By NATHAN BROWN
The Santa Fe New Mexican
A bill that would sharply scale back immigration detention in New Mexico, potentially setting the state up for a fight with a Trump administration that is moving aggressively to ramp up deportation efforts, has passed the state House of Representatives.
After three hours of debate, House Bill 9 passed on a 35-25 mostly party-line vote and now heads to the Senate. The Immigration Safety Act, as it’s called, would ban public entities such as local governments from entering into contracts to detain people for civil immigration violations and would require any entities that have such contracts to terminate them.
Currently there are immigration detention centers in Torrance, Cibola and Otero counties operating under deals with the federal government that would be required to end their agreements at the earliest possible date.
“Our government should be focused on caring for their communities, not facilitating for-profit detention,” said sponsor Rep. Eleanor Chávez, D-Albuquerque. All three of the facilities that would be affected are run by private prison operators.
Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that while most of the immigrants being held have not committed a criminal offense they are often being held in worse conditions than people accused or convicted of crimes — there have been reports of inhumane conditions at all three facilities in recent years.
“We don’t want to be using public property for these purposes,” she said.
Romero said the bill would not bar federal immigration authorities from detaining people in New Mexico.
“We’re limiting this very, very narrowly to the portion of these public bodies and facilities that are being used for civil immigration [detention],” she said.
A similar bill was voted down in the Senate last year when a handful of Democrats joined the Republicans in opposition. This year’s debate, however, takes place against a much different backdrop, with President Donald Trump, who ran promising stricter immigration policies and who has already ramped up arrests in his less than two months in office, now in power.
Lea County has been looking into entering into an immigration detention contract. Federal authorities have also been exploring using Kirtland Air Force Base as a detention site, although these plans, if they move forward, would likely not be impacted since the law regulates state and local governments.
Trump has threatened to cut off federal funding for jurisdictions that resist his immigration policies, which Rep. Rod Montoya, R-Farmington, cited as his reason for proposing an amendment that would halt the effect of the bill if the state’s federal funding really were to be jeopardized as a result. This, Montoya said, “would give us time to come back here and determine whether this is a battle we really want to take on.”
Montoya said New Mexico receives more federal funding per capita than any other state and that the results of the November election were “very unambiguous.”
“We’re standing in the way of the vast majority of the American public and the vast majority of other states. … The reality is we don’t hold any cards,” Montoya said. “New Mexico doesn’t hold any cards, and the reality is [if] we want to play this game of chicken — I give. I don’t want to play this game of chicken.”
His amendment was voted down, with Democrats questioning whether Trump has the power to cut off federal funding for what they view as the state exercising its rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“I stand with the people of New Mexico and our sovereignty,” Romero said.
Lawmakers also voted down an amendment Montoya proposed that would require a crime victim to be notified if someone detained for a federal immigration violation is released due to a detention agreement being terminated.
Some of the bill’s opponents raised concerns about potential job losses as a result of the bill.
“It’s very, very hard to do economic development like repurposing in places like Cibola County,” said Rep. Patty Lundstrom, D-Gallup.