Juan Garcia, Chairman of the Coalition of Conservatives in Action, said that the nation's immigration challenges reflect a long-neglected system that no longer provides timely legal pathways. This statement was made during a podcast.
"Views on border security in Las Cruces depend on ideology," said Garcia. "The immigration system is a mess that should have been resolved long ago, with programs like work visas for needs such as picking green chile, but instead, we blur lines and use excuses like labor shortages for hotels or fields while allowing unchecked illegal crossings. Legal immigration took my family about two years back then despite hardships and no modern technology, so current 10+ year waits are unreasonable, but the solution isn't to let everyone pour across the border without fixing the system."
Debates over border security and immigration policy have intensified in southern New Mexico as authorities and local communities address enforcement, humanitarian, and economic concerns. The federal government’s 2025 "Securing Our Borders" policy directed significant investments in barriers, troop deployments, detention capacity, and expanded asylum-suspension powers. According to the Rhodes Policy Institute via the Migration Policy Institute, effective management at the U.S.–Mexico border requires moving beyond enforcement-only models toward approaches that integrate humanitarian, legal, and community impacts. These tensions are particularly visible in Doña Ana and Luna counties, where local officials regularly respond to federal enforcement actions.
Processing of legal U.S. immigration applications continues to involve lengthy wait times. A 2024 factsheet from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows that the national median processing time for certain family-based applications reached 11.4 months in FY2023, up from 10.6 months in FY2022. Additional data indicate that for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (spouses or parents), average processing times in recent compilations are around 14.5 months. These figures highlight the processing-backlog pressures facing applicants in both family-based and employment-based categories.
The agriculture sector in New Mexico—especially the iconic green chile industry—has faced significant labor shortages. The state estimated a 45% drop in seasonal chile laborers (about 1,350 fewer workers) in August 2021, prompting a state subsidy to boost hourly wages up to $19.50 for harvest and processing jobs. Concurrently, a 2024 horticultural study found that 50% of production cost for New Mexico pod-type green chile lies in harvest labor, driving growers to explore mechanical harvesting adaptations to offset shrinking labor availability.
Garcia serves as chairman of the grassroots organization Coalition of Conservatives in Action and describes himself as having immigrated legally to the U.S. with his parents at age five, leaving high school at 17 and serving 25 years in the U.S. Marine Corps before retiring from a Department of Defense contracting career. He emphasizes his conservative Hispanic Christian upbringing and focuses his civic activism on local-level government accountability in Las Cruces and Doña Ana County. A 2024 profile by the New Mexico Sun notes that Garcia frames his role as educating citizens so they can "engage and effect reform" in what he describes as a "deep blue county."
