As state legislators enter their last week of filing before the new bill introduction period ends on Feb. 20, one bill that would axe New Mexico’s local government agreements with ICE detention facilities has resurfaced for the third time on the legislative floor.
If successful this year, the bill introduced by Reps. Eleanor Chávez, D-Albuquerque, and Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, could lead to a shutdown of New Mexico’s three ICE detention facilities.
The Immigrant Safety Act, introduced as House Bill 9, would prohibit public bodies from entering agreements used to detain individuals for federal civil immigration violations and using public property for these purposes, and would also terminate existing agreements of this nature if the law goes into effect.
"In New Mexico, we know how essential immigrants are to our communities, culture, economy and workforce," Chávez tells SFR through a written statement. "House Bill 9 makes sure that the public bodies sworn to protect the people of our state are not misused to profile or harass members of our community, or play any role in the inhumane mass deportations threatened by the Trump Administration."
A coalition of immigrant advocacy organizations collaborated in designing the bill, including the Innovation Law Lab, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center, the New Mexico Dream Team, the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Detention Watch Network.
“Here in New Mexico…we really care about our neighbors, about our community members, our families, and immigrant people are part of those communities and in those families,” says Victor Romero-Hernandez, communications manager of the Innovation Law Lab. “If ICE is taking our neighbors, our coworkers, obviously that impacts all of us.”
ICE detention centers in New Mexico include the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, the Otero County Processing Center outside of Chaparral and the Torrance County Detention Facility outside of Estancia.
All three facilities' operations would be impacted if HB9 passes.
Jessica Martinez, an attorney and director of policy and coalition building for the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center who has worked in the development of this bill, tells SFR public safety and health are “at the heart” of HB9.
“New Mexico's ICE contracts have led to some of the worst conditions in the entire country in the treatment of immigrants,” Martinez says. “The only way to resolve this is to have New Mexico take action and no longer be complicit in these human rights violations that are happening in our state, and no longer allowing our local governments or our state to [use] this loophole that is harming immigrants in civil detention.”
Martinez explains the bill’s main function would be to close an “existing loophole” in current law that allows ICE to enter agreements with local governments, in which the agency can avoid the Competition in Contracting Act that requires federal agencies to competitively bid for contracts and services like immigration detention.
Competitive bidding processes with private companies, Martinez explains, are “key forms of oversight in the federal procurement system” because they scrutinize any potential contractor looking to operate an immigrant detention facility.
“When you have these local counties acting as straws that take advantage of this loophole, and get awarded contracts, there's no bidding process, so there's no genuine oversight,” Martinez says.
Martinez notes there have been “countless stories” of human rights violations in New Mexico’s three immigration detention centers, including a lack of adequate food, drinking water and healthcare. Other allegations include detainees being placed in solitary confinement without access to their attorneys, serious injuries without treatment, abuse and deaths.
All three detention centers have recently been the subject of abuse allegations and poor living conditions. Last December, immigrant and prisoner rights activists held a rally (organized by the Innovation Law Lab and Jailhouse Lawyers Speak) calling for The Torrance County Detention Facility to be shut down for alleged abuse of detainees.
In March of 2024, three undergraduate researchers from Colorado College published a report detailing abuse and poor living conditions at both the Torrance County and Cibola County detention centers, and the ACLU called for an investigation into the death of a detainee at the Otero County facility in June 2024.
“It's going to make our community safer, and it's going to be a powerful stance to stand with the others. We would be the eighth state to be able to take this stance,” Martinez says.
Martinez notes that all seven states that have adopted the law—California, Washington, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey and Colorado—have the law in full effect. Only one, Illinois, faced a court challenge, but the courts have “squarely upheld the law as constitutional.”
This bill has been attempted twice in New Mexico during the past few years, including in the 2024 Legislative Session, where the bill died on the Senate Floor in a 21-18 vote. This year, advocates for the bill say they believe they have built enough momentum that the bill has potential to pass into law this year.
“I think sometimes, bills like these can be very controversial, especially under this current political climate,” Romero-Hernandez says. “I think there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to immigrant detention, and so I think, throughout the years, we've worked really hard to address some of that misinformation and really listen to people's concerns, to make sure that we're not leaving anybody behind.”
Romero-Hernandez says the coalition is “working on economic growth in rural communities” so that those who are reliant on jobs at the detention center can “move forward and thrive,” although he was not aware of any specific legislation in the works that would do so.
The ACLU of New Mexico and Equality New Mexico have both shown support for the bill as well.
"The devastating human rights record of immigration detention in New Mexico speaks for itself," Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, said in a Wednesday press release detailing the bill’s introduction from the Innovation Law Lab. "The Immigrant Safety Act is a crucial step toward ending our state's involvement in a system that routinely violates basic human dignity and due process."
Martinez says in addition to HB9, the coalition is working on two Memorials—one in the House and one in the Senate—that would directly address the conditions of the three New Mexico ICE detention facilities because “the bill is so technical.”
“Oftentimes, in a bill, you cannot put all of what's happening,” Martinez says. “Sometimes those conversations kind of get lost…these Memorials are going to humanize a lot of what's happening…I think [the memorials] also strengthen the bill as a whole, because we bring light to the voices of those who have died, who are suffering and who are currently needing action taken by the state to stop this from from continuing.”
The bill has yet to be heard on the floor or in committee, but hearings are expected in the coming weeks, according to Wednesday's press release from the Innovation Law Lab.
Correction: This story has been updated to remove a quote from Romero-Hernandez that falsely stated "all three facilities will be shut down, or at least it will be harder for them to operate," because not all of the ICE detention facilities in New Mexico operate on public land, such as the Torrance County Detention Facility.
