By Daniel J. Chacón
The Santa Fe New Mexican

As New Mexico lawmakers work on a plan to bail out three counties bracing for financial hardship under a new law that will force them to end their immigration detention contracts, the Trump administration could be considering litigation.

“They are evaluating their options,” state Sen. Jim Townsend, R-Artesia, said Monday in response to a request for an update on a letter he had sent to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi last month requesting her agency’s “attention and intervention” on House Bill 9.

“They believe they have a pathway, and I believe they’ll exercise it soon,” he said.

Townsend said he’s been talking to a U.S. Justice Department attorney, “and that’s what I believe is going to happen.”

Asked what options the department is considering, Townsend said the agency could file a lawsuit over HB 9 “and probably argue primacy.”

News of the federal government’s potential involvement in New Mexico’s new law — passed in part to send a message to the Trump administration over its aggressive immigration crackdown — comes as members of the Senate Finance Committee work to throw a lifeline to three counties that house immigrant detention facilities.

“They’re like the fingers on your hand,” the committee chair, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, said during a brief interview in the hallways of the state Capitol.

“They’re all different, so they’re all different plans,” he said. “We’ll try to have a short-term fix and then a long-term plan.”

Millions of dollars in taxpayer money are at stake.

HB 9, known as the Immigrant Safety Act, prohibits local governments in New Mexico from contracting with the federal government to detain undocumented immigrants and other individuals with pending civil immigration cases.

Representatives of the three counties in New Mexico that currently house immigration detention facilities — Cibola, Otero and Torrance — warned the consequences of HB 9 will be dire.

“It’s possible, just monetarily, our budget’s cut in half,” Cibola County Finance Director Paul Ludi told lawmakers. “I could foresee our cash balances getting depleted.”

Cibola County Manager Kate Fletcher said taxpayers may be in for a cut in services, including law enforcement. Fletcher said the county is looking at paying double what it pays now to house inmates.

“In 2019, we had a sheriff’s office that didn’t do 24 hours. They do now,” she said. “If this happens and we have to do more transports with our inmates and pay double for our nighttime beds, we’re going to have to reduce those those services again, and we’ve come such a long way from there. It’s very frightening on a sense of how we’re going to continue.”

Candi Williams, manager and finance director for Milan, said the village uses the Cibola County detention facility’s population to apply for federal grants, which often hinge on specific population thresholds.

“We’ve been applying for federal grants to develop our industrial park,” she said. “However, with the loss of this population, I won’t be able to do that on any any further.”

Like Cibola, Torrance County faces not only increased costs to house inmates but decreased revenues.

“The overall economic impact to Torrance County would be approximately $3 million annually, so when it adds up, it is significant,” said Michelle Jones, deputy county manager.

Jones told lawmakers the impact on Estancia is especially significant, saying it faces about $1 million in losses in gross receipts tax revenue currently paying for public safety services.

“They’re paying for our EMTs. They’re paying for our police officers, so the first thing Estancia would have to do would be to cut those services and then to cut the wages for those employees,” she said. “Those responsibilities would then roll over to Torrance County. Torrance County would have to absorb those responsibilities for fire, EMS and police.”

Jones also raised concerns about job losses that would lead to residents leaving the community and schools losing students.

“When this happened in 2017, it was devastating,” she said, referring to a previous closure of the detention facility, which reopened about two years later.

“The impact will be severe,” she told lawmakers. “It’ll be severe.”

After the meeting, Torrance County Commissioner Kevin McCall said he’s hopeful the Legislature will help the counties offset any financial losses.

“I feel like they finally are coming to their senses,” he said. “They did something that’s going to hurt three counties tremendously, and they’re going to need to do something to try to make us as whole as they can.”

In addition to an impact on government coffers, opponents of HB 9 have said some 1,000 jobs are at stake.

Otero County Manager Pamela Heltner, who appeared remotely, said 284 jobs with a payroll of $20.8 million “will be lost” if the Chaparral detention facility closes.

“The revenues we’re looking at losing from the facility in the contract alone is $475,000 annually and $3 million in [gross receipts taxes]” she said, adding the county also has outstanding bonds on the facility.

“The outstanding bonds [are] approximately $21 million,” she said. “We did hear from the bondholders last week that if we default on these bonds, they will foreclose on us and sell to the lowest bidder, and we will lose a $68 million facility.”

The Otero County detention center is strictly an ICE facility, she said.

“This is an ICE-only facility,” she said. “We house no one else. It was built for that purpose. And if we lose this contract, as we will with the passage of House Bill 9, we will have to invest several million in a feasibility study and renovations for other purposes.”

Two House Democrats have introduced a memorial calling for a study on “ways in which jobs related to the existing detention facilities that contract with [ICE] might be replaced with new employment opportunities.”