Author

Allegra Love

Allegra Love

Allegra Love is an immigration attorney from Santa Fe. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of New Mexico School of Law. She is the founder of and former director of Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a legal services organization serving immigrants and refugees. She also worked at the El Paso Immigration Collaborative to represent detained asylum seekers in the Southwest.

COMMENTARY

A chance for NM to light the way out of suffering, abuse

By: - February 17, 2023

In 2019, a young nurse came to the United States from El Salvador. Her name was Joana Medina León but she was known as Joa. She came seeking asylum at the U.S. border. Joa was trans and because her gender assigned at birth was male, she was detained by ICE in an all male unit […]

COMMENTARY
Immigrants wait overnight next to the U.S.-Mexico border fence to seek asylum in the United States on Jan. 7, 2023, as viewed from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Trump is no longer the villain at the border. It’s Biden.

By: - January 12, 2023

I listened to President Joe Biden announce his new plan for the U.S. border on Jan. 5 with fury. A theme in his speech — to crack down on people who cross the U.S. border illegally and circumvent U.S. law — makes my blood boil. Crossing the U.S. border to ask for asylum is emphatically […]

COMMENTARY

End of Title 42 a hard-won victory, but the work of creating a humane approach to migration remains

By: - November 18, 2022

A Federal District Court judge in D.C. ordered the Department of Homeland Security to end the use of Title 42 at the U.S. border on Tuesday night. Frustratingly, in spite of the fact that it has been in place for close to three years, Title 42 never got the attention it deserved as a devastating […]

COMMENTARY

NM governor’s call to delay refugee entry into the U.S. echoes the inhumane policies of the right

By: - July 1, 2022

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s letter to the secretary of Homeland Security asking the department to delay the release of migrants into the U.S. is a disappointing endorsement of violent policies that kill migrants.  Though her letter would never spell this out, her statement essentially says that the U.S. should close its borders completely to refugees, […]

COMMENTARY

A decade with DACA shows sensible immigration policy, we still deserve better

By: - June 15, 2022

The immigration policy that is providing hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to live and work in the United States without fear that their future would be disrupted by deportation is now ten years old. When Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA was issued by executive order under the Obama Administration on June […]

COMMENTARY

ICE is watching you

By: - May 26, 2022

In 2018, in my capacity as a lawyer, I took a few trips to Mexico to provide legal advice and legal accompaniment to refugees in Mexico who intended to seek political asylum in the United States. The border is a very tricky place to navigate. Our goal was to identify people who had clear claims […]

COMMENTARY

Conservatives needn’t panic about the end of Title 42

By: - May 13, 2022

Trump’s former immigration adviser is having a premonition of doom. Stephen Miller has the dubious distinction of authoring ex-President Trump’s (anti-)immigration policies.  He retweeted news of a Centers for Disease Control announcement last month, saying: “This will mean armageddon on the border. This is how nations end.”  So what on Earth could a public health […]

COMMENTARY

Relocating ICE detainees isn’t enough, release people from ‘inhumane’ federal custody

By: - March 29, 2022

During the first week of February, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General showed up at Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, N.M. to conduct a surprise inspection.  The staff at the facility shouldn’t have been surprised. Over the last two years Torrance County has been under about as much scrutiny that a […]

COMMENTARY

U.S. opens arms for Ukrainian refugees while turning back others fleeing violence

By: - March 17, 2022

The Department of Justice had a tough day in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit earlier this month. There, in a court case called Huisha-Huisha v. Mayorkas, the judge ruled that the Biden administration cannot use a public health order to expel migrant families into countries where they would face […]

COMMENTARY

Dear Rep. Herrell

By: - March 3, 2022

I am not a person who normally peruses the headlines of Fox News. Yet last week, I clicked on a link: GOP lawmaker says U.S. should offer asylum to Canadian truckers after Trudeau’s ‘heavy-handed crackdown.’ I was lured in by the novelty of any GOP lawmaker suggesting the U.S. offer asylum to people and the […]

COMMENTARY

A tech wall at the border is just as dangerous as a physical one

By: - February 24, 2022

Six years ago, when Donald Trump was campaigning for the presidency, the border wall emerged as a major theme. As he constructed a platform based on deep anti-immigrant sentiment,  the “big, beautiful wall” was a ridiculous campaign promise.  Considering the actual logistical, financial and infrastructural demands of walling 2,000 miles while also getting the country […]

COMMENTARY

The COVID tinderbox that is ICE detention is exploding

By: - February 9, 2022

Everyone  has a story of how the fast-moving COVID pandemic and all the attending fear and anxiety affected their lives during March of 2020. It’s hard to think about now.  In all the disorientation, a few things were made clear to our community: cover your face, wash your hands and maintain distance. Things seemed out […]