New Mexico Senate passes bill seeking to close immigration detention facilities - Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
The New Mexico Senate passed a bill Tuesday that could shut down immigration detention centers in the state, successfully sending the legislation to the governor’s desk after nearly a decade of failed attempts.
With Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in support, New Mexico is expected to join six other states that have also severed ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid ongoing public outcry over the agents' use of force.
“We’re better than this — you don’t have to turn on the TV to know that we’re better than this,” said co-sponsor Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces.
Cervantes voted against past iterations of this bill, a decision he said he now regrets.
The vote came nearly six hours after the Senate began debate on the bill, delayed by a series of back-to-back monologues by Republican senators about unrelated subjects — from riding horses to Black History Month.
New Mexico Senate Republican spokesperson Brandon Harris denied that the extended use of the announcement period was an attempt to delay the vote and said instead Republicans were "highlighting priorities."
Ultimately, after four hours of debate, the bill passed on a 24-15 vote.
The only Democrat to vote against the bill was Sen. George Muñoz of Gallup.
“If you want to see a town dry up like a tumbleweed and blow away, get ready, because we are a prison town,” Muñoz said.
If signed into law, the act would not directly shutter detention centers; instead, it would forbid counties and local law enforcement from contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Two facilities, in Torrance and Cibola counties, could remain open if ICE decides to contract directly with the facilities’ owner and operator, CoreCivic.
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has responded to repeated requests for comments on whether officials would pursue such a contract.
While two of the rural facilities may be able to circumvent the law, the largest detention facility located outside Chaparral will likely close because it is owned by Otero County.
Lawmakers who represent Otero have warned that closing the facility would economically devastate rural communities that rely on prisons for jobs and tax revenue.
“Would you want your people, your neighbors, your friends, your children's friends — would you want them to have the opportunity to have a full belly tomorrow night and have their mom and dad to have a job?” said Sen. Jim Townsend, R-Artesia. “I will, I'll stand for them because it's the right thing to do.”
Other lawmakers who represent the affected counties argued that their communities cannot rely on the prison industry forever, but to get there the state needs to step in and provide economic relief.
“Dignity should never be compromised for revenue,” said Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma. “Justice should never be traded for economic survival… We can take a moral stand and still do right by the people who will feel the impact the most — Cibola County has already given more than its share.”
An amendment that would have compensated the counties for lost tax revenue as a result of the facility closures was narrowly shot down by a 20-19 vote. Several additional amendments leveled by Republican lawmakers also failed.
Despite opposition, the bill, which sprinted through both chambers of the Legislature, is headed to the governor's desk. Staff in the Governor's Office said she plans to sign the bill, which she first expressed support for in an executive message on the session's first day.
Conditions on the ground
The detention facilities have long been criticized by immigration attorneys and advocates who have repeatedly warned of human rights abuses, including uses of arbitrary solitary confinement, meager food rations, poor medical care and abuse from guards.
Immigration attorney Zoe Bowman, who has clients in both the Cibola and Torrance facilities, said these complaints aren't new.
What's changed, she said, is that attorneys now feel powerless to do anything about abuses their clients report to them.
“One thing that is different now is that a lot of the internal accountability mechanisms we relied on before have been wiped out from the Trump administration,” Bowman said.
The bill’s passage sends a strong message to her clients, she said, that New Mexicans are standing beside them.
Before the vote, co-sponsor Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, who has visited the Torrance facility in Estancia, called the situation “heart-wrenching.”
She described meeting a young man with developmental disabilities who did not understand his situation.
“He looked at me with sad eyes — he did not understand why he was in the facility,” Sedillo Lopez said. “His mother was in Florida and he wanted to go home to her. He said to me, ‘no me gusta aquí.’ ‘I don't like it here.’ And he said this in a childish voice, my heart just broke.”
Trump's $45 billion expansion of immigrant detention sites faces pushback from communities - By David A. Lieb, Heather Hollingsworth and Morgan Lee, Associated Press
With tensions high over federal immigration enforcement, some state and local officials are pushing back against the Trump administration's attempts to house thousands of detained immigrants in jails, converted warehouses and privately run facilities in their communities.
Federal officials have been scouting cities and counties across the U.S. for places to hold immigrants as they roll out a massive $45 billion expansion of detention facilities financed by President Donald Trump's recent tax-cutting law.
The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis have amplified an already intense spotlight on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, increasing scrutiny of its plans for new detention sites.
A proposed ICE facility just north of Richmond, Virginia, drew hundreds of people last week to a tense public hearing of the Hanover County Board of Supervisors.
"You want what's happening in Minnesota to go down in our own backyard? Build that detention center here, and that's exactly what will happen," resident Kimberly Matthews told county officials.
As a prospective ICE detention site became public, elected officials in Kansas City, Missouri, scrambled to pass an ordinance aimed at blocking it. And mayors in Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City — after raising concerns about building permits — announced last week that property owners won't be selling or leasing their facilities for immigration detention.
Meanwhile, legislatures in several Democratic-led states pressed forward with bills barring or discouraging ICE facilities. A New Mexico measure targets local government agreements to detain immigrants for ICE. A novel California proposal seeks to nudge companies running ICE facilities out of the state by imposing a 50% tax on their proceeds.
The number of ICE detention sites has doubled
More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of mid-January, up from 40,000 when Trump took office a year earlier, according to federal data released Tuesday.
In a little over a year, the number of detention facilities used by ICE more than doubled, to 225 sites spread across a combined 48 states and territories. Most of that growth came through existing contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service or deals to use empty beds at county jails.
Trump's administration now is taking steps to open more large-scale facilities. In January, ICE paid $102 million for a warehouse in Washington County, Maryland, $84 million for one in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and more than $70 million for one in Surprise, Arizona. It also solicited public comment on a proposed warehouse purchase in a flood plain in Chester, New York.
Federal immigration officials have toured large warehouses elsewhere, without releasing many details about the efforts.
"They will be very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards," ICE said in a statement, adding: "It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space."
Detention site foes face legal limitations
State and local governments can decline to lease detention space to ICE, but they generally cannot prohibit businesses and private landowners from using their property for federal immigrant detention centers, said Danielle Jefferis, an associate law professor at the University of Nebraska who focuses on immigration and civil litigation.
In 2023, a federal court invalidated a California law that barred private immigrant detention facilities, finding it infringed on federal powers. A federal appeals court panel cited similar grounds in July while striking down a New Jersey law that forbade agreements to operate immigrant detention facilities.
After ICE officials recently toured a warehouse in Orlando, Florida, as a prospective site, local officials looked into ways to regulate or prevent it. But City Attorney Mayanne Downs advised them in a letter that "ICE is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate."
Officials in Hanover County also asked their attorney to evaluate legal options after the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter confirming its intent to purchase a private property for use as an ICE processing facility. The building sits near retail businesses, hotels, restaurants and several neighborhoods.
Although some residents voiced concerns that an ICE facility could strain the county's resources, there's little the county can do to oppose it, said Board of Supervisors Chair Sean Davis.
"The federal government is generally exempt from our zoning regulations," Davis said.
Kansas City tries to block a new ICE detention site
Despite court rulings elsewhere, the City Council in Kansas City voted in January to impose a five-year moratorium on non-city-run detention facilities. The vote came on the same day ICE officials toured a nearly 1-million-square-foot (92,903-square-meter) warehouse as a prospective site.
Manny Abarca, a county lawmaker, said he initially was threatened with trespassing when he showed up but was eventually allowed inside the facility, where a deputy ICE field office director told him they were scouting for a 7,500-bed site.
Abarca is trying to fortify Kansas City's resistance by proposing a countywide moratorium on permits, zoning changes and development plans for detention facilities not run by the county or a city.
"When federal power is putting communities on edge, local government has a responsibility to act where we have authority," he said.
As other ICE proposals have surfaced, officials in Social Circle, Georgia; Merrillville, Indiana; El Paso, Texas; and Roxbury Township, New Jersey, have raised concerns about a lack of water and sewer capacity to transform warehouses into detention sites.
Officials in Leavenworth, Kansas, are seeking to hold private prison operator CoreCivic to its requirements. A city planning commission on Monday advanced a three-year permit that would be needed for CoreCivic to reopen a shuttered prison as an ICE detention facility capable of housing up to 1,000 detainees.
Nationally, it remains to be seen whether local governments can deter ICE facilities through building permits and regulations.
"We're currently in a moment where it is being tested," Jefferis said. "So there is no clear answer as to how the courts are going to come down."
New Mexico targets existing ICE facilities
The Democratic-led New Mexico House on Friday passed legislation banning state and local government contracts for ICE detention facilities, sending it to the Senate. Similar bills are pending in Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.
The Otero County Processing Center, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from downtown El Paso, Texas, is one of three privately run ICE facilities that could be affected by the New Mexico legislation. The facility includes four immigration courtrooms and space for more than 1,000 detainees. The county financed its construction in 2007 with the intent to use it as a revenue source, and plans to pay off the remaining $16.5 million debt by 2028.
Otero County Attorney Roy Nichols said the county is prepared to sue the Legislature under a state law that prevents impairment of outstanding revenue bonds.
Republicans warned of job losses and economic fallout if the legislation forces immigrant detention centers to close.
But Democratic state Rep. Sarah Silva, who voted for the ban, and said her constituents in a heavily Hispanic area view the ICE facility as a burden.
"Our state can't be complicit in the violations that ICE has been doing in places like Minneapolis," Silva said. "To me that was beyond the tipping point."
Clear Horizons Act clears first legislative hurdle after lengthy hearing - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
The highest-profile climate change bill under consideration during this year’s 30-day legislative session passed its first Senate committee hearing Tuesday, but only after weathering a broad blast of opposition from business and industry groups.
After five hours of public testimony and debate, the Senate Conservation Committee voted 5-4 to advance the Clear Horizons Act to its next assigned committee.
The vote on the legislation, Senate Bill 18, broke down largely along party lines, with Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, joining the committee's three Republican members in casting "no" votes. He voiced concern the legislation could lead to a flood of litigation, especially in southern New Mexico.
Other critics, including representatives from New Mexico's dairy, mining and restaurant industries, voiced economic concerns, saying the bill would raise costs and could lead to some businesses being shuttered.
"I don't believe we can regulate our way to utopia, and I don't believe we can tax our way to prosperity," said Sen. Ant Thornton, R-Sandia Park.
However, supporters of the bill expressed a sense of urgency to enshrine greenhouse gas emission limits in state law amid rising temperatures and a recent increase in natural disasters across New Mexico.
"Affordability isn't just about monthly bills, it's about the costs when disasters hit," said Demis Foster, the chief executive officer of Santa Fe-based Conservation Voters New Mexico, who urged legislators to be on the "right side of history."
Several officials in Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's administration also spoke in favor of the bill, which would codify an executive order issued by the governor in 2019 that directed New Mexico to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030.
New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney described the bill as the "engine" to power the state's climate action plan, while Ali Rye, the state director of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, cited recent changes in the state's weather and an accompanying spike in wildfires and other natural disasters. The two largest wildfires in modern state history have erupted in the last five years.
"We're not preparing for a specific season (anymore)," Rye said. "Disasters are happening throughout the year."
Specifically, the Clear Horizons Act would set future deadlines for meeting statewide greenhouse gas emissions — including a 100% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, based on 2005 levels. It would also establish new methane emission limits for the oil and gas industries.
Previous attempts to pass similar legislation have stalled at the Roundhouse due to concerns about its impact on local agricultural operations and the state's oil and natural gas industry, which generates about 35% of the state's general fund revenue.
New Mexico is currently the nation's second-highest oil producing state — behind only Texas — and the fifth-highest producer of natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In response to concerns raised in past years, Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, the bill's sponsor, made several changes to the legislation this year, including exempting emissions of less than 10,000 metric tons per year.
During the Senate Conservation Committee hearing, she read off a list of more than 20 other states that have already set carbon emission limits, including Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Stewart also pushed back against suggestions by Sen. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, that the legislation would make New Mexico follow in California's footsteps.
"We wrote this ourselves over the last several years," Stewart said at one point during Tuesday's debate.
Meanwhile, several legislators also questioned the bill's potential impact on Project Jupiter, a massive data center under construction in Santa Teresa that has prompted debate in Doña Ana County.
Air quality permits for the project, which would be fueled by natural gas, indicate it could produce more than 2.8 gigawatts of electricity via fossil fuels, with significant carbon emissions.
Kenney declined to speak specifically about Project Jupiter due to its pending air quality applications before the state Environment Department, but said the legislation would allow the state to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from data centers.
"We are on the sideline (currently), and that's a shame for such an important aspect of our economy," Kenney said during Tuesday's hearing.
Matthew Gonzales, vice president of state affairs for the Consumer Energy Alliance, a nonprofit group that supports Project Jupiter, described the vote to advance the Clear Horizons Act as disappointing.
"Instead of thoughtful environmental policy, this creates rigid mandates that will drive up costs and invite years of litigation, turning the law into a revenue-generating tool for attorneys rather than a practical solution for New Mexicans," Gonzales said in a statement.
The bill now advances to the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee with just over two weeks remaining in this year's 30-day legislative session.
Agave or bust! Mexican long-nosed bats head farther north in search of sweet nectar - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
Mexican long-nosed bats have a taste for agave, their tongues designed to lap up the famous desert plant's nectar during nightly flights. It's not just a means of satisfying taste buds. It's a matter of fueling up for an arduous journey.
The endangered species migrates each summer from Mexico into the southernmost reaches of the United States. Big Bend National Park in Texas is a destination, as is Hidalgo County in New Mexico's Bootheel. It wasn't until last year that DNA evidence helped to add Arizona to the list.
Bat Conservation International announced on Tuesday that swabbing agave plants and hummingbird feeders on the fringes of New Mexico's Gila National Forest also turned up proof that the bats are farther north than ever before.
The research shows they're traveling about 100 miles (160 kilometers) beyond their known roosts in New Mexico.
The state's Bootheel region has been hit hard by drought, and agaves there don't seem to flower as much as they used to, said Kristen Lear, director of the Agave Restoration Initiative at Bat Conservation International.
"We think these bats are trying to look for healthy agave food sources elsewhere," she said. "So that's kind of driving them farther north, where the agaves are a little bit less hit by drought."
Traveling another 30 miles (48 kilometers) can add another night to a bat's journey. To keep the sweet nectar flowing along the route, researchers on both sides of the international border say restoration of desert grasslands on the fringes of where the bats have been found in the past will be key to ensuring the future of the winged mammals and the genetic diversity of agaves.
The Mexican long-nosed bat was added to the endangered species list in 1988. It's estimated that fewer than 10,000 remain.
Complicating matters is that both Mexican long-nosed bats and agaves are slow breeders. The bats have only one baby — or pup — per year. Agaves, which rely on the bats for pollination, can take a decade or more to flower and produce seeds.
"So you're not going to get huge population rebounds quickly. You have to really work to maintain those levels," Lear said.
Researchers and volunteers in Mexico and the United States have planted about 185,000 agaves since 2018 in what they call the nectar corridor. Seeds are collected so more plants can propagate. It can take a couple of years of rearing in a nursery before agaves are transplanted into high-priority areas.
Rachel Burke, BCI's agave restoration coordinator for the U.S., said the discovery in New Mexico underscores the importance of ongoing work to learn more about the bats. According to Burke and the other researchers, detecting the presence of the bats helps to target planting and restoration efforts.
From private ranchers and local communities to government agencies, more than 100 partners have teamed up with Bat Conservation International to continue sampling for DNA and surveying agave patches.
NM House unanimously approves interstate medical compact bill - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
With no debate, the New Mexico House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass Senate Bill 1, the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Act.
The 64-0 vote comes after the Senate similarly approved the bill with no opposition. The legislation would make it easier for health care professionals in other states to practice in New Mexico, something supporters say will go a long way in addressing the state’s health care worker shortage.
But supporters, including co-sponsor Sen. Linda Trujillo (D-Santa Fe), have also been quick to acknowledge that SB1 isn’t a cure-all. She previously told Source NM that she believes other measures, including loan forgiveness for health care workers and affordable housing, are sorely needed to attract and retain physicians.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle share that sentiment. In one of the only comments lawmakers issued from the floor of the House Tuesday, Rep. Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena) said that entering the compact will make it exceedingly easy for New Mexico doctors to leave the state unless lawmakers also enact meaningful medical malpractice reform.
A medical malpractice proposal cleared its first hurdle in the Legislature last week when the House Health and Human Services Committee voted to advance it, but not before Republicans objected to an “unfriendly amendment” that would not cap punitive damages for corporate-owned hospitals. Physicians who practice in those hospitals would still be covered, though.
“This is not a silver bullet,” Armstrong, who signed onto the legislation as a co-sponsor, said ahead of casting her “yes” vote. “We are with the signage of this, and if the governor signs it, we are giving them a full tank of gas to be able to go to other states, as well. Without medical malpractice reform, we will not fix this, and I am a little disappointed this has come before the other.”
Similar compact legislation failed in 2025, but lawmakers pushed this year to enter a number of interstate compacts that would make it easier for licensed professionals in several occupations to work in New Mexico. Those proposed compacts would extend to physicians assistants, dental hygienists, social workers and more.
On the opening day of this year’s 30-day legislative session, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham used her final State of the State address in part to stress the importance of joining an interstate medical compact.
A spokesperson for Lujan Grisham on Tuesday told Source NM that she plans to sign the bill into law.