New Mexico

Governor’s call for panhandling crackdown raises concerns – NM Political Report

Published

2 years ago

January 22, 2024

Governor’s call for panhandling crackdown raises concerns – NM Political Report

By Gabrielle Porter, The Santa Fe New Mexican

Lori Sena stood in the median of Paseo de Peralta late Thursday morning, holding out a cardboard sign that read, “Help us, please.”

She occasionally stepped toward drivers who stopped at the light on St. Francis Drive and held money out their windows for her. Sena was hoping to get enough money to buy food for herself, her husband and her dog, Reina.

Typically, they can get by on $20 to $50 per day, according to the 40-year-old, who grew up just around the corner on Alto Street.

If she gets a little extra, Sena said, they sometimes stay in a motel.

“It’s been harder and harder,” she said. “… People can be very mean.”

Sena is one of many New Mexicans who would be affected by a statewide crackdown on panhandling Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham proposed and urged lawmakers to consider earlier this week during her annual State of the State address. The governor referred to panhandling as a safety risk.

“We have one of the highest pedestrian fatality rates in the entire country and a situation where drivers and their children as passengers are at increased risk,” Lujan Grisham said in her speech Tuesday at the Roundhouse. “It’s not tenable, and we can do something about it.”

While advocates say they agree panhandlers being in the roadway or on a narrow median can become a safety issue, several said they have concerns about the details of a statewide measure, especially when it comes to the ways people might be punished for continuing to panhandle.

“Generally, we’re all pretty concerned that the end goal here is to incarcerate people who are unhoused,” said Nayomi Valdez, director of public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. The statewide organization and local chapters have successfully challenged a number of municipal panhandling statutes in court.

“That’s not a solution,” Valdez said of the proposed ban, “and in fact, that will cause deeper harm and long-term harm.”

‘Free speech and peaceful protest’

Efforts to ban or limit panhandling are nothing new in New Mexico or around the country. The ACLU has argued, however, against those they say violate First Amendment rights.

“People have a constitutional right to stand in public spaces and to solicit donations … regardless of whether they’re looking for money to buy their next meal or … firefighters out trying to fill the boot,” Valdez said.

Sean Baity, who was soliciting donations Thursday from the median of St. Francis Drive near Cerrillos Road, said he views panhandling as a protest of sorts.

“It’s a matter of free speech and peaceful protest,” said the 45-year-old, California-born painter, who has been in New Mexico about a year. “All you’re doing is protesting that you don’t have a home and money.”

Local leaders in recent years have cast the issue primarily as a safety risk, especially against the backdrop of New Mexico’s dismal pedestrian fatality rate — the highest in the nation in 2022, according to a Governors Highway Safety Association study, with 4.4 deaths per 100,000 people.

Albuquerque city leaders went through several rounds of revisions and court battles in recent years before ultimately landing on the city’s current iteration of a panhandling ordinance: a measure that, among other things, prohibits people from occupying medians less than 4 feet wide on roads with a speed limit of 30 mph or faster.

A statute now on the books in Española takes a similar approach, restricting solicitors from standing on medians that are narrower than 3 feet wide. And Santa Fe forbids panhandling “in an aggressive manner” or in certain locations, including on private property.

While no bill for a statewide measure has been introduced following Lujan Grisham’s speech, a Governor’s Office spokeswoman said the proposal would be modeled after Española’s, noting it “did withstand judicial scrutiny.”

“Panhandling on our streets, especially in narrow medians at busy intersections, creates a dangerous situation for both panhandlers and drivers,” spokeswoman Maddy Hayden wrote in an email Thursday. “… In addition to protecting New Mexicans, a statewide law would provide a clear standard of safety for law enforcement who have jurisdiction in multiple municipalities, counties or statewide.”

‘Putting themselves at risk’

Korina Lopez, executive director of the Interfaith Community Shelter at Pete’s Place in Santa Fe, said she “absolutely” understands the physical dangers panhandling presents.

“Sometimes it’s scary if people aren’t paying attention and they’re in a really narrow median,” she said, adding she often hears of people getting hit by cars while in the median, though she said she doesn’t know if those people are panhandling at the time. “… Even if they’re collecting money, they’re kind of putting themselves at risk with the traffic.”

Nechay Gustobov, who has lived without a permanent house for decades in the Santa Fe area and is a member of the city’s Lived Experience Advisory Board, said panhandling isn’t just a risk because of cars.

“Traffic does become a major issue for safety, but it’s also the weather,” Gustobov said. “It’s a good chance of them getting hypothermia. … In summer, you can be standing there and be dehydrated.”

Valdez said she agrees the trend of rising pedestrian deaths is concerning.

But, she added, “I don’t think it’s completely fair or accurate to attribute that to panhandling per se. We have a distracted driver problem in this country. … People are driving really fast. They’re on their phone.”

Lopez, Gustobov and Valdez all said despite those risks, they’re worried a crackdown on panhandling could mean driving already vulnerable people into the criminal justice system. That could include fines and jail time as a punishment or for missing court dates.

“If you get a fine, typically people are panhandling because they don’t have regular income,” Lopez said. “It’s kind of like a Catch-22, where they’re panhandling to make money, and then you get the fine, so you’re going to have to earn the money to pay the fine; if not you’ll end up with a warrant. … It becomes this weird cycle.”

Gustobov noted some people panhandle because they think it’s easier than finding a job, but many do it because they are not capable, physically or mentally, of working.

He doesn’t think a crackdown on panhandling will change behavior.

“They can go to jail, they can get out of jail. They can get a fine,” he said. “The attitude is: ‘Big deal. So it’s against the law to panhandle. I’m going to do it anyway.’ … Punishing people because they’re panhandling is not a long-term solution.”

Valdez said she believes trying to push through a statewide statute on panhandling could be a waste of taxpayer funds if it ends up posing a constitutional threat that’s later challenged. She pointed to cities like Albuquerque that spent considerable time and money fighting challenges in court.

“That money could be going toward housing people … toward building a behavioral health pipeline,” Valdez said. “That money could be going toward a whole number of things that actually get at the root cause of homelessness.”

‘Like dominoes’

Panhandling wasn’t Sena’s plan for her life. She hoped at one point to go to college, to learn automotive repair. She had a job she enjoyed for years as a cashier at a carwash. Then her mom died, and Sena took over raising her siblings. Later, she said, she got ovarian cancer and couldn’t work anymore.

“It just [was] like dominoes,” said Sena, adding that, all told, she’s been homeless for about 10 years. “It went from losing my apartment to my savings to losing my car. … This is where we got stuck at.”

Sena said she would like to go back to work. She’s applied to jobs, but her lack of an address has been an issue for employers. She said she’s on good terms with her old boss at the carwash, and she might try to go back to work there.

But, Sena said, it’s also hard to go to work every day when she doesn’t have somewhere to live and to shower — and housing is more expensive than ever.

“With the rent going up to, geez louise, $2,000 for a one-bedroom, two-bedroom house?” Sena said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Sena said she and her husband put their names down on a list for one of the Pallet shelters the city is installing, but they haven’t heard back.

If she’s restricted from panhandling, she said, it will be difficult to get enough money to eat. She also thinks cities will see other problems start to increase as people get more desperate.

“Guaranteed, the crime is going to go up. People are going to start getting into cars more and breaking into houses and robbing people,” Sena said. “It’s not all of us. … [But] it’s going to get bad. It’s going to get worse than it already is.”

She said leaders considering a crackdown on panhandling should consider her experiences of becoming homeless and trying to survive.

“Walk a mile in my shoes, and let’s see if you can do it,” Sena said. “I give you guys three days.”

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New Mexico

New Mexico man sentenced to nearly 20 years for distributing meth

Published

8 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

New Mexico man sentenced to nearly 20 years for distributing meth

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A judge sentenced a New Mexico man to nearly 20 years in prison for distributing meth and having guns in his possession to use while doing so.

Court records indicate 43-year-old David Amaya sold meth from a trailer on his parents’ property in Anthony throughout July and August 2024. Agents executed a search warrant Aug. 22 and found 1.18 kilograms of meth, two firearms and ammunition in the trailer and a makeshift bathroom.

Amaya pleaded guilty to possession of meth with intent to distribute it. A judge sentenced him to 235 months in prison.

Once he is out, Amaya will face five years of supervised release.

The FBI’s Albuquerque Field Office and the Las Cruces Metro Narcotics Task Force investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Williams prosecuted it.

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New Mexico

New Mexico Lottery Powerball, Pick 3 Day results for Dec. 10, 2025

Published

20 hours ago

December 11, 2025

Press Room

The New Mexico Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Dec. 10, 2025, results for each game:

Powerball

10-16-29-33-69, Powerball: 22, Power Play: 3

Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.

Pick 3

Day: 8-2-7

Evening: 6-9-2

Check Pick 3 payouts and previous drawings here.

Lotto America

03-13-37-42-44, Star Ball: 01, ASB: 03

Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.

Pick 4

Evening: 5-0-7-8

Day: 3-7-2-0

Check Pick 4 payouts and previous drawings here.

Roadrunner Cash

02-04-06-21-22

Check Roadrunner Cash payouts and previous drawings here.

Powerball Double Play

13-15-51-67-68, Powerball: 08

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Las Cruces Sun-News editor. You can send feedback using this form.

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New Mexico

Secretive New Mexico Data Center Plan Races Forward Despite Community Pushback

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2025

Press Room

Secretive New Mexico Data Center Plan Races Forward Despite Community Pushback

By Dan Ross

This article was originally published by Truthout

To power the growing demand for AI, New Mexico is gearing up to build a data center with a city-sized carbon footprint.

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At the very Southeastern tip of New Mexico bordering Texas and Mexico, a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center is gearing up to be a greenhouse gas and air pollution behemoth, an additional water user in a drought-afflicted region, and a sower of community discontent.

Project Jupiter is one of five sites in the $500 billion Stargate Project, a national pipeline of massive AI systems linked with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank.

“Health is my biggest concern. I’m worried about the air pollution, the ozone, and the buzzing noise,” local resident José Saldaña Jr., 45, told Truthout. Saldaña has lived in Sunland Park, New Mexico, nearly his entire life, and he’s worried about Project Jupiter’s added environmental footprint in a pollution hotspot. Another big data center is going up in nearby El Paso, Texas. He lives less than two miles from a landfill that emits such an unpleasant smell, he can’t even hang his clothes out to dry.

“I’m just trying to stand up for my community,” Saldaña said of his opposition to the facility. But the project is racing ahead, and has already cleared one important hurdle: financing, including a massive tax break for the data center’s backers.

Between September and October, the Doña Ana County Board of County Commissioners approved three funding ordinances, including the sale of industrial revenue bonds up to $165 billion.

With important permitting decisions still pending, work at the project site has already begun. Proponents tout all sorts of alleged benefits. This includes at least 750 well-paid new full-time positions and 50 part-time roles within three years of operations, with a priority for local hires. Instead of paying property and gross receipt taxes, the project will make incremental payments spread out over 30 years totalling $360 million — just a fraction of the bond monies.

Opponents of the project argue, however, that any benefits to the local economy are far outweighed by the impacts from potentially millions of tons of heat-trapping gas emissions annually from the plant’s proposed energy microgrid. This, when global warming is on track to increase by as much as 2.8 degrees Celsius over the century, blowing past Paris Agreement benchmarks set just 10 years ago.

And while Project Jupiter isn’t expected to be as thirsty as some of its fellow data centers, water advocates warn about any uptick of water usage in this drought-afflicted region, especially when New Mexico is projected to have 25 percent less surface and groundwater recharge by 2070 due to climate change.

“There’s so much secrecy and lack of information about the project,” Norm Gaume told Truthout. Indeed, a lot of the negotiations around the project have occurred behind closed doors. Gaume is a retired state water manager and now president of the nonprofit New Mexico Water Advocates.

“What is certain is two things: Global warming is taking our renewable water away. And Project Jupiter intends to use the least efficient gas turbine generators,” said Gaume. “Their emissions are just over the top.”

Massive Energy Consumption

The recent, rampant proliferation of AI in everyday life has prompted the swift buildout of enormous facilities to house the machinery needed to crunch extraordinary amounts of data — a process that requires enormous amounts of energy. Just how much?

The Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit fighting climate change and its impacts, recently published a report showing how seven of the eight largest utilities in the interior West forecast an increase in annual energy demand of about 4.5 percent per year, driven primarily by the growth of energy-sucking data centers. In comparison, their annual electricity sales grew by only about 1 percent per year between 2010 and 2023.

This week, over 200 groups from all over the country jointly signed a letter to Congress urging for a moratorium on new data centers until safeguards are in place to protect communities, families, and the environment from the “economic, environmental, climate and water security” threats they pose.

Project Jupiter is set to be powered by two natural gas-fueled microgrids. But air quality permits recently filed with the New Mexico Environment Department show the project could reportedly emit as much as 14 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to Source NM. How much is that? The entirety of Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest city by population, emitted just over 26 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022.

Under state law, qualified microgrids won’t be required to transition to a 100 percent renewable energy system for another 20 years, Deborah Kapiloff, a clean energy policy adviser with the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, told Truthout. “So hypothetically, up until January 1, 2045, [Project Jupiter’s operators] could run their gas plants at full capacity. There are no interim guidelines. There’s no off-ramp,” she added.

Furthermore, the region is already classed as a marginal “non-attainment” area, meaning it fails in part to meet federal air quality standards for things like ozone and fine particulate matter levels. And local residents are concerned about the addition in the area of noxious air pollutants — including PM2.5, one of the most dangerous such pollutants linked to serious health issues like cardiovascular disease — from the gas powered microgrids.

“Technically, the EPA could decline these air quality permits because we have such bad air quality already,” documentary filmmaker Annie Ersinghaus told Truthout. She lives in the adjacent city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is skeptical the Environmental Protection Agency will intervene. “It very much feels like David and Goliath.”

Then there’s the water component.

Water Usage

According to online materials, the project’s data centers will require a total one-time fill volume of approximately 2.5 million gallons (which is the equivalent to the annual water usage of just under 25 households). Once operational, Project Jupiter’s data centers will use an average of 20,000 gallons per day (which is equivalent in daily usage of about 67 average households).

This doesn’t appear to be a lot of water — some data centers can use millions of gallons daily.

Project Jupiter’s developers boast an efficient closed-loop cooling system. But Kacey Hovden, a staff attorney with the nonprofit New Mexico Environmental Law Center, warned Truthout that this type of cooling system hasn’t yet been used at a fully operational facility, and therefore, it’s currently unknown whether those projected numbers are realistic.

In the background lurks a rapidly warming world marked by huge declines in global freshwater reserves. Arid New Mexico is at the heart of this problem.

A comprehensive analysis of the impacts from climate change on water resources in New Mexico paint a picture over the next 50 years of temperatures rising as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit across the state, and with it, reduced water availability from lighter snowpacks, lower soil moisture levels, greater frequency and intensity of wildfires, and much more aggressive competition for scarce water resources.

Gaume told Truthout the state needs to take every step possible to curtail water usage rather than add to its needs. “This is a pig in a poke,” Gaume said about Project Jupiter. “We’re living in a fantasy world where people aren’t really paying attention to water.”

The project’s potential impacts on the community’s drinking water supplies is further complicated by the fact that both will share a water supplier, at least for a while — the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, which has long been marred by water quality issues, including serving water containing elevated arsenic levels to its customers. An Environmental Working Group assessment of the utility’s compliance records finds it in “serious violation” of federal health-based drinking water standards.

The utility’s problems have gotten so bad that the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners voted in May to approve the termination of the joint powers agreement that created the utility. Exactly what will replace it is currently unclear.

Project Jupiter will supposedly contribute $50 million to expand water and wastewater infrastructure. But it’s also unclear exactly how those funds will be used — whether just for the data center or for the community as well — and when. Hovden described this promised investment as nebulous. “I would say that’s probably the best way to describe everything around this project,” she said.

Multiple messages to BorderPlex Digital Assets — one of two project developers alongside STACK Infrastructure — went unanswered.

Then comes the issue of groundwater, the region’s primary water source. Once again, there’s very little known about the sustainable health of the region’s groundwater tables.

“The horse is way out ahead of the cart in this situation, where we don’t really know a lot of the details of how this project might impact New Mexico, especially its water,” Stacy Timmons, associate director of hydrogeology at the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, told Truthout. She’s currently involved in a state project to better understand the status of New Mexico’s groundwater resources.

Community Pushback

Caught unawares by the speed with which this project was announced and is moving forward, community pushback is beginning to coalesce. At the end of October, the New Mexico Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of José Saldaña and another local resident, Vivian Fuller, against the Doña Ana County Board of County Commissioners, arguing that they had unlawfully approved the three funding ordinances.

Ersinghaus is one of a group of local residents behind Jupiter Watch. They turn up at the construction site to monitor and track its progress, to make sure permits are in order (they often aren’t, she said), and to bring some “accountability” to the project. A large protest is scheduled for early next year, to coincide with the air quality permit decisions.

“Jupiter Watch came along very spontaneously,” said Ersinghaus, about the impetus behind the group in light of the hastily fast-tracked project. “Our commissioners voted for this [bar one], and we want them to feel ashamed.”

Saldaña said that he’d like regulators and politicians to halt the project and move it elsewhere. If they don’t, he speculated that he might pack up and move from the region he’s called home since 1980.

“In the worst case scenario, I’ll tell my mom, ‘Let’s move, let’s get the hell out of here.’ But I don’t want to move,” said Saldaña. His mother lives next door to him and he has many relatives in the area. “It’s sad. Very sad.”

This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.

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