NM House committee advances bill to ban immigrant detention in NM
—Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico lawmakers advanced an immigration detention bill out of committee Thursday afternoon after Republican representatives warned it could irreparably harm rural economies.
House Bill 9, known as the Immigrant Safety Act, would prohibit government entities across the state from signing contracts to detain people for federal immigration violations. Lawmakers on the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee voted 4-2 to move the bill.
“An economy built on cages is not development — it is dependency,” Rep. Angelica Rubio (D-Las Cruces), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said during the hearing. She said she has tried to pass similar legislation for a decade.
The move came as dozens of immigrants arrested in Minneapolis were shipped to the Torrance County Detention Facility, which is run by private prison operator CoreCivic, in New Mexico. One of them, 33-year-old Jorge Cordoba, told Source NM he lived in Minneapolis for more than 20 years and was in the country legally under protected Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status.
Republican Representatives Stefani Lord of Sandia Park and John Block of Alamogordo expressed concerns about the proposed bill. They disputed assertions that incarcerated people are mistreated in custody and argued that passing this bill could cause companies like CoreCivic to shut down the facilities and take jobs away from rural New Mexico communities.
“Would you accept an amendment to subsidize my district so that we don’t go bankrupt?” Lord , whose district includes Torrance County, asked committee members during the committee meeting. “There’s been a lot of concern about people in the prison there. What happens when they go to Montana or Florida or Guantanamo Bay? We don’t care anymore, because they’re out of sight, out of mind?”
Block took up Lord’s line of questioning for nearly an hour and asked presenters — who included Rep. Eleanor Chávez (D-Albuquerque), American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico senior attorney Becca Sheff and New Mexico Immigrant Law Center attorney Jessica I. Martinez — if they were OK with the federal government shipping immigrants currently detained in New Mexico elsewhere.
Block’s interrogation ran so long that at one point, committee Chair Rep. Joanne Ferrary (D-Las Cruces) accused him of harassing Chávez, Sheff and Martinez. Later in the afternoon during Block’s questioning, Rubio left the dais to distribute bottled water to testifying experts and some members of the audience.
Residents who spoke during public comment were overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, though Otero County Attorney R.B. Nichols spoke during a virtual public comment period to oppose the bill. He said it would disproportionately harm economies in regions like Otero or Torrance counties that rely on detention centers for jobs.
The bill’s supporters, though, contend that it would not force these facilities to shut down. Many detention centers contract with other law enforcement agencies, such as the U.S. Marshals, and would still detain people accused of crimes.
“We’re disentangling ourselves from the immigration industry that’s been…a money-making, for-profit machine off the backs of our neighbors and families and friends,” Chávez, one of the bill’s sponsors, told Source NM. “I think that it sends a message to the rest of the country.”
Dozens of Minneapolis ICE detainees shipped to Estancia detention facility
—Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Dozens of immigrants currently housed at a New Mexico detention facility arrived there recently from the Minneapolis area, the site of a massive federal immigration operation and intensifying protests.
Three detainees at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia told Source New Mexico in phone interviews Wednesday evening that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested them separately in Minnesota on or around Jan. 5 before quickly flying them to a detention facility in El Paso, which was rapidly filling with new arrestees as they stayed there for several days.
On Jan. 11, officers woke them up around 4 a.m. and bussed about 40 of them to Estancia, a journey that required detainees to be awake for 24 hours, detainee Jorge Cordoba told Source. Everyone on the bus to Estancia was arrested in Minneapolis or nearby, he said.
Cordoba, 33, said he has lived in Minneapolis for more than 20 years and lives in the United States legally under protected Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status granted to immigrants who arrived here as children. His parents brought him here from Mexico when he was 10, he said.
“My wife is a U.S. citizen. I have four kids,” he said. “I’ve been a pretty good citizen. It’s been more than 10 years since I got a speeding ticket.”
Cordoba’s protected status didn’t stop an ICE agent from arresting him around 4:30 a.m. Jan. 5 on his way to work at a humidity control company, he said. ICE agents took him to a temporary detention facility in the city and, by 10 p.m. that night, Cordoba was already in El Paso, he said.
While Source could not independently corroborate his account, Innovation Law Lab, an immigrant legal advocacy group, provided details of its own interviews with recent jail arrivals, including one account that matches Cordoba’s.
Now Cordoba remains in New Mexico awaiting a hearing before a judge to demonstrate that he still has DACA status.
“I’m stuck here,” he said.
Irina Vaynerman, a Minnesota-based lawyer with the organization Groundwork Legal, told Source on Thursday that ICE is deliberately shipping detainees to far-away facilities to deprive them of legal access and family support.
Her organization is seeking a federal judge’s order to return one of her clients from New Mexico. In a legal filing Wednesday, she argued that “Oscar O.T.”, a Guatemalan man seeking asylum, is being denied constitutional due process and that his transfer to New Mexico violates a judicial order that he be able to face a judge in Minnesota.
“This is just part of a much bigger story about not just the unlawful detentions that are happening, but on top of that, the intentional evading of the court’s orders and court’s jurisdiction,” she said.
She said ICE shipping detainees out-of-state prevents “individuals who have been unlawfully detained from being able to connect with local counsel and file the legal actions they need to be able to get free.”
In Oscar’s case, she said, ICE’s system for lawyers to track their clients was not working, so they had no clue where he was until she got an email from ICE saying he was being held in “Albuquerque.”
No ICE detention facility exists in Albuquerque, so Vayneman said it’s possible he is actually in Estancia, an hour or so away from Albuquerque, and was bussed there along with fellow Minneapolis residents from El Paso.
“That is the type of insanity that is going on, the intentional disappearing of Minnesotans who have been unlawfully detained,” she said. “It is genuinely the government’s effort to try to erase entire swaths of the U.S. population in an unlawful way.”
An ICE spokesperson did not respond to Source’s request for comment about why the agency would hold Minneapolis arrestees in Estancia. A spokesperson for CoreCivic, which owns and operates the facility, referred Source’s request for comment to ICE.
It’s not clear exactly how many Minneapolis arrestees are held in Estancia. Tiffany Wang, a lawyer with Innovation Law Lab, told Source on Wednesday that a “decent number” of roughly 100 detainees the group spoke with last week were from Minnesota. The Portland-based immigrant legal advocacy group does weekly jail visits.
Wang said her best guess as to why ICE would select Estancia is that the jail has space, following a reduction in detainees that coincided with a two-month-long contract expiration between ICE and CoreCivic late last year. She noted that many detainees previously arrived there from a makeshift ICE facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“TCDF just has served as this holding place for people caught in other states, and sent here with really no regard to the family that they have in other places or with the attorneys that they may have in their home states, or anything,” she said.
The Legislature is currently considering a ban on public entities like Torrance County from contracting with ICE and CoreCivic for the purpose of immigrant detention. One reason lawmakers cite is to prevent public bodies from being complicit in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push in New Mexico and across the country.
A New Mexico House committee is scheduled to take up the bill Thursday afternoon.
Cordoba, along with fellow Estancia detainees Cirilo Figueroa and Felix Garcia, all told Source they worry most about their families more than 1,200 miles away in Minnesota amid protests and an immigration crackdown that have seized the city. Like Cordoba, Garcia and Figueroa said they’ve lived in the city more than 20 years. Garcia, 59, has 12 grandchildren, as well as a nephew whom ICE briefly detained despite him being a US citizen, he said.
All have watched local news reports from inside the jail showing the chaos in their hometown, they said, and described feeling powerless to help their families from so far away.
“It’s not fair,” Cordoba said, his voice cracking, “what’s happening.”
Bernalillo County District Attorney says warrantless ICE detentions violate NM law
—Olivier Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman sent a letter Wednesday to a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in Albuquerque warning that some practices of federal agents in other states could be prosecuted as a felony offense under New Mexico law.
ICE officials who detain someone without a warrant signed by a judge can be charged under New Mexico's felony false imprisonment law, which contains no exceptions for law enforcement officers, Bregman wrote.
"I write to express my deep concern about ICE procedures and operations across the country," he said in the letter sent to William Shaw, assistant field office director for ICE in Albuquerque.
"ICE's nationwide pattern of unconstitutional enforcement actions give rise to questions and unease about ICE activity in New Mexico," Bregman wrote. "Specifically, certain activity by ICE agents reported in other states would be criminal under the laws of New Mexico."
Bregman, who is a Democratic candidate for governor, said he received no response to the letter on Wednesday. Shaw is the assistant field director of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in Albuquerque.
The Journal did not receive a response Wednesday to a request for comment from Albuquerque officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
Bregman said he wrote the letter in response to videos and news reports about ICE activities in other states and was not prompted by any specific incidents in New Mexico.
"I'm trying to get ahead of this so that it's very clear," Bregman said in a phone interview. "I'm not going to sit by and watch anybody violate the law and turn a blind eye to it. To the contrary, we're going to hold people accountable, and that means everybody."
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that ICE officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people's homes without a judge's warrant, according to an internal ICE memo and whistleblower complaint.
The memo, signed by acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, states that administrative warrants signed by an agency official are sufficient for forced entry if there’s a final order of removal. The change reverses previous guidance and raises concerns about constitutional protections against illegal searches.
Bregman's letter highlights New Mexico's statute for false imprisonment, which is defined as "intentionally confining or restraining another person" without lawful authority such as a signed warrant, reasonable suspicion or probable cause. False imprisonment is a fourth-degree felony with a basic sentence of 18 months in prison.
New Mexico law contains no exception for law enforcement officers, Bregman wrote in the letter.
"Therefore, any ICE agent who, without a signed warrant and without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, detains, confines or retrains a person in Bernalillo County may be subject to prosecution," it said.
Bregman said in the interview that videos and news reports from other states show ICE officers engaging in racial profiling by arbitrarily pulling over Hispanic people and demanding to know where they were born.
"We are a majority Hispanic state," he said. "I represent the biggest populated county in the state. I'm laying this down to make sure everybody knows that we're not going to tolerate whoever they are violating our criminal statutes."
Homeless residents leave Quirky Books encampment with uncertain futures - Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
Despite being homeless, it’s been three years since Evan Paquin has had to search for a place to sleep.
Alongside his mother, 38-year-old Paquin found refuge in the parking lot of a used bookstore a block off Central, on Jefferson. Each night he pitched his tent and took it down by the following morning.
After a while, the encampment began to grow, eventually becoming a fixed community that would draw both controversy and praise.
Tuesday night, due to a court order in an ongoing lawsuit between the city and the bookstore owner, Paquin and the few remaining residents gathered their things and left.
Many didn't know where they would sleep that night.
“It’s the not knowing that scares me,” Paquin said. “Are we gonna be alright?”
The Quirky Books encampment has become the epicenter of a debate over how to address the mounting number of people experiencing homelessness in Albuquerque. The owner, Gillam Kerley, said he provided a rare place where homeless people were welcome, while surrounding business owners and the city argued that Kerley’s encampment enabled drug use and violence.
“I wish that what I was doing spurred the city to be better, instead of attacking us,” Kerley said as he looked out at the empty parking lot. “They say that they have the solutions, but they don’t.”
From the city’s point of view, the solution is shelters, a remedy that the municipality has poured millions of dollars into in recent years. The city says there are some 5,000 people living on the streets in the city, with around 1,300 beds available at various shelters.
But many say they are hesitant to go to shelters, whether that’s because of prior bad experiences, sobriety requirements or limited accommodation for pets.
Sobriety requirements are the reason Paquin declined a ride to a shelter Wednesday.
He said quietly that he wanted to go to a sober living facility and get his life back on track, but was scared of detox, a process known to cause physical and mental anguish and in some unattended cases — death.
Many of the encampment's residents rejected help from Albuquerque Community Safety staff, who were present multiple times in the days leading up to the eviction.
All in all, ACS transported three people from the encampment to a shelter Tuesday, although they offered services to more than 15 people during several visits, said city spokesperson Rebecca Atkins.
"Every interaction focused on compassionate engagement, trust-building and offering services and support," Atkins said in a statement Wednesday.
‘It’s just not a solution’
For neighboring businesses, the court order put an end to a yearslong fight with Quirky Books.
In the months prior, tensions were mounting after a homicide was reported near the property in November and a month later a large fire broke out. The blaze destroyed several tents filled with belongings, scorched a telephone pole and warped a metal fence.
Alfredo Barrenechea, the owner of Absolute Investment Realty which shares a property line with the bookstore, said Wednesday that he was relieved and noticed a “marked improvement” after the encampment cleared out.
“The aftershocks may still follow,” Barrenechea said.
Though the business owners were glad to see the encampment go, Barrenechea isn't sure it will stay gone. If people decide to set up camp once more, Barrenechea said he's unsure if Kerley would enforce the court order.
"I'm not sure he'll enforce it in good faith," Barrenechea said.
For business owners, the encampment was a day-to-day frustration, but what bothers Barrenechea more, he said, is Kerley marketing it as a viable solution to homelessness.
“It's really disappointing that people who have compassion for these (homeless) people feel like this is a good solution for their problems,” Barrenechea said. “Because it's just not a solution. It's just a place where things get worse.”
But even with people gone, the fight isn’t quite over.
The court order is temporary pending the outcome of ongoing litigation. Depending on who the judge sides with, the encampment may return or be gone for good.
Paquin, who left his makeshift home of three years, said that the ire from neighboring businesses upset him.
"I never wanted that on our names," Paquin said. "I tried to clean up, but more and more just came and ruined it for everyone. This was my house, this was my yard." US Fish and Wildlife Service quietly suspends aerial count of Mexican gray wolves - Cathy Cook, Albuquerque Journal
An annual helicopter count of endangered wolves has been indefinitely paused, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service won’t say why.
The Mexican gray wolf is a highly endangered subspecies of the gray wolf, which U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and the Arizona Game and Fish Department are working to recover. There were 286 Mexican gray wolves counted in New Mexico and Arizona during the 2025 population count.
But this year’s aerial operations have been paused, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Garrett Peterson. Ground counts of the wolves are being conducted. The agency did not answer questions about why the aerial operations have been paused and when they might resume. The aerial operations were originally scheduled for sometime in January.
The New Mexico and Arizona departments of Game and Fish typically assist in the aerial count. New Mexico’s Game and Fish Department is working with Fish and Wildlife to “better understand challenges to the survey,” said spokesman Darren Vaughan. He did not know why the aerial count was canceled, and directed other questions to Fish and Wildlife.
One Fish and Wildlife Service publication describes the annual population count as “an integral part of the Mexican wolf recovery program,” because it provides information about the minimum numbers of wolves, packs, breeding pairs and pups in the wild, allowing agencies to track progress toward recovery goals. The annual count includes ground counts that begin in fall, and aerial operations in winter.
During aerial operations, specific wolves are darted from a helicopter. The sedated wolf is examined, measured, vaccinated and fitted with a radio collar, according to an agency guide on the wolf count. The animal also gets its blood drawn. Then the wolf is crated. When sedation wears off, it’s driven back into the wild and released.
Greta Anderson, deputy director of the Western Watersheds Project, has some reservations about the aerial count being an invasive way to manage the species, but believes it’s an important part of the science being done to save the species. Collaring the wolves provides a lot of information that helps with the program’s management, she said, and valuable genetic information is collected during aerial operations.
“It feels like knowing the genetics of the population is really important at this point, while we're facing a bottleneck, and the helicopter counts are the time that they do a lot of that collecting,” Anderson said. “So the counting itself, they can do most of it from the ground, but the efficient data gathering, collar trading, all of that stuff is something that we'll be missing out on this year if they don't get to it.”
Efforts to strip the gray wolf and the Mexican gray wolf of endangered species status are ongoing in Congress. A bill that would strip the gray wolf of endangered and threatened species status passed the House in December. A bill to delist the Mexican gray wolf sponsored by Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., is scheduled to be marked up by the House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday.
Wandering wolf found dead
A young Mexican gray wolf, m3065 — nicknamed “Taylor” — was killed over the weekend after being hit by a vehicle along Interstate 40 near Grants, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish confirmed.
The wolf had gained attention after wandering north of I-40 outside the Mexican wolf experimental population area. Environmental advocacy groups have pushed for eliminating the experimental population area boundaries and allowing Mexican wolves to roam farther north.
“His persistence and self-determination in deciding to live at Mount Taylor is really a lesson for how policy should be set,” Anderson said. “And if there's any outcome of this, I hope that they consider building more wildlife crossings and safe passage for wildlife along our highways, because we're losing, not just threatened and endangered species, but other wildlife this way all the time.”
Taylor was originally found by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish in the Mount Taylor area, although genetic testing showed he was related to a wolf pack in Arizona. The male wolf was given a radio collar and relocated farther south twice last year because of the potential risk of death, according to past news releases. Each time he wandered back to the Mount Taylor area. In the fall, he made rapid movements north, likely looking for a mate.
“Taylor’s death is a heartbreaking reminder that highways like I-40 are not just lines on a map, they are lethal barriers for wildlife,” Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project Executive Director Claire Musser said in a statement.
House committee advances flurry of medical compact bills, despite Senate Dem opposition - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
A New Mexico House committee on Wednesday approved nine bills seeking to authorize the state’s entry into various health care licensure compacts, part of a bipartisan effort to increase pressure on Senate Democrats to approve more than just two such agreements this session.
Interstate licensure compacts make relocation easier for health care and other types of workers licensed in other states, according to doctors and advocates. But New Mexico, unlike most other jurisdictions nationwide and its neighboring states, is a member of only one such medical compact.
Amid a statewide health care worker shortage, a group of six lawmakers from both parties and legislative chambers met repeatedly starting in November and announced agreement on legislation joining two such compacts: one for physicians and another for social workers.
But many lawmakers, including House Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, say two compacts is not enough. So they introduced more than a dozen bills for other compacts, including for paramedics, dentists, physical therapists, counselors and others.
Republicans in both chambers during opening-day news conferences touted the compacts as a way to bring in health care workers and increase patient access, particularly in rural areas, to telehealth services.
“There’s absolutely no excuse why we can’t enter all of these compacts,” said Sen. Nicole Tobiassen (R-Albuquerque) during a news conference Tuesday. “It’s in the best interest of every New Mexican.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has called on the Legislature, including in her State of the State address on Tuesday, to pass multiple medical compacts, and provided a legislative message this week that authorizes the Legislature to consider non-budget-related bills.
Democratic leaders in the Senate have opposed entering more than two compacts during the session, saying doing so will overburden the state Regulation and Licensing Division and would risk rushing the state into complicated, important agreements. They’ve also previously opposed joining due to concerns about liability and how the compacts might undermine state laws.
During Wednesday’s meeting of the House Health and Human Services Committee, sponsors and bill supporters described worker shortages in a variety of fields — gaps they hope the compacts will help fill.
Rep. Marian Matthews (D-Albuquerque) is sponsoring three compact bills for psychologists, paramedics and counselors. She said New Mexico’s entry will have immediate benefits for the provision of telemedicine, particularly for specialized areas of care.
“It basically makes the practice of medicine kind of nationwide, instead of just each little state having only the resources that are in that state,” she said. “And I think that’s why the access grows exponentially.”
Fred Nathan, director of Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan advocacy group in favor of the compacts, said during the meeting that joining the compacts is the “single most important and impactful thing the Legislature and the governor can do this session to improve access to care for all New Mexicans.”
“There are more compacts than just the doctors’ compact. We have shortages in every area,” he said, including shortages of emergency medical technicians. A 2024 study from the University of New Mexico found the state is about 2,500 EMTs below national benchmarks based on county populations and numbers of patients.
According to one state official, refusing to join the compacts could carry significant financial impacts. Keenan Ryan, acting chief medical officer at the state Health Care Authority, noted that the state recently received more than $210 million from the federal government for a rural health care grant program. In the application, federal officials asked the state to explain its plans to join medical compacts.
State officials wrote in their application that they intend to push the Legislature to pursue compact approval for doctors, emergency medical service providers, psychologists and physicians’ assistants during the session.
“Stipulations in this grant require that if these compacts don’t get passed, we are subject to potential clawbacks from the federal government,” Ryan said. “So there is real funding opportunity losses if these compacts are not passed, especially for rural New Mexico.”
Of 11 compacts on the agenda, lawmakers on the committee passed nine. Rep. Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena) withdrew her two compact bills dentists and physicians’ assistants without explanation.
The bills that passed Wednesday will be heard next in the House Judiciary Committee.
The nine compact bills HHS passed:
- HB 10 PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT INTERSTATE COMPACT
- HB 11 AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY COMPACT
- HB 12 PHYSICAL THERAPY LICENSURE COMPACT
- HB 13 OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY LICENSURE COMPACT
- HB 14 DENTIST & DENTAL HYGIENIST COMPACT
- HB 31 EMS PERSONNEL LICENSURE INTERSTATE COMPACT
- HB 32 COUNSELING LICENSURE COMPACT
- HB 33 PSYCHOLOGY INTERJURISDICTIONAL COMPACT
- HB 50 SOCIAL WORK LICENSURE INTERSTATE COMPACT
New Mexican lawmakers celebrate Mexican delegation at the Roundhouse – Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
New Mexico lawmakers on Wednesday welcomed what they said was the largest delegation of Mexican officials to ever visit the Roundhouse, with Speaker Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) pledging continued cooperation with the state’s neighboring country.
“We share history, we share values, we share customs, we share a commitment to making life better for every single person,” Martínez said. “No matter how divisive the federal administration might be right now, no matter how dark some of these times are for our communities, New Mexico will continue to stand strong in our commitment, in our ally, in our connection to our brothers and sisters south of the border.”
Standing before the New Mexico, U.S. and Mexico national flags, several lawmakers welcomed the more than one dozen delegates from Mexico, which included state representatives, mayors and other delegates from the states of Chihuahua, Sonora and Nuevo León — as well as federal diplomats.
After remarks, Juárez-based Juan Gabriel impersonator Hugo Cortés and wife Lily Cortés serenaded the crowd with a rendition of “Qué Bonito Es Santa Fe.”
Despite continued uncertainty from the Trump Administration’s tariff policies, talks between New Mexico and the states of Sonora and Chihuahua on trade are ongoing, Patricia Pinzón, who serves as the Consul of Mexico in Albuquerque, told Source NM in an interview after the event.
“Conversations have not stopped, they have only increased,” she said. “Once more, we are so thankful to be in an immigrant collaborative, cooperative state such as this.”
Gerardo Fierro, the executive director of the state’s Border Authority, said he expects continued investment at the state’s border regions and crossings, noting that New Mexico’s exports increased from $7 billion to $10 billion in trade with Mexico.
“Mexico is the number one trading partner with the U.S., but it is also the number one trading partner for New Mexico,” he said. “We’re looking to make strategic investments at the border to bring more companies there.”
He also said the delegation would hold discussions with state lawmakers on the continued impact of the New World screwworm, a remergent parasitic worm which has shut down cattle trade between the U.S. and Mexico.
“It’s affecting jobs across the U.S., with jobs on the feed lots and meat factories being lost, because we are no longer having cattle that used to be fed in New Mexico and Texas,” he said. “It’s imperative that both federal governments start resolving these issues.”