More than 100 advocates, faith leaders, and other New Hampshire residents signed on to a letter this week urging Gov.-elect Kelly Ayotte to not cooperate with mass deportation efforts under the next Trump administration.
One of the people behind the letter, organizer Grace Kindeke with the American Friends Service Coalition, said the group is also requesting a meeting with Ayotte to discuss their concerns.
“Our hope is that Governor-elect Ayotte will, in sincere and good faith, be willing to sit down with immigrant community members, activists, leaders, to really understand what is needed to make New Hampshire safer,” Kindeke said.
While Gov. Chris Sununu recently signed on to a pledge stating he supports the deportation plan from President-elect Donald Trump, Ayotte has expressed more limited support.
Trump has said his administration’s deportation efforts will target people with criminal histories first, but he indicated mass deportations could go beyond deporting criminals — without specifying who else might be affected. What the law calls "unlawful presence" — being in the country without proper documentation — is a civil violation, rather than a criminal violation, according to state troopers' Fair and Impartial Policing Policy.
Ayotte said she supports deporting undocumented immigrants with a criminal record in a recent interview with WMUR. She added that undocumented residents who didn’t commit a crime aren’t an immediate threat, but emphasized that immigrants should follow the law. It is not clear how she would handle federal efforts to deport immigrants who haven't been convicted of a crime.
“We've had open borders, and we know there are people that are coming over those borders that present a danger to the country,” Ayotte told WMUR. “So to me, this is a national security issue as well as a basic public safety issue for the country, but especially New Hampshire.”
In New Hampshire, immigration enforcement policy is often decided at a local level as different municipalities have different policies. The state police and some local police departments have guidelines that prevent officers from detaining anyone on suspicion of immigration status — unless officers suspect that person of committing a crime. Others don’t have a formal policy and decide on a case-by-case basis.
Kindeke and the signers of the letter oppose using local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. They said that the first priority of local law enforcement should be to protect the people of New Hampshire, regardless of citizenship status.
They argue that involving New Hampshire law enforcement with federal immigration matters would erode the progress that the state has made to encourage trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. They also argue that mass deportations would have an impact on local communities that goes beyond undocumented immigrants.
“Our state has little need for aggressive federal immigration enforcement initiatives, much less state and local law enforcement entanglement in such efforts,” the letter reads. “If mass deportation operations take place in New Hampshire, there is a strong likelihood that lawfully present New Hampshire residents and U.S. citizens, and longtime community members will be wrongfully detained and even removed from the country.”
Deportations in New Hampshire peaked in 2019, according to data from a Syracuse University tracker. Between 2006 and 2023, 98 people were deported from New Hampshire — more than half of them in 2019. Among those, 60 were convicted of a crime and 38 were not convicted of any crime.
