More than 760,000 New Mexicans who rely on Medicaid and food assistance could face benefit cuts or stricter requirements under federal legislation, prompting Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to consider calling lawmakers back to Santa Fe as early as late August.
The governor is “likely to call a special session, possibly in late summer or early fall, but a final determination has not been made,” Michael Coleman, director of communications for the governor’s office, said Wednesday.
Lujan Grisham’s chief general counsel, Holly Agajanian, told the Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on Wednesday that the session would focus on responding to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed July 4. The legislation cuts federal funding for Medicaid by more than $1 trillion and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $295 billion over the next decade.
The cuts target programs that serve New Mexico’s most vulnerable residents. About 764,407 New Mexicans receive Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits as of October 2024 — roughly 36% of the state’s population. New Mexico also has the nation’s highest percentage of residents receiving SNAP benefits at 21.2%, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
“The governor will consider legislation responding to President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda signed into law earlier this month, which contains cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” Agajanian said during the committee meeting.
The governor is looking for “ways to reinforce our health care system, our SNAP system, and other topics like that,” Agajanian said, “in order to make sure we’re not leaving the most vulnerable of us behind.”
Beyond responding to federal cuts, Coleman said the special session agenda would include legislation to “increase penalties for felons in possession, update our outdated definitions of danger to self and others, make a small adjustment to the criminal competency bill that passed in the last session and ban local governments from contracting with federal agencies to detain immigrants for civil violations.”
The immigration provision would target New Mexico’s three existing ICE detention facilities in Cibola, Otero and Torrance counties, which together can hold about 3,000 people in federal immigration custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has proposed expanding capacity at the Cibola and Torrance facilities and adding detention operations at Lea County Correctional Facility.
Agajanian said the governor is “willing to have a bill on the call that would ban the presence of immigration facilities in the state of New Mexico.”
The immigration detention proposal reflects years of criticism from Lujan Grisham about conditions at the facilities.
At the beginning of Lujan Grisham’s term in 2019, she committed to phasing out private prisons. But existing contracts and the sheer number of inmates made that a challenging task.
“I’m appalled at what’s going on in Torrance County, and I need that fixed,” the governor said at a public safety news conference in January 2023. She told federal Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that conditions at Torrance County Detention Center needed improvement if the federal government wanted the state to continue licensing such facilities.
In November 2019, after Cuban asylum-seekers were placed in solitary confinement for hunger strikes, the governor demanded ICE stop “inhumane treatment” at New Mexico facilities.
During a COVID-19 outbreak at the Otero facility in May 2020, Lujan Grisham criticized ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service for conditions that led to 65 cases.
“They didn’t take any of our standards for how you visit, how you are training staff, what you do for infection control, mandating that guards and staff have masks, Lujan Grisham said. “And this is a huge failure in the federal system.”
The mental health provisions would reintroduce legislation to redefine “harm to self” and “harm to others” to allow civil courts to commit more people into locked psychiatric facilities. That bill died in the House during the 2025 regular session.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have indicated support for a special session, though for different reasons.
Republican leadership sent Lujan Grisham a letter after the 2025 Legislative Session, calling it “unproductive and disappointing” and requesting an immediate special session focused on crime and healthcare.
Democratic Senate Whip Michael Padilla of Albuquerque said lawmakers have discussed returning for both crime and federal funding issues. “We’ve talked about coming back for a special session on crime,” Padilla said, according to Source New Mexico. “I’m really thinking we’re going to come back on these federal cuts as well.”
After Wednesday’s committee presentation, State Sen.Crystal Brantley (R-Elephant Butte) issued a statement saying a special session would be a waste of time.
“New Mexico is under a clear and present danger from within our own state lines. Look at our headlines from CYFD, to the Young Park massacre, to UNM this past weekend—we have deeply rooted issues and yet here we are again talking about Trump,” Brantley said. “Our President has taken illegal immigration to the lowest numbers ever, but here we are finding a way to use taxpayer dollars to pick a fight with the administration for cheap political points. Meanwhile, we’re leaving serious bipartisan juvenile justice reform efforts out in the cold. I’m deeply upset yet not surprised that this is shaping up to be another special session of hot air.”
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed Congress largely along party lines, imposes 80-hour monthly work requirements on many adults receiving Medicaid and applies existing SNAP work rules to additional beneficiaries.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation will cause 12 million people nationwide to lose Medicaid coverage by 2034, while 4.7 million SNAP participants will lose benefits over the 2025-2034 period.
For New Mexico, the impacts could be particularly severe given the state’s high participation rates in both programs. New Mexico has the nation’s highest percentage of births covered by Medicaid, and the state recently expanded SNAP eligibility to include households earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level — a change that added about 67,697 New Mexican households to the program in 2024.
Coleman noted in his email that the special session agenda “is not necessarily an exhaustive list” but reflects “the governor’s current concerns.”
Agajanian also indicated the governor would not address juvenile crime during a potential special session, saying that topic would wait until the 2026 regular legislative session in January.
If called, this would be Lujan Grisham’s seventh special session since taking office in 2019. The governor has broad authority to set the agenda and timeline, with sessions limited to 30 days maximum under the New Mexico Constitution.
Her last special session in July 2024 lasted only five hours after the Legislature rejected most of her crime-focused agenda, prompting the governor to say lawmakers should be “embarrassed.” Special sessions cost approximately $50,000 per day in legislative expenses.
A final determination on timing has not been made.