Then-Rep. Jim Townsend, R-Artesia, reads a bill in his office in 2024. Courtesy/Santa Fe New Mexican 

By CLARA BATES
The Santa Fe New Mexican

A Republican state senator is requesting the U.S. Department of Justice’s “attention and intervention” on legislation that would restrict local governments from entering into immigrant detention contracts.

Sen. Jim Townsend, R-Artesia, wrote in a Thursday letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi that House Bill 9, which would ban public entities in New Mexico from contracting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “raises serious constitutional concerns” and “intrudes upon federal discretion” to carry out immigration enforcement.

He requested the DOJ “engage during legislative consideration” of the bill to “ensure that New Mexico does not enact legislation that conflicts with federal law and undermines federal supremacy.”

The bill is currently making its way through the House and cleared its first committee on a party-line vote Thursday.

New Mexico is home to three detention facilities that contract with ICE — in Cibola, Otero and Torrance counties. The bill, which Democratic lawmakers have said they hope to see pass, could turn out to be one of the most controversial of the session and, if adopted, could put the state on a collision course with the Trump administration and its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. Republicans have vowed to fight the bill, arguing it would devastate rural economies that lack other major employers and would only outsource detention to other states.

Reps. Eleanor Chávez, D-Albuquerque, Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces and Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, three of the co-sponsors of the bill, could not immediately be reached by phone Friday evening. The DOJ didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Townsend posted the letter on Facebook Friday. He cites the case CoreCivic, Inc. v. Governor of New Jersey, in which in a challenge to a similar law the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held a state cannot regulate private industry in a way that prevents the federal government from carrying out a core function. The state, in other words, cannot ban companies from contracting with the federal government to detain immigrants.

But Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, said at a hearing on the bill Thursday that it wouldn’t be subject to the same challenge. New Mexico’s legislation doesn’t attempt to regulate contracts between private companies and ICE, she said—only public entities.

That means if the bill passes, private companies could still contract directly with ICE to hold detainees.

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said in an interview Friday the bill is urgent, regardless of potential federal backlash.

“You can’t just sit idly and not respond to things that we’re all seeing across the country,” he said, citing the deadly shooting of a 37-year-old woman by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month.

“I just think, ‘Do we want to be in the business of facilitating this agency?’ is the question that’s going to be debated,” Wirth said. “I’ve struggled with it, but in my heart of hearts, I feel like passing this bill is the right thing to do,” he said, adding he has heard “extremely concerning” things about the facilities’ conditions.

“There’s no question that it’s done in an environment with national lenses focused on us, but I think it’s the right thing to do,” Wirth added.