President Trump's executive orders on cash bail could affect New Mexico - Cathy Cook & Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
President Donald Trump took aim at pretrial detention programs that don’t utilize cash bail with executive orders he signed Monday morning.
Trump on Monday signed an executive order that targets Washington, D.C., specifically, asking agency heads to “identify appropriate actions to press” D.C. to change its cashless bail policies if the city keeps them in place. The nation’s capital eliminated cash bail in 1992. Given Congress’s constitutional control over Washington, D.C., making changes for the district is much easier for the federal government than in any state.
The president signed a second executive order that directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a list of states and local jurisdictions that have substantially eliminated cash bail as a condition of pretrial release for crimes that pose a “clear threat to public safety and order.”
It also asks department and agency heads to identify federal funds, including grants and contracts, to the jurisdictions on that list that could be withheld. This order could affect New Mexico, where voters overhauled the bail system almost nine years ago.
“No cash. Come back in a couple of months, we’ll give you a trial. You never see the person again,” Trump said, moments before signing the order.
Critics of the cashless route say that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes. The White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney’s office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism.
Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars.
Other studies show the jury is still out on the effect of cashless bail on crime. Loyola University of Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois’ new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties.
NEW MEXICAN RESPONSE
Not unsurprisingly, New Mexico’s leaders largely reacted along party lines.
“Effective public safety requires evidence-based solutions tailored to local needs, not federal mandates that undermine state sovereignty and threaten to politicize our judicial systems,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s spokesman Michael Coleman said in response to Monday’s orders.
Lujan Grisham has proposed changes to New Mexico’s system like pretrial detention and no-bond holds for repeat felony offenders “because the system went from discriminating against poor defendants to one that now requires better protection for victims of repeat crime,” Coleman said.
New Mexico Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, who was one of the architects of the 2016 measure approved by voters, said the old system was unconstitutional.
“The bail reforms voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016 give judges the ability to hold dangerous defendants in jail before trial,” Wirth said in a statement. “Any punitive action from the federal level is a clear overreach and a misguided attempt to undermine New Mexico’s Constitution.”
And New Mexico Chief Public Defender Ben Baur said Monday that many defendants spent months in jail under the state’s old system because they couldn’t come up with $50 to post bail.
“Cashless bail is a term that does not apply to New Mexico,” Baur said in a statement. “What we have is bail reform.”
The Republican Party of New Mexico lauded the executive order.
“This order takes decisive action to restore accountability, protect law-abiding citizens, and stop the revolving door of crime that undermines both safety and trust in the justice system,” Republican Party of New Mexico Chair Amy Barela said in a statement.
New Mexico’s bail system has been a politically contentious issue for the last decade — if not longer.
State voters overwhelmingly approved the 2016 constitutional amendment that overhauled New Mexico’s cash bond system and replaced it with one that allows judges to keep defendants in custody if prosecutors can show they pose a danger to the public.
But the implementation of the new system has drawn criticism, along with repeated attempts to make it easier for judges to hold defendants behind bars until trial.
Under the current system, New Mexico judges can still impose cash bail in certain cases if a defendant is deemed to be a flight risk. But it’s more common for judges, who use a tool to determine whether a defendant should be released pending trial, to order certain conditions of release like ankle monitoring or drug testing if a defendant is released.
POTENTIAL IMPACT ON NEW MEXICO
“What the Trump administration is trying to do, or it looks like they’re trying to do, is to unconstitutionally coerce states to do something, and that something is to reinstall cash bail,” said Joshua Kastenberg, a University of New Mexico law professor.
Other attempts to withhold federal dollars from states as a tactic for pressuring them to align with the president’s agenda have been challenged in the courts. On Friday, a U.S. district judge barred the Trump administration from denying funds to 34 so-called sanctuary cities, including Albuquerque.
Whether the latest order will end up in court likely depends on what the Trump administration does next.
The administration is allowed to collect information, Kastenberg said, which is all the broader order directs. And if that information is given to Congress, then Congress could penalize future funding to try and pressure states to re-implement cash bail. It’s a tactic that has been used in the past. During the Reagan administration, Congress authorized the White House to withhold 5% of state highway funds if states did not set a 55 mph speed limit.
But if the president unilaterally decides to withhold funding from states without cash bail, a court challenge seems more likely.
“When a state determines that cash bail is no longer viable and will outlaw it, that is a democratic process, and it’s supposed to be free from federal interference,” Kastenberg said.
A HISTORY OF PRETRIAL DETENTION IN NEW MEXICO
Since the passage of bail reform in New Mexico, the issue of pretrial detention has remained a contentious one.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who was the Bernalillo County district attorney before being elected attorney general in 2022, pushed unsuccessfully at the Legislature in his previous position to expand the grounds for pretrial detention.
As district attorney, Torrez also suggested allowing judges to order a defendant kept in custody even without a motion from the prosecutor, as is currently required.
But such proposals were staunchly opposed by public defenders and other groups and failed to win approval at the Roundhouse.
In recent years, Lujan Grisham has also pushed to change New Mexico’s pretrial detention system but the Democratic-controlled Legislature has shown little appetite for such legislation.
Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, the influential chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in 2023 described presumption of guilt as an “unconstitutional shortcut” and said the current system was working largely as intended.
Still, if Trump gets his way, the system may be in for another seismic change.
NM Republicans — and one Democrat — tour Otero ICE Detention Center - Patrick Lohman, Source New Mexico
About a dozen New Mexico Republicans and one Democrat toured the state’s biggest immigration detention center Monday, where they spoke to officials running the facility that holds more than 850 detainees and saw conditions first-hand.
The roughly two-hour visit marked the culmination of several days of controversy and follows a July announcement from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office that she’s mulling the inclusion in a forthcoming special session of legislation banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in the state.
The tour, comprised mostly of Republican members of the Legislature’s Courts and Criminal Justice Committee, occurred at approximately 8 a.m. as the official CCJ meeting kicked off an hour away in Las Cruces.
Cervantes had originally mentioned the possibility of a tour for the committee, but canceled it, he said, after he received no response from ICE officials. State Sen. Crystal Brantley (R-Elephant Butte) subsequently emailed all committee members to tell them she’d used her contacts at the federal Department of Homeland Security to secure a visit to the facility.
Brantley’s arrangement for a tour struck some Democrats as inappropriate and a political stunt, as state Republicans also issued an invitation to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to join the tour and posted an online poll about whether she was likely to do so (the governor did not attend).
Senate Republicans, in a news release after the tour, touted the visit as “bipartisan,” even though only one Democrat, Rep. Andrea Romero of Santa Fe, attended. They said the tour proved that detainees are being housed humanely in a clean and safe environment, and that the facility’s closure would mean the loss of 300 well-paid jobs.
“Today’s tour was eye-opening,” Brantley said in the news release. “My biggest takeaway is this: This facility provides good jobs in Otero County and ensures detainees are treated humanely—far better than any alternative I’ve seen. ICE will do their job no matter what. Our choice is simple: a clean, safe, and accountable facility here, or one where we have no say in how detained migrants are treated.”
The tour did not include visits with detainees due to legal concerns, according to Otero County Attorney RB Nichols.
Sen. Nicholas Paul (R-Alamogordo) told Source that everything he saw on the tour Monday convinced him that closing the facilities should not be a high priority for the governor during a special session or otherwise. The Otero facility is safe and clean and treats detainees humanely, he said, with recreation facilities, a law library and a kitchen that can accommodate dietary restrictions.
Nichols told Source on Monday that the facility’s closure would mean lost jobs and gross receipts tax revenue, and would dissuade investors from buying municipal bonds in New Mexico, he said, given that the facility has at least $20 million in outstanding bonds.
“I think it was good for everyone to lay eyes on it and see for themselves what the situation is,” he said. “The facility’s clean; people going through it are provided with services, are provided with food and clothes, even dental care, mental health care. And there’s activities from a PlayStation 4 to, you know, exercise equipment, musical instruments, tablets and communication devices.”
THE LONE DEMOCRAT
But Romero, the lone Democratic representative, told Source that she came away from the tour deeply distressed about the rights of the people detained and feeling like she didn’t get the whole picture, saying that the jail operators had adequate advance notice to ensure the facility was clean and calm.
She saw no evidence that detainees are able to recreate, and noted that the equipment, like the Playstation Nichols and Paul mentioned, was locked up during the visit, and she saw hundreds of inmates “who just look absolutely in despair,” sitting or lying on their beds.
“People are confined to their beds, not speaking. It was eerily quiet across the facility,” she said. “I don’t know what the day-to-day really looks like. I don’t. But, certainly, a rosy picture painted, for sure.”
The majority of ICE detainees have no criminal history, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Romero said the operators they spoke with at Otero said that was also true in Otero, and the “vast majority” of the people held there had no prior criminal history or convictions.
She repeatedly asked the detention center officials about the detainees’ due process rights and how quickly they’re being deported without adequate representation, she said.
“Being the only Democrat on the tour, I’m the only one asking questions about all of this,” she said. “It became very lonely, trying to understand what was going on, and being the only one asking questions about constitutional rights, due process, contracts, etc.”
Romero told Source she opted to go on the “unofficial” tour — Cervantes told committee members it was not officially sanctioned nor eligible for reimbursement — because she thought it might be her last chance to visit. She urged state and federal elected officials to seek access to the facilities.
“Certainly the reality of the situation requires more oversight,” she said. “I hope that our state officials and federally elected officials get an opportunity to really see these places, because it shouldn’t just be one person trying to decipher what’s actually happening. We need to have a lot of transparency around people’s rights, around who we detain, and for what reason.”
COMMITTEE RECONVENES
The competing CCJ events — one the Republican tour of the facility, the other meeting on campus — meant that the new president of New Mexico State University spoke to a group of just four or five lawmakers, which some members said was disrespectful to the leader of such a large New Mexico institution and one that was hosting them.
At the end of the committee hearing Monday, with Republicans and Democrats finally in attendance, Cervantes sought to explain his thinking on the canceled tour and the possible legislation, and to reconcile any lingering resentment among committee members.
He recounted working for months with Zach Cook, a former Republican lawmaker turned lobbyist for Otero County, who tried to arrange a visit with CCJ members. Cook assured him a visit was in the offing, Cervantes said, but as the day approached and Cook said he wasn’t hearing back from ICE, Cervantes said he decided it was best to cancel the visit. (Cook has not responded to Source’s requests for comment.)
“The person who I was relying upon to help me make this happen was telling me his phone calls were not being returned by ICE,” he said. He tried to work through other contacts, he said, including the Otero County Commission to “break the logjam” without success.
When Brantley stepped in with her own tour, he said he felt obligated to keep the agenda intact, but that he “respects all of you” that chose to go on the tour instead of the meeting, and that he doesn’t think the whole matter is “much of a scandal.”
Brantley stressed to the committee that she and Cervantes are friends outside of the committee and also said she was disappointed that an email thread with the back-and-forth about the canceled tour was leaked to Source New Mexico.
“I think the biggest concern isn’t really how the tour got scheduled, but why it got scheduled,” she said. “And that’s what the focus needs to remain on, is that as lawmakers, we’re going to be taking action on this very specific site and others.”
Committee Vice-Chair Rep. Christine Chandler (D-Los Alamos) said she remained disappointed that Brantley did not coordinate better to allow the tour to include more people, including Democrats. Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (D-Albuquerque), said she’s worked to get into the ICE facilities for years, but she’s skeptical tours like the one Monday are of much use if the operators have prior notice and if the visitors can’t have candid conversation with detainees.
“If you can’t talk in private with the residents and assure them that there won’t be any kind of repercussions for them for an honest conversation, then that is not an adequate tour,” she said.
Lawmakers will discuss the tour and implications of the potential closure of New Mexico ICE facilities again on Tuesday, when Otero County officials and Sedillo-Lopez will present to the committee a presentation called, “Enterprise of Housing Immigration “Detainees by Local Governments.”
Sandia Labs director: Further job losses unlikely after layoffs earlier this year - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Sandia National Laboratories Director Laura McGill anticipates “no further job losses” following layoffs for approximately 400 people to be completed by October, she told Source NM on Monday.
McGill, who assumed leadership at Sandia in May, presented an update Monday for lawmakers attending the Science Technology and Telecommunications committee meeting in Albuquerque. She gave an overview of the labs’ programs, which primarily focus on nuclear weapons research, and employ most employees at the main campus in Albuquerque.
In June, McGill initially announced proposed 1% to 3% cuts of Sandia Labs’ workforce of nearly 17,000 people, a departure from the job growth Sandia had reported every year since 2011.
On Monday, she confirmed to lawmakers that 2% of employees took a voluntary severance package, offsetting costs from higher salaries and reducing overhead. The restructuring will be complete by October, according to Kenny Vigil, a spokesperson at Sandia Labs.
After the meeting, McGill told Source NM that the job losses were mostly in “support positions,” which she described as non-contract work for federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense or the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“Instead, it’s all the other things we do to support those activities, around administrative work, the planning work and all the other things that have to be in place to do the technical work,” McGill said.
In response to emailed questions seeking greater specificity about the eliminated positions, spokespeople at Sandia said just over three-quarters are from Albuquerque and the remaining layoffs are at the Livermore, California location.McGill faced questions from lawmakers on the labs’ future and potential federal fallout, given the Trump Administration’s cuts to science grants and medical research. McGill noted that the laboratories do not have their full budgets yet, but she expects static funding or increases for nuclear weapons work, despite cuts to U.S. Department of Energy programs.
The NNSA received a $6 billion increase to its budget for designing, handling and storing nuclear weapons, and contracts with the NNSA account for more than 60% of Sandia’s work, McGill told lawmakers.
“As far as the federal budgets go, we’re in great shape,” she told lawmakers.
Rep. Joy Garratt (D-Albuquerque) asked McGill if the laboratories had received a directive regarding “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which the Trump administration has vowed to cut from universities and the federal government. “We’ve had some direction from the administration to talk about our outward-facing websites, but it hasn’t affected anything we’re doing internally,” McGill said. “We continue to support all our employees. We just believe in belonging.”
After the meeting, McGill told Source NM she hopes to reassure the workforce that further layoffs are not coming. “We know there’s a lot of needs out there, but I can say we fully expect our programs to continue to be supported,” she said.