ACLU NM director marks MLK Day with calls for New Mexicans to stand with neighbors under threat

American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico keynote speaker Leon Howard marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a speech on “the urgency of now” at the Jan. 19, 2025 MLK Brunch in Las Cruces. (Leah Romero for Source New Mexico)

As communities in New Mexico and across the country react to the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies and raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico Director Leon Howard marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day by calling on New Mexicans to stand with their neighbors and “every community under threat.”

Howardwho took over the ACLU’s New Mexico branch in June 2025, was the keynote speaker at this year’s MLK Day Brunch, hosted annually by the Doña Ana County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He addressed a packed ballroom at the Las Cruces Convention Center, highlighting King’s words from his 1963 speech. “I have a dream speech» as theme: “fierce urgency of the moment. »

“He didn’t describe it as panic or chaos,” Howard said of King’s quote. “He was talking about the danger of becoming accustomed to injustice. The danger of letting the unacceptable become normal. And we live in a time where the unacceptable continues to try to present itself as everyday life.”

Howard pointed to the Native Americans who were the first to experiment with the “state power machine” and the minority communities who have been singled out in the years since — from slave patrols in the 1700s and the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 1800s, to the internment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s and the profiling of people of Mexican and Latino descent today.

Howard talked about Presley Eze, a Black Las Cruces resident who was killed by a Las Cruces Police Officer with a gunshot to the back of the head in 2022. “Presley’s death is not an isolated tragedy,” he said. “It’s one point on a long line that stretches back through American history.”

“We’ve been litigating the exact same issue for generations, and now we have a new version: checks based on race, accent, language, type of work, location. A set of factors that the government claims create reasonable suspicion,” Howard said. “These application models are old. The vocabulary is new.”

Howard said King’s calls for people to be good neighbors weren’t just for people who look like each other or believe the same things, but for anyone in need. “[King] “The true test of our humanity is what we do for people the world has decided is easy to ignore,” Howard said.

But New Mexico has taken steps to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies, Howard noted, speaking in an update “Welcoming Community” Resolution the Las Cruces City Council passed in October 2025. The resolution updates a previous 2017 resolution by calling for stronger protections for immigrants in the “immigrant-friendly” community and provides updated guidance on how the city responds to federal law enforcement.

The resolution does not go so far as to designate Las Cruces as a formal sanctuary city. The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened so-called sanctuary cities with funding cuts, and included Albuquerque on a list last summer from these jurisdictions.

“This choice sets a model that the rest of the state and the country should take seriously. This kind of courage doesn’t come out of nowhere,” Howard said of the Las Cruces resolution. “It comes from tradition, standing with every community under threat.”

He noted that collaboration between the NAACP and ACLU has a long history, such as the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court declaring segregated education unconstitutional. “Organizations work together not because it is politically convenient, but because when injustice spreads across communities, the response must expand as well,” Howard said. “And if there’s one group that can’t afford to take a step back right now, it’s the next generation.”

Doña Ana County NAACP President Bobbie Green told the audience that the organization has long played a “critical role in social advocacy,” but “never, in my lifetime anyway, has advocacy been more crucial than today’s fierce emergency.”

Green also said she and various local NAACP chapters are working with the ACLU of New Mexico, the New Mexico Attorney General and state lawmakers to support a bill this legislative session to update the continuing education curriculum for law enforcement in the state — a step toward reforming state law enforcement at a time when federal law enforcement has been criticized.

State Sen. Antonio Maestas (D-Albuquerque) told Source New Mexico that the bill would authorize the New Mexico Law Enforcement Standards and Training Council to develop an updated “evidence-based curriculum” that officers would have to follow on an ongoing basis, rather than every two years as is currently the case. The bill would not address the initial training officers receive at the academy. He said he, Sen. Crystal Brantley (R-Elephant Butte) and Rep. Pamelya Herndon (D-Albuquerque) have worked together during the interim, with local sheriffs and police chiefs, and intend to co-sponsor the bill.

“[The curriculum] hasn’t been updated in decades,” Maestas said. “What we would like to do is move the New Mexico Police Department toward constant training; weekly, monthly training… No matter where people come from in terms of policing, everyone should be happy with this bill.

Howard concluded his speech by stating that “resistance also has a throughline,” that of communities coming together and “refusing” to look away and ignore indifference.

“The question for us now is not whether the timing is urgent, it absolutely is,” Howard said. “The question is whether we will face this moment with the same courage that Dr. King demanded of us, because the ‘now’ he spoke of belongs to us, and what we do with it will decide the path ahead.