that, \u201cYou have to respect the local community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByPeter Schurmann Oct 17, 2025 ICE...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76407,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76406\/revisions\/76407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}