NM Secretary of State signs letter to feds about voter roll data
-Julia Goldberg, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver recently signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem expressing concern about the federal government’s request for states’ voter rolls.
The Nov. 18 letter, as Colorado Newsline originally reported, was signed by 10 Democratic secretaries of state, and raises concerns about inconsistent information from the federal agencies about how they are using and sharing voter data requested from states in recent months.
The election officials’ recent letter notes that everyone who signed it—which in addition to Toulouse Oliver includes the secretaries of state from Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington—received letters requesting voter data lists—in some cases redacted lists that included “dates of birth, state driver’s license numbers, and last four digits of Social Security numbers.”
In the case of New Mexico, as Source NM previously reported, the United States Department of Justice initially reached out to Toulouse Oliver in July. She told Source NM this week the state provided the federal government with “the publicly available file that anyone has access to,” which does not include Social Security Numbers and only years of birth.
Following the requests for data, the letter says, officials heard inconsistent information about how the information would be used.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Oliver and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson look on during a House Administration Committee on Septe, 11, 2024 in Washington, DC on “American Confidence in Elections.” (Photo by Bonnie Cash/Getty Images) According to the letter, at the end of August in a phone call meeting arranged by the National Association of Secretaries of State, a U.S. Department of Justice representative said the lists would be used to assess compliance with the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act.
Then a DHS official named Heather Honey, in a separate meeting, said that “that DHS had not received voter data or requested it. She then suggested that DHS had no intention of using voter data.”
That information was contradicted when the Trump administration acknowledged that the Department of Justice was sharing voter information with Homeland Security to search for non-citizens.
Honey, according to the DHS website, holds a position as Deputy Assistant Secretary for elections integrity. The letter from the secretaries of states notes that Honey “has a history of spreading false claims about elections.”
“Federal law and the U.S. Constitution are clear: states are responsible for administering elections,” the letter reads. “Additionally, transmitting this information to another federal agency raises serious Privacy Act concerns and risks improper dissemination of and access to sensitive voter data. We are deeply concerned about the inconsistent and misleading information that Secretaries have received from the DOJ and DHS and with the potential lack of compliance with federal law.”
The letter asks for answers to a series of questions by Dec. 1 about how the voter information has or will be used or shared.
In response to a query from Source NM regarding the letter, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson referenced a previous statement on the topic provided by a spokesperson that says:
“Enforcing the Nation’s elections laws is a priority in this administration and in the Civil Rights Division. Congress gave the Justice Department authority under the NVRA, HAVA, the Civil Rights Act, and other statutes to ensure that states have proper voter registration procedures and programs to maintain clean voter rolls containing only eligible voters in federal elections. The recent request by the Civil Rights Division for state voter rolls is pursuant to that statutory authority, and the responsive data is being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
Source has a pending query with Homeland Security regarding the letter and its content.
In a phone interview Wednesday, Toulouse Oliver told Source NM that she had two main concerns about the federal government’s request for voter data rolls. First: “What is the data being used for outside of verifying citizenship? That’s a big concern, because we’re not in the business of creating citizenship lists or providing information to [Immigration Customs Enforcement] that would potentially harm people who are legally here in the United States. We’ve seen from many, many news reports, there are a number of people that ICE have detained that are either US citizens or have legal status, so to me, that’s deeply concerning.”
Toulouse noted, as she has previously to Source, that she’s not worried “that there is some huge amount, if any, non-citizens on our voter registration list. What I am concerned about goes to the number two concern, which is they have insisted that we send them our data and that they do the matching. And that’s not how it works. We, the county clerks and my office, are experts in matching data for voter registration purposes, and we go out of our way to ensure that a match is an accurate match.”
Accurate matches, she said, “go beyond having the same name and birth date. Because you can have two Juan Sanchezes with the same birth date; it’s not hard to imagine in New Mexico. We have deep concerns about how they are doing their matches and what is the level of scrutiny that’s being applied to that process.”
If state officials were doing the checking, Toulouse Oliver noted, “I would trust that process a lot more than whatever mysterious process they’re doing because, again, I know that we are going to exhaust every possible resource at our disposal to ensure that when we say this person is a non-citizen and they’re on the voter registration list, that we are sure that they are and or that we have a high percentage of being sure.”
The bottom line, she said, “they’re actually using voter registration as a tool to try to find non-citizens to prosecute or persecute through their other agenda regarding non-citizens. And it’s not, in my mind, about making sure we don’t have non-citizens on the voting rolls, although that should be a goal that we all share. It’s more about using that data for other purposes.”
And while Toulouse Oliver said she doesn’t necessarily expect to receive a response to the questions posed by the letter, “If I don’t stand up and use my voice for what is right, then I’m complicit. If I don’t stand up and I don’t say, ‘Hey, this is wrong. Can you please provide us with some answers?’ then I’m not doing my job.”
Safer Cities Ordinance passes in Albuquerque
–Mia Casas, KUNM news
On Tuesday, the Bernalillo County Commission passed an ordinance to establish Safer Community Places for residents, including immigrant community members.
The ordinance passed 4:1 with Commissioners Barboa, Barbara Baca, Frank Baca, and Eric Olivas voting in favor. Walt Benson voted against.
The regulation follows Article 9, Section 12 of the New Mexico Constitution, which grants a county the authority to provide safety, preserve the health and promote the prosperity of its residents.
Commissioners said the goal of this ordinance is to ensure the safety of immigrant communities in times of high Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence.
Vice-Chair Barboa said she sponsored the ordinance in response to ICE violently targeting immigrants. The rule identifies a range of private spaces within public facilities as Safer Community Places. These include areas within hospitals, schools, daycare centers, county-owned or operated facilities, community resource centers, work zones on Bernalillo County property and other similar locations.
Fabiola Landeros, Immigrants' Rights Organizer, El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos said the goal of protecting t workers, businesses, and vulnerable communities is “a step in the right direction and reflects our shared values as New Mexicans.”
Luján leads US Senate effort to reverse SNAP cuts
Patrick Lohman, Source New Mexico
U.S. Sen Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico led fellow senators Thursday in a denunciation of recent federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program before introducing a bill that would repeal all SNAP-related changes in the recently enacted “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
The bill President Donald Trump signed July 4 cuts $187 billion from SNAP over the next decade, including $68 billion by 2029, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. It does so primarily by imposing additional work requirements on SNAP recipients and additional costs on states.
Luján, a Democrat who leads a Senate subcommittee on nutrition and represents the state with the highest nationwide percentage of SNAP recipients, called the cuts cruel and unprecedented.
“For half a century, our nation has upheld a bipartisan promise to ensure that no child, no senior, no veteran, no working family should go hungry in the United States of America,” he said. “Republicans broke that promise, and today, congressional Democrats are fighting to restore this program.”
The two-page bill Luján introduced, which 46 other senators co-sponsored, seeks simply to repeal all the provisions in the Republican bill imposing the SNAP cuts. It’s called the “Restoring Food Security for American Families and Farmers Act of 2025.”
He and other Democrats who spoke at a news conference Thursday in Washington D.C. pointed to the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold November SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, despite court rulings and a contingency plan the federal Agriculture Department had in place to keep benefits flowing during a shutdown.
Withholding the benefits caused upheaval in the food assistance program, which 42 million Americans rely on, including about 460,000 New Mexicans. Food banks in New Mexico saw sharp increases in demand, and the Legislature stepped in to approve nearly $200 million in state funds to pay for benefits throughout January.
Now that the government has reopened, New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee director on Monday told state lawmakers the state was receiving all its expected federal SNAP funding. But the cuts are still in effect under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” provisions, Luján noted, which he and Democrats are hoping to stop.
“These are people across the country who you probably stand in line with when you’re checking out at a grocery store every day. Folks right now, they face the real possibility of going hungry because of the choices made by President Trump and congressional Republicans,” he said.
Man facing new charge in fatal hit-and-run of nurse outside UNMH - Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
The man accused of hitting and killing a University of New Mexico Hospital nurse was rearrested Tuesday on a charge of vehicular homicide.
The new charge was filed against Brian Boyce, 43, in the Oct. 9 death of 28-year-old Alec Montoya. He was previously charged with knowingly leaving the scene of a crash that resulted in death.
A 2nd Judicial District grand jury indicted Boyce on additional charges after further investigation by police found that there was an open container of alcohol inside his vehicle, according to Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesperson.
Boyce was booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center on Wednesday. Boyce’s attorney did not respond to calls for comment.
Police were sent to Stanford and Lomas NE around 6:45 p.m. Oct. 9 after a caller reported that a person had been struck by a car, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. Officers arrived and found Montoya lying in the street. He died at the scene.
UNM police obtained security camera footage that showed Boyce’s eastbound vehicle “traveling at a high rate of speed” on Lomas and hitting Montoya, the complaint states. Boyce could be seen in the footage stopping and getting out of the vehicle.
Boyce requested to be taken to a hospital because there was glass in his eye, according to the complaint. He left shortly after on foot.
Police caught up with Boyce, who was eventually booked into jail and released on his own recognizance, according to online court records.
New Mexico officials, Mora residents say feds should respond to groundwater contamination - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
As fear ripples across the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire burn scar about newly discovered toxic metals in Mora County groundwater, elected officials and residents are increasingly wondering whether a federal office overseeing a multi-billion-dollar wildfire compensation fund will step in to help.
On Friday, the New Mexico Department of Health issued an alert to Mora County residents telling them to test their private wells following the discovery that high levels of dangerous metals like antinomy, arsenic and uranium in the groundwater exceeded federal safe drinking water limits. In the meantime, health officials recommended those with private wells drink bottled water.
NMDOH also noted the metals are found in suppressant materials used to fight wildfires like Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire that burned through a 534-square-mile area in 2022, including much of Mora County.
But even though state officials and New Mexico Democratic U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández — as well as the independent geologist who discovered the elevated levels — are pointing to the wildfire as the likely culprit for the contamination, whether federal officials will release some of a huge compensation fund to help test private wells or provide water filters is an open question, they told Source New Mexico this week.
Leger Fernández, in an interview with Source New Mexico on Tuesday, called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to quickly review evidence presented about the role of fire suppressants in causing the contamination. The agency is overseeing a claims office with a $5.45 billion fund Congress created to compensate victims of the fire, which the Forest Service accidentally ignited in botched prescribed burns in early 2022.
“If [the metals] are a consequence of the fire, it is my belief that they should be covered by the Hermits Peak money that I secured for these claims,” she said. “And we need to make sure that FEMA reads the report to understand that this is not naturally occurring contamination and that they are heavy metals that come from the fire suppression efforts.”
Dianne Segura, a FEMA spokesperson, told Source New Mexico on Wednesday the agency was working on a response to Source’s questions about the contamination. Source will update this story with the agency’s response when it’s received.
According to attendees, FEMA officials didn’t attend a packed, emergency meeting Wednesday morning at the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Mora, where state and local officials described the contamination and their options for next steps. Segura told Source on Tuesday that the agency had not received a “formal invitation” to the meeting and didn’t know whether agency officials would attend.
At the meeting Wednesday, state Environment Department officials collected names of people seeking private well tests. They also described results from recent tests showing the metals were not at elevated levels in the public drinking water system.
Recent delays on ‘cascading events’
The latest environmental crisis in Mora County resurfaced frustration with FEMA’s Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Claims Office, which has so far paid out about $3.24 billion of the fund, according to an update the office posted Tuesday on Facebook.
Much of the recent frustration centers on how the office handles claims from fire victims who suffered damage from post-fire flooding and debris flows, which the agency refers to as “cascading events” caused by the wildfire.
Even though federal officials committed to covering claims for post-fire flooding, victims have told Source in recent weeks that the office has either not approved their requests to reopen their claims for compensation or has not responded.
In early November, Leger Fernández and other members of the New Mexico congressional delegation criticized the agency in a letter for failing to keep its promise to honor “cascading event” claims.
State and local officials told Source this week that they believe the newly discovered contamination constitutes another “cascading event” that the funds should cover. They are calling on the claims office to pay for private well tests and water filters.
Leger Fernández told Source on Tuesday that the agency had not responded to the delegation’s recent letter, and that she’s concerned FEMA will continue to ignore requests for reopened claims for the metal contamination.
“We need to use this process to address this as a ‘cascading event’ if it is a consequence of the fire,” she said. “And it looks like it is.”
Mora County Commissioner Veronica Serna told Source she tried to confront FEMA officials on Monday in-person at the claims office headquarters in Santa Fe, but was unable to find the office’s director, and left even more frustrated, she said.
She says she’s also sent about a dozen letters to FEMA in recent weeks from different fire victims who have not received compensation for “cascading events.” That doesn’t bode well for the agency’s response to the contamination, she said.
“I’m not sure what’s going on with this claims office, and I really feel bad for people,” she said.
‘I’d rather have a burned mountain’
Geologist Kate Zeigler, who runs an independent geologic consulting firm, has been testing private wells in Mora County each summer since 2023, and found no concerning levels of contaminants in 2023 and 2024, she said. But the results of her latest round of testing from this summer were “so concerning,” she told Source in an email, that she quickly summed up findings into a report that she sent to state agencies, which then issued the alert Friday.
Zeigler’s four-page report dated Oct. 4 said tests of 55 private wells in the summer of 2025 detected a sudden increase in a range of metals beyond levels the Environmental Protection Agency deems safe for human consumption.
The report also cited a 2024 study of California watersheds that linked increased heavy metal levels to fire suppression materials used in fires across the West between 2009 and 2021. The study concludes that fire suppressants contributed approximately 380,000 kilograms of toxic metals to the environment in that period.
Zeigler elaborated on her findings during the Wednesday meeting, showing maps of 55 well sites where tests detected elevated levels of antimony, arsenic, manganese, cadmium and uranium, a subset of which were beyond EPA limits.
The news of the contamination has been deeply distressing to Paula Garcia, a lifelong Mora-area resident who also directs the New Mexico Acequia Association, she said at the meeting Wednesday. She called on the Forest Service to share with the public details of how much fire suppression it dumped on mountainsides to fight the blaze, and she fears the ensuing contamination will imperil drinking water for years to come.
“I’d rather have a burned mountain,” she said, “than poisoned water.”
Rural NM prosecutors ask state for help with high-mileage cars, internet, hiring - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
Each of New Mexico’s district attorneys on Wednesday asked state lawmakers during ongoing Legislative Finance Committee hearings to increase their funding in the upcoming legislative session. Most every prosecutor’s office asked for more money to hire attorneys and support staff, but DAs in New Mexico’s most rural areas had a unique set of requests.
In the Eighth Judicial District, which includes Taos, Colfax and Union counties, prosecuting attorneys rely on a high-mileage fleet of cars to cover courthouse visits that require driving as much as 140 to 266 miles round-trip. In the Fifth Judicial District, which includes Roswell, attorneys experience disruptions to internet speeds and reliability during electronic discovery processes. And across the state, IT services and computers are “at end-of-life” and need a major overhaul, the president of the New Mexico Administrative Office of the District Attorneys said.
Marcus Montoya, district attorney for the Eighth Judicial District and president of the New Mexico District Attorneys’ Association, said his office currently has 10 vehicles, two of which have clocked more than 100,000 miles. The odometer on his office’s 2005 Toyota Matrix recently rolled over to 142,282 miles, he said, noting that Kelley Blue Book assigns that vehicle an average lifespan of 147,428 miles.
His staff attorneys need the vehicles to attend court hearings, serve subpoenas and attend meetings throughout the vast district, Montoya said. Extreme weather isn’t uncommon in his part of the state, where roads and highways stretch through craggy, mountainous terrain.
“We are the Dutch boy plugging the dam with our finger,” Montoya said.
He asked state lawmakers to increase his office’s base budget by about 4.4%, which would include $75,000 to upgrade its vehicle fleet. In all, his office requested about $6 million. Montoya’s office isn’t alone — the 12th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which includes Alamogordo, also requested about $71,000 to replace vehicles with 150,000 miles.
Dianna Luce, DA for the Fifth Judicial District, told state lawmakers that her office has issues with internet speeds and said that convincing University of New Mexico law graduates to move to Chaves County is a tough proposition. As of Wednesday, she said her office has seven unfilled staff attorney positions.
“It is extremely difficult to hire attorneys,” she said. “We primarily hire from outside the state.”
Albuquerque’s Verus Research secures $12.7M in Navy contracts for weapons tech - Hannah Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
An Albuquerque-based defense contractor acquired earlier this year, but that still maintains a presence in the city, has been awarded two multimillion-dollar contracts this month by the U.S. Navy.
Verus Research, now part of Radiance Technologies, secured contracts with the military branch for $6.7 million and $6 million to develop weapons defense systems, Verus CEO Grady Patterson said.
That includes the Ship Electromagnetic Acquisition System and the Adaptive Radio Frequency Chamber and Hardware, the former of which is for two and a half years and will see the company build a “suite of sensors” that will then analyze simulated pulses on ships to dictate how those vessels will react to the environment, Patterson said.
Verus is not building a ship or the simulator, he added, only the instrument that will measure the effects of electromagnetic energy hitting them. Patterson said electromagnetic pulses can be generated from devices, like what was used to cause the citywide blackout in the film “Ocean’s Eleven,” or by nuclear explosions.
“The Navy has a need to understand how its ships will survive an electromagnetic pulse,” Patterson said. “How do we know what our naval vessels will do in that environment?”
The $6 million award, which spans four years, will implement Verus’ Adaptive Radio Frequency Chamber and Hardware technology — basically, a sensor sent into the air that measures radio frequencies — within Navy operations on testing targets or actual threats. The company, founded in 2014, will examine how it can add these sensors onto items like drones to get a sense of what “actually gets to” what is being aimed at, Patterson said.
For example, if someone is shooting bullets at a large bucket in the air, Patterson said the Navy wants to understand how many bullets made it into the bucket. Similarly, Verus would do the same test from different directions and speeds.
“You want to do all these different testing elements to understand what scenarios might be effective or what scenarios might not be effective,” Patterson said. “What we’re doing is building radio frequency hardware that allows us to better understand the engagement.”
Both contracts are all about “being proactive,” Patterson said. In dangerous situations, like weaponized fighting or inclement weather, it’s important for services like the Navy to be prepared for anything.
Patterson said the awards show that, despite being acquired, Verus is still “here in Albuquerque.”
“These are just two examples of how we’re continuing to try to bring new technology, business and jobs to New Mexico,” Patterson said. “Nothing’s changed. We’re still doing what we’ve been doing.”