Haaland leads Hull by narrow margin in New Mexico’s race for governor

Democratic nominee holds 6-point edge over GOP rival as election cycle enters homestretch

BY DAN BOYD / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL CAPITOL BUREAU

August 30, 2026

SANTA FE — With just over two months until Election Day, Democrat Deb Haaland holds a lead — but not an overwhelming one — over Republican Gregg Hull in New Mexico’s open race for governor, a new Journal Poll found. The poll found 49% of likely voters surveyed said they plan to vote for Haaland, who is seeking to become the first Native American woman elected governor in the nation’s history.

Meanwhile, 43% of voters said they plan to vote for Hull, the former Rio Rancho mayor who would be the first Republican to win a statewide race in New Mexico since 2016.

The remaining 8% of voters surveyed said they had not yet decided on who they would support in the November general election.

“It’s narrower than many people expected, including me,” said Brian Sanderoff, the president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc., which conducted the poll.

But he said Haaland is still well-positioned to win in November, citing a national political mood that favors Democrats and the Democratic nominee’s strong support among women and highly educated voters. “Despite the fact the race is closer than expected, Gregg Hull still faces an uphill battle,” Sanderoff said.

Haaland, the former U.S. Interior secretary under President Joe Biden and a former congresswoman, launched her campaign for governor in February 2025.

As of July, she had raised more than $13.8 million in her bid to succeed outgoing Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, with thousands of donations from around the country.

“Yes, I have a lot of $5 and $10 donations from across the country, but I have more contributions within the state of New Mexico than any of my opponents, Democrat or Republican,” she said in an interview before the June primary election.

While Hull has lagged behind his Democratic opponent in terms of fundraising, he has proven adept at capitalizing on a network of connections forged during his 12 years as Rio Rancho’s mayor.

Hull defeated two GOP opponents in the primary election — Doug Turner and Duke Rodriguez — despite being outspent in the race. In the process, he emerged largely unscathed by negative attacks.

“Gregg Hull has avoided being labeled as an ideologue, and he has portrayed himself as a bipartisan pragmatist,” Sanderoff said.

If elected, Hull says he would seek to make New Mexico more economically attractive by reducing tax rates, among other proposals.

For her part, Haaland has touted affordability as among her campaign priorities, while vowing to build more affordable housing for New Mexicans and expand tax breaks for low-income families.

A gender gap – and regional swings

While Haaland’s lead in the Journal Poll can be attributed to several factors, strong support among female voters could be the most pivotal.

The Democratic nominee received the support of 54% of women surveyed, compared to 37% who said they planned to vote for Hull.

In contrast, male voters preferred the Republican nominee, though they were more evenly split.

If elected, Haaland would be the third consecutive woman to serve as New Mexico’s governor, as Lujan Grisham was preceded in office by Republican Susana Martinez. Before Martinez, no woman had been elected to the state’s highest office.

Meanwhile, both Haaland and Hull received strong support from voters of their own parties, as 89% of Republicans said they would vote for Hull and 86% of Democrats said they planned to vote for Haaland.

That could make election turnout a key factor, as Sanderoff pointed out that Republicans have voted at a higher clip in recent elections when President Donald Trump is on the ballot.

Among independents, who have seen their ranks swell and now make up more than one-quarter of registered New Mexico voters, Haaland was outpacing her GOP rival. But 19% of independent voters said they had not yet decided who to support.

As in other recent polls, there was also a notable difference among surveyed voters by education level, as voters with a college or graduate degree were far more likely to express support for Haaland than for Hull.

Looking at the race by region, Haaland held a significant advantage over Hull in the Albuquerque metro area and in north central New Mexico, a traditional Democratic stronghold.

But Hull had a lead in other, less populated parts of the state, including in northwest and southern New Mexico, along with the state’s usually conservative east side.

Interestingly, the overall 6-point margin separating Haaland and Hull in the Journal Poll mirrors the final margin of New Mexico’s 2022 gubernatorial race between Lujan Grisham and Republican Mark Ronchetti.

Lujan Grisham won that race but will step down at the end of this year after eight years in office.

Methodology

The Journal Poll was conducted from Aug. 21 through Aug. 28. It is based on a statewide random sample of 516 voters who cast ballots in the 2022 and/ or 2024 general elections, and a sample of adults who registered to vote since January 2025 and who said they are likely to vote in the upcoming election.

The total sample of 516 voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. The margin of error grows for subsamples.

The sample was stratified by race/ethnicity and county and weighted by party affiliation, gender and education level based on traditional voting patterns in New Mexico general elections, to ensure a more representative sample.

All interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers based in Albuquerque, with multiple callbacks to households that did not initially answer the phone.

Both cellphone numbers (96%) and landlines (4%) of likely general election voters were used.

These NM restaurants were honored in Michelin’s first guide to the Southwest

Twelve eateries across the state picked up awards

BY NATALIE ROBBINS / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 29, 2026

Michelin, the tire company- turned-restaurant-compendium, included 12 New Mexico restaurants in its first guide to the American Southwest, released Wednesday. The guide includes eateries in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

New Mexico did not pick up any Michelin stars — the guide’s top honor, awarded in this case only to restaurants in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Salt Lake City — but the Land of Enchantment’s restaurants scored several other accolades, including best cocktails and best value.

Five New Mexico restaurants received Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award for good food at reasonable prices, including Albuquerque mainstay Frontier near the University of New Mexico.

The Michelin guide bestowed recommendations — food that is “above average, but not quite at star or Bib level,” according to the guide — for seven New Mexico restaurants: six of them in Santa Fe and one in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque.

Campo at Los Poblanos, the Los Ranchos restaurant that received a Michelin recommendation, was also given the Michelin Guide Southwest Exceptional Cocktails Award.

Michelin-recommended restaurants:

„ Campo at Los Poblanos, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque

„ Arroyo Vino, Santa Fe

„ Paloma, Santa Fe

„ Restaurant Martin, Santa Fe

„ Joseph’s Culinary Pub, Santa Fe

„ Market Steer, Santa Fe

„ Izanami, Santa Fe Recipients of Michelin’s Bib Gourmand award for high-quality food at good value:

„ Frontier, Albuquerque

„ Jambo Cafe, Santa Fe

„ Paper Dosa, Santa Fe

„ La Choza, Santa Fe

„ Tia Sophia’s, Santa Fe

Albuquerque becomes latest city to sue over cigarette butt pollution

Suit aimed at Big Tobacco but also local cigarette manufacturer and distributor

BY MATTHEW REISEN / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 29, 2026

The city of Albuquerque is following in other locales’ footsteps by filing a lawsuit against Big Tobacco — not for the health costs but for the accumulation of butts in local waste.

The suit was filed Wednesday in 2nd Judicial District Court against several tobacco companies and distributors, including Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. The suit also names as defendants New Mexico companies Santa Fe Natural Tobacco — which makes Natural American Spirit cigarettes — and Blue Sky Distributors.

The civil action comes weeks after Denver and Sacramento County in California filed similar suits against Philip Morris and other tobacco companies.

In 2022, Baltimore filed the first such suit in a case that is ongoing, and in March, the companies filed a motion claiming immunity due to a 1990s settlement agreement over health damages from smoking.

The city of Albuquerque accuses the companies of several violations, including being a common law public nuisance, continuing trespass and negligence through design. The lawsuit seeks attorneys’ fees, punitive and compensatory damages, recovery of costs associated with cigarette butt cleanup and the companies to “fund, participate in, or otherwise bear responsibility” for abatement measures to address butt pollution on city property.

“Our storm drains should carry water, not toxic garbage,” Mayor Tim Keller said in a news release. “And the companies profiting from these products should take responsibility for the lasting harm they have on the environment and our essential systems.”

None of the defendants returned requests for comment Friday.

The first clause of the lawsuit quotes the Philip Morris International website: “By 2030, there could be more cigarette butts than fish in the oceans” but cuts the last part of the sentence — “if littering is not reduced.” The clause heads up PMI’s assurance that it is implementing strategies — providing butt disposal equipment, education on littering and shaming of those who do it — to reduce plastic litter from its products by 50% by 2025.

The city of Albuquerque said in the suit that “the widespread environmental deposition of discarded cigarette filters is neither random nor extraordinary.”

“Rather, it is the foreseeable, recurring, and statistically predominant consequence of the ordinary and intended use of filtered cigarettes,” according to the suit. Modern cigarette filters are primarily made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic plastic that does not biodegrade “under ordinary environmental conditions.”

The suit states time and exposure may cause the filters to fragment, but the associated microplastics and underlying material “persists in the environment and continues to require municipal collection, removal, management, and disposal.”

The plastics, with the help of rain and wind, make their way from sidewalks and parks to storm drains and waterways, according to the suit, which states the “widespread deposition of discarded cigarette filters is neither accidental nor an unforeseeable misuse of Defendants’ products.”

The suit states each filtered cigarette sold “creates a foreseeable risk” that its butt will be left on public property and impose “recurring operational, environmental, maintenance, and remediation burdens that continue long after the product has been consumed.”

The defendants also failed to adopt feasible alternative designs “that would eliminate or materially reduce the persistent plastic waste created by their products,” according to the suit.

The suit states, “Plaintiff alleges that Defendants knowingly externalized the foreseeable costs of managing persistent plastic cigarette filter waste onto municipalities while retaining the economic benefits derived from the manufacture and sale of filtered cigarettes.”

PMI’s website contains a 2020 video in which Senior Product Branching Scientist Stefanos Papakyrillou discusses why the company hasn’t moved to a paper filter for more biodegradability — “the consumer acceptance was very low to none.” Papakyrillou explains they were testing other materials as a replacement and hoped to find a material “biodegradable in all mediums” by 2025.

More recent ly, PMI unveiled its 2025 Roadmap, which did not appear to have identified a biodegradable filter material. Instead, PMI planned to substantially phase out cigarettes by 2030 and “maximize the benefits” of vape and other smoke-free products, “making them available in 100 markets… and continue to increase the total number of users.”

Prominent Texas Republican predicts GOP losses over data centers

One prominent Texas Republican predicts disaster at the polls if his party doesn’t take a harder stand against data centers.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske for the Washington Post

August 28, 2026

HOUSTON — Texas’s outgoing agriculture commissioner is warning fellow GOP leaders that if they don’t take action soon against data centers, they could lose key races in November.

“I’ve been leading the charge against these data centers for a year or more, and it’s all falling on deaf ears,” Miller, who lost his primary election, told The Washington Post on Friday. “It’s going to hurt us in the midterms. I think we could lose some statewide races.”

Among the Republicans most at risk, he said: Gov. Greg Abbott, who is seeking a fourth term; Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running to replace Sen. John Cornyn; Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick; and Nate Sheets, who is running to replace Miller.

While Abbott proposed data center restrictions this month that Paxton endorsed, Miller dismissed the “flip flop” as toothless “political fluff” and “pablum.”

“People are not buying it,” he said, demanding that Abbott declare a moratorium on data centers and call a special legislative session to address them.

Miller said he’s talked to rural Republican voters who say they won’t cast ballots in certain races or who plan to vote for Democrats for the first time.

He said Texas GOP Chairman D’rinda Randall called him last week and accused him of campaigning with Democrats after he appeared at anti-data-center events. Miller said he resented being “chewed out” for “not being a team player.”

“The Texas GOP is committed to addressing the concerns surrounding data centers in a manner that aligns with our party’s values and priorities,” Randall told The Post. “I understand the diverse perspectives within our party and am focused on fostering constructive dialogue to ensure the best outcome for all Texans.”

NM sues over illegal border wells

New allegations of meter tampering, illegal pumping for border wall construction emerge

BY ALGERNON D’AMMASSA / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 28, 2026

DEMING — New Mexico’s Office of the State Engineer is suing the federal government and three contractors over their drilling of unauthorized water wells to support border wall construction earlier this year.

The lawsuit, announced by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office Tuesday afternoon, presents new allegations of unlawful drilling and pumping from stressed water aquifers near the southern border, as well as meter tampering and unlawful diversion from existing wells.

The activity has permanently reduced pressure from a historic spring and could even complicate the recent settlement of a 13-year legal dispute over rights to water from the Rio Grande below Elephant Butte, the lawsuit argues.

State Engineer Elizabeth Anderson is seeking an injunction against the use of water from new wells developed at the direction of Customs and Border Protection, and repayment for water already pumped.

According to the complaint, the first report of a nonpermitted well near the southern border came in March from a rancher near Hachita. Inspectors from OSE learned that a drilling contractor had reached 540 feet of depth with plans to reach 1,000 feet.

The contractor allegedly told field inspectors that CBP had advised them no state permits were required because the drilling was on federal territory adjacent to the border, where President Donald Trump’s administration is building new border wall segments, roads and other border security infrastructure.

In all, inspectors reported seven wells had been developed unlawfully in the Hachita, Mimbres and Lower Rio Grande basins, plus “unpermitted diversions from a livestock well, switching of meters in violation of permit conditions, well-plugging in the absence of a legally mandated plugging plan, and collapsed boreholes that were either plugged without a plugging plan or left exposed.”

Subsequent field inspections allegedly discovered evidence of meter-tampering with a CBP well that had been permitted for border wall construction in 2025, obscuring whether CBP was staying within the limit of approximately 977,553 gallons per year.

Field inspectors also discovered unauthorized drilling activity in Luna and Doña Ana counties, where the latter could hinder New Mexico’s ability to deliver water from the Rio Grande to Texas under the Rio Grande Compact. In May, New Mexico, Texas and the federal government reached a settlement after 13 years of litigation and intricate negotiation over the vital resource. Although CBP announced its contractors would cease drilling new wells, the complaint states that OSE has received no commitment that the wells and boreholes would be properly plugged, that water illegally pumped would be repaid or that it would get the water it needs from other sources.

The complaint states that as recently as Aug. 20, three of the unauthorized wells were operating, with inspectors observing water trucks “actively filling at the site.”

The lawsuit names the United States as well as Montana-based Barnard Construction and two Arizona- based drilling companies as defendants.

Subcontractors Wyatt Drilling Arizona LLC and Cascade Drilling LP, both named in the lawsuit, received notices of violation from the state in August, jeopardizing their licenses to operate in New Mexico.

CBP and the contractors did not immediately respond to queries for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in New Mexico’s 6th Judicial District, seeks a court order barring the defendants from drilling more wells without permits or diverting water without securing a lawful water right. The OSE is also seeking plugging and remediation plans, and an accounting of how much water was illegally diverted with double repayment.

Trump administration sues New Mexico over in-state tuition for undocumented students

Arizona, Oregon and Washington also hit in latest round of suits

BY NATALIE ROBBINS / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 28, 2026

New Mexico is one of four additional states sued by the federal government for providing in-state tuition to undocumented students.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed lawsuits against New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Washington on Thursday. In total, 21 states have been sued for similar reasons.

The complaint, which names the New Mexico Higher Education Department and Secretary Stephanie Rodriguez as defendants, contends that New Mexico’s policy to allow undocumented residents to pay in-state tuition at state universities is unconstitutional discrimination against U.S. citizens living in other states.

“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said in a news release. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second- class citizens in their own country.”

HED spokesperson Auriella Valles said the agency was aware of the suit, though it had not yet received official court documents.

“New Mexico’s financial aid programs are designed to support residents pursuing higher education. Eligibility requirements vary across programs, but they are consistently grounded in residency and academic participation within the state,” Valles said in an email. “We are committed to ensuring that New Mexicans have reliable, structured pathways to afford and access higher education. We will continue to uphold our mission of supporting students, strengthening our workforce and advancing educational opportunity across the state.”

New Mexico has been granting in-state tuition to undocumented students — who are not eligible for federal student loans or financial aid — since the passage of Senate Bill 582 in 2005.

The bill affords in-state tuition rates to students who attended a New Mexico middle or high school for at least one year, graduated from a New Mexico high school or received a GED in the state, regardless of immigration status. It has since been codified in state law.

The DOJ lawsuit seeks to strike down the state law as unconstitutional and establish a permanent injunction prohibiting New Mexico from granting in-state tuition or financial aid to undocumented students.

New Mexico offers free tuition to virtually all documented and undocumented residents at the state’s 29 four-year and two-year colleges via the Lottery and Opportunity Scholarships. Nonresidents who attend the state’s flagship university, the University of New Mexico, pay $34,734 in tuition and fees per year.

Similar lawsuits against Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Kentucky have proved successful for the Trump administration — those states have ended their in-state tuition policies since they were sued.

“Over 30 years ago, Congress made clear that states cannot put illegal aliens before our nation’s own citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said in a statement. “By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and Arizona are pushing citizens to the side and ignoring federal law. No more.”

BernCo sheriff to end Flock contracts over privacy concerns

City of Grants also announced it would terminate its agreement with the surveillance technology company

BY NAKAYLA MCCLELLAND / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 28, 2026

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he is in the process of canceling contracts with a controversial surveillance technology company due to what he described as privacy concerns regarding the company’s use of data.

The city of Grants also announced Thursday that it would terminate its contract with Flock, saying “the benefits provided by these cameras do not sufficiently align with the investment required or with the city’s overall mission and approach to public safety and security.”

Flock Safety provides surveillance technology, including automatic license plate readers (ALPR), to businesses and law enforcement agencies.

Law enforcement agencies such as the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and the Albuquerque Police Department have said the technology has helped them track vehicles, identify homicide suspects and find missing people across the state.

APD uses another surveillance technology company, Genetec, for ALPR cameras instead of Flock.

“We have successfully used license plate readers to recover stolen vehicles and help reduce auto theft by over 50%,” said Gilbert Gallegos, spokesperson for APD. “This year, license plate readers have been successfully used in 14 solved homicide cases.”

But Flock has come under scrutiny in recent months, with legislators and the public expressing concerns over how data from ALPR cameras is collected and stored.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Wednesday launched an investigation into Flock and how the company protects the public’s data, stating in a letter that Congress “never authorized the network your industry has built.”

New Mexico lawmakers in February passed Senate Bill 40 — titled the Driver Privacy and Safety Act — with the goal of limiting the sharing of drivers’ personal information gathered from the technology.

Allen wrote a letter in support of the bill, stating that it would provide safeguards by defining what ALPR data can be used for and creating auditing requirements.

BSCO currently has three contracts with the company for a total of 21 Flock cameras.

One contract is $15,000 for five ALPR cameras that expires in October, another is $56,000 for 16 speed cameras that are connected to the Flock network and the third is a $116,000 contract for gunshot detection devices.

The sheriff said all three contracts are off the table as he searches for a new company to partner with. The speed cameras will remain operational but will solely function as a speed camera.

“If I don’t have complete confidence in a vendor or company, how am I going to tell another law enforcement entity, ‘Yeah, go ahead and go with them,’” Allen said.

Flock did not respond to calls for comment.

BCSO will receive retroactive payments for the gunshot detection devices, which were canceled before their term ended, according to BCSO spokesperson Jayme Gonzales.

Allen said over the past year he lost trust in Flock because there are not enough safeguards in place to protect people’s data, and there have been instances where cameras were cut down or destroyed without Flock notifying him until weeks or months later.

Abuses of the technology by law enforcement have also drawn national attention. The Washington Post reported earlier this month on dozens of instances where officers were accused of using the cameras to track romantic partners or family members.

BCSO has a policy requiring regular audits of deputies’ Flock usage, and each deputy is required to input a case number in order to access the system. If they cannot justify their usage, they will eventually be banned from using the technology.

Allen said he expected the company to have its own safeguards in place without law enforcement agencies having to implement them independently.

“We audit at least quarterly, if not monthly,” he said. “I’ve just audited two days in a row because I’m making sure we’re not missing any discrepancies.”

The agency keeps collected data for 30 days.

Allen expressed concerns over law enforcement agencies from other counties or states using New Mexico’s data for ill-intended purposes.

An American Civil Liberties Union public records request revealed that New Mexico ALPR cameras were accessed thousands of times by out-of-state law enforcement, including once by Texas law enforcement allegedly tracking a woman seeking abortion care.

The ACLU did not respond to an email for comment about BCSO’s Flock contract.

Allen does not allow Torrance or Curry counties to access data from BCSO because they work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Allen said he has issues with Flock, he plans to search for a new vendor in hopes of finding a company with stronger data protection policies, adding that the technology has helped law enforcement in a multitude of ways.

“I’m not looking at getting rid of the technology as a whole. It’s the vendor I have a problem with,” he said. “It’s a very useful, powerful tool, but it needs to have guardrails and be used correctly.”

AG sues feds for DEA fentanyl records

US Attorney’s Office in NM has so far declined Raúl Torrez’s request

BY COLLEEN HEILD / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER

August 28, 2026

State Attorney General Raúl Torrez is escalating his effort to determine why federal authorities allowed massive quantities of fentanyl to reach Albuquerque and other New Mexico communities during long-term drug investigations.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, Torrez asks a federal judge to compel the U.S. Attorney’s Office to turn over records related to decisions not to seize large fentanyl shipments during wiretap investigations.

“Fentanyl is killing New Mexicans faster than almost anywhere in the country,” Torrez’s office said in the lawsuit. “No corner of the state has escaped the fentanyl crisis.”

The lawsuit is the latest effort to learn more about the DEA tactic of monitoring drug shipments but not intervening, allowing millions of fentanyl pills to reach the streets of Albuquerque and other New Mexico communities beginning in 2023.

The Albuquerque Journal and The Associated Press have reported that the controversial practice, known as “fentanyl walking,” occurred in New Mexico as federal authorities sought to build larger cases against drug trafficking organizations and their leaders.

The investigative tactic was first revealed by veteran Albuquerque DEA agent David Howell, who filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel alleging that the practice was harming the community.

Howell contended the practice violated an internal DEA policy designed to mitigate the public safety risks involved in long-term wiretap investigations.

Since his initial complaint in 2023, two other current or former DEA agents have come forward with additional accounts of “fentanyl walking.” They also allege they faced retaliation within the DEA for speaking out.

“Whistleblowers from within DEA have come forward with credible, detailed accounts that this fentanyl walking — carried out by certain assistant United States attorneys and certain DEA agents in at least two separate investigations between 2022 and 2025 — violated U.S. DOJ’s own mandatory protocols for handling fentanyl,” the lawsuit states.

The DEA has disavowed “walking” fentanyl but has also said its actions were reasonable and lawful.

The attorney general’s lawsuit cites testimony from a DEA agent who helped lead a New Mexico-based investigation into a five-state drug trafficking organization in 2024 and 2025. The investigation into Heriberto Salazar Amaya and other defendants culminated in the seizure of more than 3 million fentanyl pills, along with cash, weapons and other drugs.

But current and former DEA agents have said that while building the case, the government allowed millions of other pills to continue to their destinations as DEA teams stood by.

The lawsuit quotes testimony last year from DEA agent David Zimmerman, who described watching couriers meet with people carrying large black backpacks and duffel bags.

“You could probably get 100,000 fentanyl pills (in a backpack), if you wanted,” Zimmerman testified.

Zimmerman said the DEA “quickly learned” that one target under surveillance “was capable of moving hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills in a couple of days.”

“Every couple of days he was basically calling … asking for more drugs, more drugs,” Zimmerman testified. “It was just like a constant revolving door.”

At the outset of the Salazar Amaya investigation, DEA agents monitored a transaction involving an estimated 350,000 fentanyl pills to be delivered in Albuquerque and chose not to stop the distribution, according to the lawsuit. Some agents have defended the practice as necessary because intervening could derail a larger investigation.

Howell has said he consulted with other DEA agents around the country and that “no one I talked with had ever heard of another DEA agent ‘walking’ a hundred thousand fentanyl pills.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham formally requested that Torrez investigate whether the actions of DEA agents or others involved violated state laws.

New Mexico’s drug overdose death rate has ranked among the worst in the nation for more than two decades, with fentanyl driving 70% of those deaths since 2016, according to the attorney general’s lawsuit.

While the national drug overdose death toll fell by more than 13% in the 12 months ending in March 2026, fatal overdoses in New Mexico increased by nearly 27% during the same period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Torrez said he asked First Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison to produce records as part of the ongoing state investigation but received little to no response, according to the lawsuit.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office failed to specify a reason for refusing Torrez’s request, “offering little more than boilerplate language and buzzwords,” the lawsuit states.

The explanation and subsequent lack of response “cannot justify (Ellison’s office’s) radical departure from the ordinary norms of state-federal cooperation,” the Attorney General’s Office said.

“This interference is a direct obstruction of New Mexico’s own authority to determine, on a complete record, whether its citizens were harmed by conduct occurring within its territory and whether civil or criminal remedies are warranted,” the lawsuit states.

Ellison’s office had no immediate response to a Journal request for comment Thursday.

Students read aloud. AI scores them

State-mandated testing program helps track progress but sparks concerns over inconsistent data and student frustration

By Natalie Robbins / Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer

April 26, 2026

Lilly Garcia is learning to read. Her tutor is a robot.

On a Friday morning in her combination second- and third-grade class at Matheson Park Elementary School, Garcia reads a story about a rabbit and a fox traveling to a tropical island. She’s wearing a headset linked to a laptop running a program called Amira, an artificial intelligence-based learning software.

Amira works by listening to students read a sentence out loud and catching their mistakes. If a student mispronounces a word, a video of a human mouth appears on screen, repeating its correct pronunciation — “opposite,” “replied,” “admired” — and the student replicates it into the microphone for points.

A bespectacled cartoon girl with purple hair — this is Amira — sometimes pops in to ask students a question about the text: “What does the author mean by, ‘The wind is angry today?’”

Beginning this school year, the state of New Mexico is requiring all students in kindergarten through second grade at public schools and public charter schools to take reading assessments on Amira. Its use is approved up to grade eight. The program grades students’ progress in a numbered score used to measure school and district performance.

The New Mexico Public Education Department began using Amira after the software provider that schools had been using for testing, Istation, was acquired by the San Francisco-based company Amira Learning.

Amira is required for assessments in two states — New Mexico and Idaho — and is authorized for state use in Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts.

Some schools, like Matheson Park, a small elementary school in Northeast Albuquerque, have warmed to Amira. Teachers use it to monitor reading level progress at the beginning of each month, said Principal Jacqueline Lovato.

Matheson Park is an Amira success story — since the beginning of the year, reading scores in Lilly Garcia’s class are up nearly 30%, according to Amira data provided to the Journal.

“I haven’t heard any complaints from my teachers,” Lovato said. “I think the kids have gotten more comfortable.”

The PED recommends 30 minutes of Amira tutoring per week for students in need of reading intervention, according to department officials.

While official data from Amira and state agencies like the PED report the program grades with the same level of accuracy as human scorers, teachers told the Journal there are discrepancies between Amira’s scores and a student’s actual abilities.

Some teachers and staff at Albuquerque Public Schools say the program is inaccurate and cumbersome. Reported problems typically fall into two categories: speech and dialect variability and environmental and technical interference.

Amira sometimes does not recognize voices of students with speech disabilities or foreign accents, teachers said. These students still must use the program for assessments.

And in busy classrooms, teachers say the AI picks up background noise and voices of other students, leading to inaccurate results. 

In Celeste Hernandez’s kindergarten class at Bel-Air Elementary School in Northeast Albuquerque, Amira can be finicky and challenging, she said.

Hernandez has seven students on individualized education programs, or IEPs, for speech — meaning they have a disability accommodation — and eight who are learning English.

When used by these students, Amira has trouble recognizing their words, she said.

“It’s not always great at picking up the language of students, especially when they have trouble with (spoken) language,” Hernandez said. 

Some students with speech disabilities are difficult to understand, even for teachers, Hernandez said, and the program will make them repeat words again and again until they’re exasperated.

“They’re doing the best they can,” she said. “But I mean, there’s a point of frustration where it’s like, why are we doing this? You can just see it in kids — they just are defeated.”

As is true in most cases, before there were computers for conducting reading assessments, there were humans. Hernandez remembers when teachers would sit down with kids one-on-one to gauge their reading progress.

“Did it take a long time? Absolutely,” she said. “But I could tell you where every kid was all the time.”

In Ryan Hayes’ special education classroom at Chaparral Elementary School on Albuquerque’s West Side, about half of his students are adept at using Amira, he said. For these students, the program can provide a good representation of their abilities. For the rest, using Amira is difficult.

“The problem with any online platform in any setting — you’re going to have some students that are successful with it. You have some students that are not successful with it,” he said.

Some of his students have trouble processing directions. Hayes said he sometimes has to repeat instructions to them five to eight times. When Amira asks these students to read a sentence only once or twice, they’re not able to understand, he said.

“If you have a kid with social communication deficits, like the type of kiddos we work with in here — with receptive, expressive and articulation delays — I feel like there should be an opt-out,” he said.

Amira does have disability accommodations — the program has modifications for one of Hayes’ students who can’t speak, but the student’s short attention span means she frequently needs to be redirected to the test.

“When you have her do it a couple of times, she escalates and starts screaming and shouting,” Hayes said. “It dysregulates everybody in the classroom. They’re more focused on that behavior, and then their scores also plummet a little.”

Having to battle students once a week takes up precious instructional time, Hayes said.

“Tuesday’s actually our Amira day. Today, I’ll bring them in and they will start groaning. I have a couple of kids — they’ll start crying because they have to do it today,” he said.

Teachers are able to look at the data after assessments are complete, though sometimes, school staff say they find inconsistencies.

“I would say there are inaccurate scores more often than not,” Hernandez said.

Erik Johns is a teaching and learning coach at APS whose job it is to track and interpret student assessment data. The data Johns sees from Amira, he said, is often inconsistent.

“I’m seeing in the data these massive fluctuations month to month in children,” Johns said. “Statistically, when you’re looking at percentile rankings, if you see a kid fluctuate one to two points, that’s normal. Fluctuating 20 or 30 points every month is totally abnormal. And it’s primarily because the AI is not working correctly.”

Inaccurate data provides an inconsistent look into student progress, Johns said, which means it’s difficult to know how to help students who are struggling.

Teachers, too, are being judged on data that may not be an accurate assessment of their students, he said.

“I have some really, really excellent teachers here, especially in my lower grade levels, and they’re being judged on this data that’s completely inaccurate,” Johns said. “It’s not factual, and it’s heartbreaking, because they’re working very, very hard to do the very best by our students.”

Since the program is a new state requirement, an adjustment period is expected, PED spokesperson Janelle Garcia said.

“The PED has been working with Amira to provide ongoing training and to support students who speak other languages or who have disabilities impacting speech,” she said. “In addition, a range of protections are built into the program to ensure that Amira’s mastery evaluations are not impacted by accent or unusual speech pattern.”

The department acknowledges that the program is not suitable for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.

“PED defers to students’ IEP teams to determine the most appropriate assessment approach for these students,” Garcia said.

At APS, 31,267 students have read 2.5 million minutes on Amira so far in the 2025-26 school year, according to Chris Blevins, Amira’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and government relations. 

Despite the kinks, APS maintains that Amira is making an impact.

“We know there are issues with the program that the company is working to fix, but Amira is making a positive difference for students by providing personalized practice to strengthen early literacy skills,” APS spokesperson Martin Salazar said in a statement. “It’s an intervention resource that supports — not replaces — the instruction our teachers provide, helping them identify and address specific student needs.”

Based on the company’s findings, Amira officials say it has proved its worth: Students who use Amira 30 minutes per week report an additional eight weeks of reading growth with the program compared to students who didn’t use it, Blevins said.

Blevins asserts that the data from Amira is accurate. There are no major differences between the scores on this year’s assessment and the one conducted last year using a different program, he said.

For students with special needs, the program can be adaptable, he added. His own daughter has an IEP and uses Amira to read, he said.

“Amira is a safe place for her to read and to learn, and Amira is a helper for her,” Blevins said.

Blevins said he understands the panic about AI but hopes people have an open mind.

“AI reminds me of cellphones,” Blevins said. “Twenty years ago, when Steve Jobs brought out the iPhone, people were afraid of a device that was in their hands, and now everybody in the world seems to have a cellphone. I think this is just an evolution of technology.”

Amid parent backlash, APS keeps AI reading program with changes

District will limit student voice recordings and delete data more frequently

BY NATALIE ROBBINS / ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

August 27, 2026

Amid mounting pressure to dump the software, leaders at Albuquerque Public Schools said Wednesday the district will continue to use the contentious artificial intelligence reading program Amira, but will scale back voice recordings and increase data deletion amid student privacy concerns.

Amira works by listening to students read aloud, noting incorrect pronunciations and scoring their performance. The program has been required for use by the state Public Education Department since the beginning of the 2025-26 school year and is used both for regular assessments and weekly tutoring.

In a letter to parents, APS Deputy Superintendent Randy Mahlerwein said Amira’s leadership provided documentation certifying that all voice data from before the current school year had been deleted. Data from Amira’s testing feature will be deleted every 48 hours so teachers have a chance to listen to the recordings, and Amira’s tutoring component will continue to score and analyze student voices but will not record them.

The move comes after parents showed up en masse at school board meetings across the state, asking district leaders to reconsider using the program, worried about where their children’s data goes and who sees it.

As the school year starts across New Mexico, several districts have already opted out of the PED requirement in favor of non-AI programs. Since the beginning of the month, 15 of the state’s 89 districts and one charter school have refused the program, some temporarily until further guidance is available, according to PED spokesperson Janelle Taylor García.

APS — the state’s largest district — has maintained that it will continue to use the program, even in the face of mounting parental discontent, citing the progress its students have made using Amira.

Parents who don’t want their children to use Amira can opt for a paper-and-pencil test, Mahlerwein said.

The program was approved for use after the non-AI software provider schools had been using for testing, Istation, was acquired by the San Francisco- based company Amira Learning in 2024.

New Mexico spends $2.7 million on Amira yearly for software use, professional development, data analysis and other additional tutoring and support programs, Amira leadership told the Journal. The cost of the statewide assessment alone is $1.4 million.

Amira is required for assessments in two states — New Mexico and Idaho — and is authorized for state use in Oklahoma, Georgia, California, Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts.

The concerns about Amira, it seems, are spreading to state government. On Monday, a group of more than 30 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signed a letter addressed to PED Secretary Mariana Padilla, requesting that the agency ask for parental consent before using Amira and provide the public information about its functionality.

“You’re talking about the biometric data of children 5 to 8 years old,” said Rep. Linda Serrato, D-Santa Fe, who led the group of signatories. “That’s valuable stuff, and we know it, but we have to treat it as such.”

Serrato said she worries about the consequences of not teaching children AI literacy when they interact with Amira, who appears on students’ screens as a friendly purple- haired cartoon character in glasses.

“Our job right now is to be teaching every level of New Mexican, whether they’re children all the way up to our elders, just what AI is and what it isn’t,” she said. “My concern is that it really is humanizing this tool.”

Serrato said building stronger guidance for AI is a top priority at the next legislative session in January.

“As public servants, our job is to operate as transparently about things that the public has questions on as possible,” she said.

Taylor García said in a statement the PED had received the letter and that the agency “welcomes the opportunity to discuss these matters with the Legislature and to partner in creating clear safeguards, strong accountability measures, and transparent communication with families.”

“The department will continue evaluating emerging technologies to ensure they are used responsibly, securely, and in the best interest of New Mexico students,” she said.

Lawmakers also wrote of anxieties surrounding “model drift,” the decline in an AI product’s functioning or accuracy after it is launched to the public as it adapts to user behavior.

“The unfortunate reality is that once children’s voices and other real-world data are used to train the model and influence its future output, the system’s behavior and performance can change,” the letter reads.

Amira CEO Mark Angel maintains that this is not an issue with the program, which does use student voices to “train” its performance, since the assessment does not change from the beginning of a school year to the end.

“This is a complete misunderstanding,” Angel said. “If anyone on the Senate team or staff had talked to us, we would have explained that any concern about model drift does not impact Amira’s ability to accurately assess students. And I think if people think about it, we’re approved by more than 30 state agencies. If there was any truth to what they’re asserting, no state agency would be willing to rely on our data.”

Amira does collect student data, but only under direction from the PED, so the state can produce its reading performance reports, Angel said.

“We don’t want to collect this data; it’s a nuisance,” he said. “If the Legislature or PED tells us to stop collecting the data, we will stop instantaneously.”

Recordings are stored so that teachers can listen back to them to hear student progress, Angel said, so a 48-hour deletion window means teachers have less time to listen to the recordings.

“People are confused about this. They think that we are keeping this audio because it’s serving some interior purpose,” he said. “It’s actually serving the exterior purpose of helping teachers to benefit from the assessment process.”

Angel insists the company does not sell or transmit data to any other agency or company.

“We have contractual obligations, civil penalties from the Federal Trade Commission, and legal responsibilities to a wide range of government agencies that make it almost an absurdity to imagine that we would do something both as immoral or as suicidal as sell or provide this data,” he said.