DOJ Sues New Mexico Over the Immigrant Safety Act, Moves for a Preliminary Injunction the Same Day, Then Withdraws It Under a Stipulation

The United States filed suit against New Mexico in the District of New Mexico on May 8, 2026, challenging the Immigrant Safety Act (HB9) and a related state law on preemption and intergovernmental-immunity grounds. The case is 1:26-cv-01471, assigned to Chief District Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, with Magistrate Judge Laura Fashing referred. It was filed with a motion for a preliminary injunction (Doc. 2) and a temporary-restraining-order status conference was set for May 12, 2026.

Docket course (RECAP copy, last updated October 8, 2026)

• May 13, 2026: the State filed a stipulation. On May 15, 2026 the court entered a stipulated order under which the United States withdrew the preliminary-injunction motion from consideration. The State’s public position at the time, per a news report cited in the ACLU-NM declaration, was that the stipulation was limited to Otero County.
• June 22, 2026: the United States filed an amended complaint adding Dona Ana County and Bernalillo County and their managers. Defendants are the State, the Governor, the Attorney General, the City of Albuquerque and its mayor, Bernalillo County and Dona Ana County.
• Motions to dismiss were filed by the State, the Governor (on jurisdiction and failure to state a claim), the City of Albuquerque, Dona Ana County and Bernalillo County between June 8 and August 10, 2026. Briefing on them was noticed complete between August 3 and September 14, 2026. No order resolving them appears in the RECAP copy.
• August 19, 2026: the State answered the amended complaint and counterclaimed against the United States, DHS, ICE and the Board of County Commissioners for Otero County. Summonses on those counterclaim defendants were returned executed in September 2026.
• September 22 and 24, 2026 and later: notices of supplemental authority from the United States, the City and the State.

What the case does and does not reach

The United States’ original complaint names Torrance County only in connection with 287(g) warrant-service agreements. It does not challenge the Torrance or Cibola detention contracts, and it does not mention CoreCivic outside case citations. Those two facilities moved onto a direct ICE-CoreCivic contract on May 1, 2026, which HB9 (a ban on public bodies) does not reach. The State’s own answer says it has filed or intends to file enforcement actions against Otero, Torrance and Curry counties; the Torrance and Curry County actions were removed to federal court on July 1, 2026 and returned toward state court in August and September 2026 on unopposed motions.

A different federal case with a near-identical caption, United States v. State of New Mexico, 1:26-cv-02827, was filed August 27, 2026. It concerns residence-based higher-education benefits, not detention, and should not be confused with this one.

Method note: docket entries were read through CourtListener (RECAP); RECAP shows only what has been pulled from PACER, so the absence of a ruling is as of the RECAP update date above. The documents above were read from the court-document storage host. This entry carries no per-claim spans and is a legacy captured entry for the claim gate.