One year in, new NM militarized border zone overwhelming courts, ACLU says - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
One year after U.S. Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a land swap in southern New Mexico would create a new national militarized zone to deter illegal border crossers, federal courts are swamped with thousands of criminal cases the government knows it cannot prove, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
On April 15, 2025, Hegseth and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the transfer of land from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to the military, effectively making the 180-mile border New Mexico shares with Mexico into an extended military base tied to Fort Huachuca in Arizona.
Along with increasing Army patrols and empowering the military a more direct role in securing the border, creating the zone also enabled federal prosecutors to impose misdemeanor charges on those caught in the new National Defense Area.
In the year since, according to the ACLU’s report released Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New Mexico have filed misdemeanor charges more than 2,000 times. But judges have tossed out many of those cases, saying the government did not establish that those charged “knowingly” entered the new military zone, and issued rulings criticizing prosecutors for continuing to bring the charges.
“The Government’s inattention to statutory and constitutional rights has been a consistent throughline through these hundreds of cases,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Strickland in one such ruling the ACLU excerpted for its report.
That prosecutors continue to file the charges remains a mystery, said Becca Sheff, staff attorney for the ACLU, in an interview Tuesday with Source NM.
“What has prompted us to persist in monitoring this so closely and analyzing its implications is really the puzzle of why the government has persisted…pushing these military trespass charges because, frankly, they’re not getting a lot of bang for their buck at this time,” she said. “And it raises the question of, what’s the broader policy objective?”
A spokesperson for the United States Attorney’s Office of New Mexico did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request Tuesday afternoon for comment on the ACLU report.
The organization’s findings echo those from a recent investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, which found that about 60% of cases involving at least 4,700 immigrants were dropped or dismissed, and that at least nine judges in New Mexico and West Texas, where another militarized border zone is in effect, have deemed the government’s charges legally deficient.
The ACLU report notes that federal prosecutors whose cases judges dismissed resorted to a new way of filing charges against immigrants arrested in the National Defense Area. Instead of securing indictments through grand juries or presenting cases to a magistrate judge for a review, prosecutors filed criminal “informations,” which the ACLU says are typically reserved for minor violations and don’t require a judge’s review.
“The audacity that the government’s shown so far in circumventing the court’s process for evaluating whether charges are valid at the preliminary stage of the case has been really egregious,” Sheff told Source NM.
The ACLU’s report urges Congress to exercise oversight over the border zones, including determining whether prosecutors are violating federal policy by filing criminal “informations” against defendants.
The ACLU also wants Congress to assess how much money and manpower federal prosecutors have devoted to enforcing the militarized border zone, as well the burdens it has placed on federal public defenders.
Sheff said her organization did legal research and statistical analysis of the charges being in militarized zones across the border, which pointed toward the ACLU toward recommendations for additional transparency, oversight and “legal reform to put in place more meaningful safeguards against this type of overreach.”
NM judge considering federal demand for personal state voter data - Colleen Heild, Albuquerque Journal
The Trump administration's attempt to collect sensitive voter registration records around the country played out in Albuquerque federal court Tuesday as lawyers for New Mexico voters decried the demand as illegal.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sued New Mexico along with some 29 other states seeking unredacted voter registration lists that include the last four digits of Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver's license information.
So far, federal courts in five states have dismissed DOJ lawsuits demanding such records.
Senior U.S. District Judge Judith Herrera of Albuquerque rendered no decision Tuesday. And after more than two hours of legal arguments, there was no consensus as to what the requested personal identifying information would be used for.
James Thomas Tucker, an attorney representing the U.S. Department of Justice, told the judge that the voter registration information is necessary to evaluate New Mexico's compliance with two federal voting rights laws.
"It's a trust but verify approach," Tucker said.
Tucker also said the DOJ wants to know more about New Mexico's relatively low rate of removals from the rolls due to duplicate voter registrations in 2024.
Lawyers fighting the DOJ requests around the country maintain there are other reasons for the federal request, suggesting the data would be used to compile a national voter list, for immigration enforcement, or for DOGE-like efforts aimed at cutting federal budgets.
Herrera had questions about whether state and federal privacy laws would bar such a data release.
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver told the DOJ last September that she is required by state law to redact Social Security numbers, full dates of birth and driver's license numbers from voter registration records before they are made available for inspection. She didn't attend Tuesday's hearing.
"This is not authorized by any law, and would cause the Secretary of State to violate the law," argued Anjana Samant, an attorney representing the state agency. After the hearing, Samant said this is the first time in at least 20 years that the DOJ has demanded such data from New Mexico.
She added that New Mexico is in full compliance with its voter roll list maintenance as required by law.
In suing New Mexico, the DOJ cites Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, arguing the law grants the attorney general of the United States the sweeping power to obtain these records.
But the Civil Rights Act requires a statement of "the basis and the purpose" for the request, which lawyers for the states say the DOJ has failed to provide in its request for records.
"I didn't see any reference to the basis (for the request)," said Herrera on Tuesday.
Tucker said the DOJ was willing to supply such a statement, but attorneys for Common Cause and the New Mexico Alliance of Retired Americans told the judge that wouldn't cure the DOJ's flawed request.
"The DOJ is trying to get the private information of every single registered voter in New Mexico and every single voter in the United States," said Alliance attorney Joshua Abbuhl at the hearing.
William Hughes, representing Common Cause, said the DOJ's request "has a real chilling effect on voters." If they know their personal information will be disseminated, Hughes added, "they will be more hesitant to register to vote."
New Mexico Supreme Court orders incumbent Republican state Rep. Dow back on the ballot - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that incumbent state Rep. Rebecca Dow, a Republican who represents a sweeping legislative district encompassing Truth or Consequences and Elephant Butte, should stay on the June 2 primary ballot.
Her candidacy had been in question since a state district court judge booted her from the ballot in early April. Democrat Tara Jaramillo, who briefly held Dow’s seat while the Republican unsuccessfully ran for governor, filed a challenge in court that alleged Dow improperly filed screenshots of signatures she gathered to make the ballot, rather than the physical nominating petition required under state law.
Dow quickly appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor just more than an hour after attorneys for Dow, Jaramillo, the Sierra County Clerk and the New Mexico Secretary of State presented their arguments. In court, Dow’s attorney argued that the screenshots contained the same information as the paper nominating petition would have, and that the dispute over formatting didn’t change the validity of the signatures she collected.
As Dow waded through a crowd of supporters in the Supreme Court building’s narrow hallways, she reminded them that Tuesday’s victory was not final. While she’s running unopposed in the June 2 primary, she is set to face a write-in Democratic candidate in the Nov. 3 general election.
“This was never about me…it’s about whether the establishment can use their own broken system as a weapon against democracy and open elections,” Dow said from the steps of the Roundhouse shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision. “I’m holding a seat that they assume should be Democrat and are looking at technicalities to remove [me].”
Republican Party of New Mexico Chair Amy Barela in a statement lauded the Supreme Court ruling as a “victory for fairness, election integrity and the rule of law,” adding that the decision is a “win for every candidate.”
Dow had long argued that the issue at hand was — at worst — an issue of formatting. In court, her attorney Carter Harrison told Supreme Court justices that the state law spells out what “must be done — not what must happen if it’s not done perfectly” and argued that keeping her off the ballot would be a step too far.
In previous court filings, lawyers for the New Mexico Secretary of State asked the Supreme Court to keep Dow off the ballot because of the issues with her nominating paperwork. In a court hearing Tuesday morning, Secretary of State general counsel Peter Auh doubled down and said that “whatever Ms. Dow filed, it was not a nominating petition.”
“It’s simple enough to use the form that is prescribed by the Legislature,” Auh said. “Everybody does it. It’s not that difficult.”
The New Mexico Secretary of State’s office last week told Source NM it was going to mail dozens of ballots to military and overseas voters without Dow’s name, as her challenge was pending in court. A spokesperson did not immediately answer a call about whether that mailing did, in fact, happen.
While justices interrogated attorneys for each party from the bench, they noted that the challenge to Dow’s candidacy was not aimed at the validity of signatures she gathered.
“You didn’t challenge the nominating petition. You didn’t challenge a name on there. So it’s clear, you must concede these were valid nominees,” Justice David K. Thomson told Jaramillo’s attorney, former state lawmaker Daymon Ely. “It just seems like a gotcha.”
U.S. House committee approves legislation returning land to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Federal legislation that would transfer land from a former boarding school to the state’s 19 pueblos unanimously cleared a congressional committee Tuesday, members of New Mexico’s delegation said.
The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee also passed a bill to memorialize the state’s downwinders.
The rare show of bipartisanship means both bills have a path forward and could go to the floor as soon as next month, U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury said during a virtual news conference on Tuesday with all three of the state’s representatives in the U.S. House of Congress, all Democrats.
“It’s a big deal because not a lot of things happen in Congress these days, and certainly, not a lot of things happen on a bipartisan and a unanimous basis,” she said.
H.R. 6162, sponsored by Stansbury, would transfer 10 acres of a former boarding school to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque — which is operated by New Mexico’s 19 pueblos — and includes a museum, cultural programming and events.
Albuquerque Indian School was part of a network of federally-run schools that took more than 18,000 Native American children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language between 1819 and 1969. Children faced forced labor, assimilation, abuse or death, including Zuni, Navajo and Apache children who were buried in unmarked graves in Albuquerque. The Albuquerque Indian School closed in the 1980s.
U.S. Rep Teresa Leger Fernández, who co-sponsored the bill, said the land transfer is a form of justice. “That land used to be a place of trauma, it was a boarding school and now, it’s a place of celebration of pueblo culture,” she said.
Monique Fragua (Jemez Pueblo), the president and CEO of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, in remarks during the news conference called the bill “absolutely monumental,” and noted that its passage coincides with the celebration of American Indian Week. She said the land would be used as an entrepreneur complex, and include light industry and manufacturing spaces.
“We have a history of transforming these lands here, the former site of the Albuquerque Indian School, into a place of cultural recognition,” she said. “It will be a place of growth, a place of economic development. New Mexican businesses can come and place their roots on our campus and build that next generation.”
A second bill, H.R. 2490, would install memorial plaques at Holloman Air Force Base, the White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Park recognizing New Mexicans exposed to radiation from the Trinity test by the federal government.
U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez said the plaques are a means to “never forget the story,” which he said is more relevant than ever as the Trump administration seeks to restart uranium mining and other nuclear activities.
“We, again, owe it to the downwinders, but also to the entire New Mexico community that felt the impacts of the nuclear testing to have these memorials placed,” Vasquez said.
Stansbury said the bills could move to the House floor vote by May, and then would have to clear the U.S. Senate.
“Basically, these bills are ready for passage,” she said.
Opponents to Camino La Tierra development mobilize for legal fight - Lily Alexander, Santa Fe New Mexican
Residents are protesting a proposed housing development near La Tierra trails in Santa Fe.
The Camino La Tierra project would span 300 acres north of the city.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports they have started a GoFundMe that has raised $63,000 out of a $250,000 goal to cover legal costs.
Residents said they’re concerned about traffic and emergency evacuations, fire safety, and the impact on the surrounding neighborhoods.
The area of Camino La Tierra contains the only road for emergency and wildfire evacuation.
The county land use officer received hundreds of pages of written comments and also took public comments at the latest county hearing on April 9th.
The Santa Fe County Planning Commission will hold the next hearing on May 21st.
The project will preserve open spaces and that its condensed-home layout will be beneficial to fire safety.
However, the fire-safety committee chair for a nearby home association disagreed, given the high fire danger area and low fire support.