Lawmakers introduced House Bill 9 Friday, which would stop local governments from entering into contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
Three counties in New Mexico contract with ICE to detain people in immigrant custody: Cibola, Otero and Torrance.
The counties subcontract detention operations to private prison companies. CoreCivic runs the facilities in Torrance and Cibola, while Management & Training Corporation runs the facility in Otero County.
Concerns about conditions have arisen on numerous occasions. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security inspected the facility in Torrance County and urged ICE to address critical staffing shortages and unsanitary living conditions. U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján led a call for the facility to close. Last year, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups said they had received nearly 80 complaints from people held in ICE custody in Cibola County, including poor hygiene and a lack of access to health care including in cases of mental health crisis.
Rebecca Sheff, Senior Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New Mexico, supports the proposed legislation and calls ICE contracting through counties a loophole.
"The county is really a pass through. It's a middleman, and it allows ICE to circumvent federal competitive bidding requirements to do its detention contracting," she said.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Similar bills have been introduced twice before. In 2023, according to reporting from Source New Mexico, a bill was narrowly defeated after some senators argued that it would have faced legal challenges and damaged local economies. Similar legislation has passed in several other states, including Colorado.
In legislative committee hearings in 2023, representatives of the three counties hosting the facilities argued that closing them would have a devastating impact on the local economies.
"CoreCivic is the largest employer of Cibola County," said Kate Fletcher, the Cibola County Manager at the time. "It has an annual payroll of $10.8 million. Just numbers I know. Behind these numbers are 232 employees. Employees have children that attend Cibola County Schools and employees that have spouses that work at our county offices, our hospitals and our schools."
This year's proposed legislation is set to be heard first by the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee, but no date has yet been set.
