New Mexico passes Immigrant Safety Act, banning state collaboration with ICE
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it. The NAA content team will be here for you, no matter how many newsroom layoffs billionaire paper owners decide to do.
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Aliya Rahman, Disabled U.S. Citizen, Assaulted, Jailed & Traumatized by ICE in Minneapolis
Aliya Rahman, a disabled U.S. citizen, was violently kidnapped from her car by ICE last month and trapped in the Whipple Federal Building. She described to Democracy Now! and testified before Congress to the horrors she witnessed in Whipple, from her kidnapping by Federal Agents as she was trying to go to her appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center, to the horrific inhumane treatment of people trapped in that building.
On January 13th, 2026, after attempting to get out of an intersection blocked by ICE vehicles, she was yelled at by several ICE agents who surrounded her vehicle. She yelled that she was disabled, to which an ICE agent replied, “Too late.”
Aliya was then slammed to the ground in a way that may have permanently injured her arms while she cried out about her brain injury and the fact that she was disabled. According to her testimony, she was never asked for ID, told she was under arrest, read her rights, or charged with a crime.
At Whipple Center, Aliya witnessed horrors. Lines of Black and Brown people chained together, being marched out in the cold. People being referred to as “bodies,” an almost unimaginable level of dehumanization. Aliya was not given disability accommodations, including the walking aids she needed for mobility.
Whipple is being run by the same people who caused a measles outbreak at Dilley Detention Center in Texas. There is no such thing as “reform” here. We need to shut ICE down.
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ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Longer and Crueler
“You don’t have to torture people. They’re not going anywhere—they’re on a plane.”
Just before her deportation flight to Hanoi, Melissa Tran’s wrists and ankles were shackled to a chain around her waist. It had been more than 10 hours since she’d been given any food or water; for the last seven, she had been sitting on a bus on the tarmac.She was told she wouldn’t arrive in Hanoi until Thursday. It was Monday night in Louisiana.
Though there was no company name or logo on the plane, she learned the airline was called Omni Air International. Information about Stonepeak’s April 2025 acquisition of Air Transport Services Group, Omni’s parent company, is scarce. Nowhere do they say that for years, Omni has been the only large-jet airline flying shackled passengers on long-haul ICE flights to Africa and Asia.
Omni’s flights are becoming increasingly inhumane. Of the 77 trips carried out between Stonepeak’s mid-April purchase and the end of 2025, 31 lasted between 24 and 50 hours. Migrants onboard spent all that time shackled. Shackled passengers are at risk of developing deadly blood clots in their legs.
An ICE document obtained by Quartz shows the agency paid Omni $33,500 an hour for a 2019 flight to Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam. With expenses, the trip cost $1.8 million, prompting a flight broker to complain Omni could charge high prices because other airlines “are discouraged
by the potential of public backlash.”
Time for Omni to face public backlash of its own.
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New Mexico passes Immigrant Safety Act, banning state collaboration with ICE
The ACLU marked the occasion of the New Mexico state Senate passing the Immigrant Safety Act a week ago. With NM governor Michelle Grisham signing the Act into law a couple days later, the state marks its intention to shut down its three ICE detention facilities, ban new ICE contracts, forbid the use of state-owned land for collaboration with ICE, and forbid county and local governments from collaborating with ICE. This includes a ban on 287(g) agreements between ICE and local sheriffs.
ACLU quotes Immigration organizer Fabiola Landeros of El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos: "This is a watershed moment for New Mexico – a testament to years of organizing by immigrant communities and allies who refused to accept our state's complicity in mass deportation… The Senate's passage of the Immigrant Safety Act shows that when communities unite and demand change, we can stand up to even the most powerful forces.”
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Keepers of concentration camps prefer secrecy because they do not want public scrutiny of their heinous acts.
The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly barred members of congress, as well as Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, from visiting ICE facilities in their districts. Most recently, three Minnesota lawmakers were barred from touring the increasingly notorious Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where all signs point to deprivation of food and medical attention as well as overcrowded conditions.
On Monday, a federal judge ruled such denial of access illegal. While longstanding federal policy requires DHS to allow the unfettered scrutiny by congress members to ICE facilities , Kristi Noem has insisted that the massive infusion of federal funds to DHS somehow allows the agency to forbid such access. But now Democratic lawmakers have no excuse not to give these gulags the exposure they have long needed.
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Action items:
- Minnesota still needs our support: list of mutual aid opportunities and organizations supporting communities affected by the military occupation of the Twin Cities.
- Are you ready to organize on the ground? Use our Congregational Protective Presence to keep our communities safe during the upcoming holidays of Easter and Ramadan. Write to shayna@neveragainaction.com to request coaching support.
- Register here for Community Defender Training: Habeas Corpus & Immigration Detention on Tuesday, February 24, 2026 from 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm PT/ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ET. This training will help community defenders understand how habeas petitions are used in the immigration detention context and go over the basic elements of a pro se petition for the most common scenarios. This training is for non-attorney advocates, including organizers, and others supporting detained community members. This training will be presented in English with Spanish simultaneous interpretation and is not eligible for CLE credit. Questions? Please contact events@nipnlg.org.
- Keep boycotting Target! There have been many protests against ICE in Targets around the country, including LA, Minneapolis, and Philly. Let’s keep the pressure on.
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Support Never Again Action’s organizing by making a donation today. You can make a tax deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor at this link, or you can donate directly to our 501(c)(4) organization at this link.
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.