New Mexico town's mayor: Residents not expected to protest immigrants

The meeting in the small New Mexico town of Artesia was loud, volatile and emotional, and the number of people in attendance set an all-time record for a community face-off, officials said. The issue was whether the oil and farming community of 20,000 was going to protest the arrival of underage immigrants, who had entered the country illegally, at a federal facility there. In the end, Artesia Mayor Phil Burch said Wednesday that the town would not raise picket signs to protest the move. Burch said he has met with U.S. Homeland Security officials, who told them it wasn’t their wish to use the facility for the detainees, but that they had no choice. “They were told to get the facility ready.” More than 350 residents met Tuesday night in a recreational center in town. There were no arrests and most of the meeting was orderly. “We’ve never seen anything like this in Artesia,” Burch said of the town, located about 240 miles south of Albuquerque. “Then again, we don’t normally have emotional issues like this.”...more