Positive STD test lead to investigation of now incarcerated MDC guard, + More

Positive STD test lead to investigation of now incarcerated MDC guard – Elizabeth McCall, City Desk ABQ 

The investigation into an alleged relationship between a Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) corrections officer and an inmate started after the inmate tested positive for a sexually transmitted infection, according to a criminal complaint.

The officer, Chevonne Culbreath, was arrested Tuesday after she was accused of having a relationship with an inmate and attempting to bring an illegal substance into the jail, according to a Bernalillo County news release.

According to MDC records, Culbreath was still in custody as of Thursday afternoon. She is facing one second-degree criminal sexual penetration charge and attempting to commit a felony.

According to a criminal complaint, an inmate was tested for a sexually transmitted infection on Sept. 10 after seeking medical care. The results, according to the criminal complaint, showed he tested positive for gonorrhea and he then disclosed an alleged relationship with Culbreath, which spurred the investigation that led to her arrest.

According to the criminal complaint, the inmate told a Bernalillo County Sherriff’s Office (BCSO) deputy the inmate and Culbreath had sexual relations for two or three months and had sex in a supply closet on Aug. 25. The deputy reported viewing surveillance footage from Aug. 25 that showed the inmate and Culbreath entering a supply closet for six minutes and showing the closet door “shake back and forth.”

In an interview with the deputy, Culbreath reportedly said she would receive letters from inmates with their numbers but would throw them away and denied having any physical contact with the inmate.

Not long after the interview, according to the criminal complaint, Culbreath told deputies she wanted to make another statement — where she told them the inmate would make sexual remarks toward her and she would give him candy and food in hopes that he would leave her alone.

According to the deputy’s narrative, Culbreath admitted to kissing the inmate and then having sex with him because he threatened to “report her if she didn’t do what he wanted.”

Culbreath, according to BCSO, also told deputies on Sept. 16 the inmate wanted her to bring him drugs from his “baby mama.” Culbreath claims she met with the woman, who allegedly gave Culbreath a breakfast burrito with a plastic bag of cannabis extract tucked inside.

The complaint states Culbreath “decided against” bringing the burrito into the jail and left it at her home in her refrigerator.
City Desk ABQ contacted Culbreath’s attorney but did not receive a response as of press time.

The politics of immigration play differently along the US-Mexico border – By Morgan Lee,Associated Press

The politics of immigration look different from the back patio of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing restaurant.

That’s where Robert Ardovino sees a Border Patrol horse trailer rumbling across his property on a sweltering summer morning. It’s where a surveillance helicopter traces a line in the sky, and a nearby Border Patrol agent paces a desert gully littered with castoff water bottles and clothing.

It’s also where a steady stream of weary people, often escorted by smugglers, scale a border wall or the adjacent Mount Cristo Rey and step into an uncertain future. It’s a stretch of desert where reports of people dying of exhaustion and exposure have grown commonplace.

“It’s very obvious to me, being on the border, that it’s not an open border,” said Ardovino, who pays for fencing topped by concertina wire to route migrants around his property. “It is a very, very, very difficult situation.”

As immigration politics have moved to the forefront of this year’s presidential election, they’ve also dominated contests for hotly contested congressional seats that could determine which party controls Congress. The urgency is greater in some districts than others.

Three of 11 districts on the Southwest border are rematches in districts that flipped in 2022 with the election of Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez in New Mexico and Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona and Monica De La Cruz in Texas.

A partner in a decades-old family business, Ardovino lives in one border district in Texas and works in Vasquez’s New Mexico district.

“It’s frustrating for people who need a border bill of any kind, any time, to start dealing with the big picture,” Ardovino said.

Early voting starts Oct. 8 in Sunland Park, where partisan control flipped in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022 with the election of Vasquez.

Democrats in Congress, including Vasquez, are aggressively touting border initiatives. He emphasizes his knowledge of the region as the U.S.-born son of immigrants with relatives on both sides of the border.

“With migrant activity along the border, we have had to adjust our approach,” said Vasquez. “I can say here that the sky is blue for 50 years, but when it turns red, you have to admit that it’s turning red.”

Here, border politics are literally a matter of life and death. Federal and local authorities describe a new humanitarian crisis along New Mexico’s nearly 180-mile portion of the border, where migrant deaths from heat exposure have surged.

In the Texas race, Democratic challenger Michelle Vallejo has taken a hard line, shocking progressive allies. She openly courts Republican allies in her campaign against De La Cruz. One of her recent ads describes “chaos at the border” and calls for more Border Patrol agents.

In Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Ciscomani calls border enforcement his top priority but has distanced himself from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Instead, Ciscomani tells an immigrant’s story — about his own arrival in the U.S. at age 11 from Hermosillo, Mexico. He received citizenship in 2006.

“We have a responsibility to enforce the law on the border, and we also are a community of immigrants – myself included,” he said.

U.S. Border Patrol arrests of migrants on the Southwest border plunged to a 46-month low in July. In New Mexico, where coordinated law enforcement raids in August targeted houses where smugglers hide migrants, the trend has been less pronounced.

Vasquez, looking to become the first Democrat to win reelection in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District since 1978, has pitched legislation to disrupt cartel recruitment of young Americans as migrant couriers and stepped up efforts to detect fentanyl at the border.

In 2022, after Democrats redrew congressional maps to split a conservative oil-producing region into three districts, Vasquez ousted one-term Republican Congresswoman Yvette Herrell by 1,350 votes.

Herrell, running for the seat for the fourth consecutive time, joined Republican House leaders in alleging that Democratic rivals undermined U.S. elections by voting against a proof-of-citizenship requirement for new voters.

“It’s our sovereignty over the open border,” said Herrell at a rally in Las Cruces.

Noncitizens already are prohibited from voting in federal elections. Vasquez says the requirement would make participation harder for legitimate voters.

Some say Herrell’s rhetoric could alienate a voting-age population that’s 56% Hispanic.

“It’s a tightrope that she’s got to walk in trying to get any of the pro-Trump enthusiasm,” said Gabriel Sanchez, director of the University of New Mexico Center for Social Policy.

Herrell’s approach resonates with retired Border Patrol agent Cesar Ramos of Alamogordo.

“People here in Alamogordo are 110% behind legal immigration, but despise that there are criminal acts of smuggling, and just breaking into the U.S. with no legal documentation,” he said.

Elsewhere in the district, concerns about border enforcement and inflation are testing Democratic Party allegiances.

Luis Soto, of Sunland Park, said migrants who cross the border impact his efforts to open a cannabis dispensary.

“I’m waiting for a fire marshal inspection and he’s busy saving people in the desert, rescuing bodies from the river, helping people out that are locked in a trailer,” said Soto, 43, the son of immigrants from Mexico in a family of lifelong Democrats, “We come from immigrants as well, but I think if the system was fixed, it would work out even better for them as well as for us.”

Vasquez in New Mexico and Ciscomani in Arizona are near ideological opposites, but they’ve co-sponsored bills to modernize temporary farmworker visas, spur local manufacturing and combat opioid trafficking.

“Juan and I play basketball together, and he has become a good friend,” Vasquez said. “There are solutions on the border that we can do today that may not look like comprehensive immigration reform.”

Ciscomani said he’s eager to collaborate with Democrats. His Democratic challenger, Kirsten Engel, scoffs at that notion, saying Ciscomani publicly rejected a major bipartisan border bill in February, days after Trump told GOP lawmakers to abandon it. The $20 billion bill would have overhauled the asylum system and given the president new powers to expel migrants when asylum claims become overwhelming.

“We’re very disappointed that it was rejected so swiftly by the very elected officials that talk about having border solutions,” said Engel, a law professor and former state legislator.

At Sunland Park, an off-road Border Patrol vehicle kicks dust into the morning air. An unmarked bus arrives for detained migrants. Ardovino, from his deck, gazes at Mount Cristo Rey and wonders aloud what it will take to make this work for people coming in search of a better life — and for those already here.

“The whole desert is unfortunately littered with people’s lives,” he said.

BernCo commissioner seeks pot parity – Rodd Cayton, City Desk ABQ 

A Bernalillo County commissioner is looking to make things more fair for county employees who use cannabis outside work hours.

Commissioner Eric Olivas told City Desk ABQ he plans to introduce legislation that would treat off-duty use of recreational cannabis in the same way as off-duty alcohol use. He called it a basic rights issue.

Olivas said he’s been working with the county’s legal team and the unions representing its employees on drafting a resolution he hopes the Board of Commissioners will soon review.

He said he’s been approached by some county employees about the disparity and decided to look into fixing it.

NOT ALL EMPLOYEES

Olivas acknowledged that the rules can’t be changed for all employees. Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, employees in “safety-sensitive positions” would be exempt from loosening restrictions on cannabis use.

According to New Mexico’s State Personnel Administration, those jobs include employees who are required to regularly carry firearms, those in health care and those whose principal jobs include regularly transporting other people, such as heavy equipment operators, law enforcement officers, pilots and correctional officers. Federal law also places restrictions on positions paid for by federal grants.

Olivas said what he’s proposing will not change the county’s drug-free workplace policy.

“We don’t want people drinking alcohol and driving the fire truck,” he said. “We don’t want people smoking weed and driving the fire truck.”

He said one hurdle might be the absence of a reliable test that can identify whether someone is under the influence of marijuana, similar to how blood alcohol concentration is used to measure intoxication.

County policy now states any employee convicted of a drug offense is subject to automatic termination, while someone convicted of DWI could be retained.

“It’s totally backward,” he said, adding that the county should have a consistent policy.

THE RULES ELSEWHERE

Other governments have also dealt with the issue. The City of Albuquerque implemented a revised substance abuse policy earlier this year. Spokesperson Ava Montoya said the policy specifically addresses on-duty conduct, but there can be off-duty implications.

For example, the city’s policy prohibits reporting to duty any time “there is a quantifiable presence of a prohibited substance in their body, which could be ingested off-duty or there are situations where off-duty conduct could create the basis for reasonable-suspicion drug testing.”

The city prohibits cannabis use for employees who are on duty or on city property, Montoya said.

She said there was some discussion of incorporating specific provisions about medical cannabis in the recent substance abuse policy update, but “through the course of labor negotiations, those discussions ended, and no specific provisions for medical or recreational cannabis were included. “

City employees in Denver — Colorado legalized recreational cannabis in 2012 — are prohibited from consuming, being under the influence of or impaired by legal or illegal drugs while performing city business, while driving a city vehicle or while on city property. The law doesn’t specifically permit off-duty cannabis use.

Phoenix, Tucson and Portland have similar policies. Kansas City, Missouri, has also dropped cannabis from its pre-employment drug screening menu.

California law prohibits almost all employers from “discriminating against a person in hiring, termination, or any term or condition of employment” based on off-site, off duty use of cannabis.

Jodi McGinnis Porter, a spokeswoman for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, said the state doesn’t have a policy on off-duty use of alcohol or recreational drugs for its employees.

“Certain state employees in safety-sensitive, transportation, or health care provider classifications are subject to pre-employment and random drug screenings,” she said. “Cannabis is part of the drug test.”

NMSU announces new president – Santa Fe New Mexican, Associated Press, KUNM News

After more than a year, New Mexico State University has a new president. The university’s board of regents announced their pick of Valerio Ferme Thursday.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports Ferme comes to Las Cruces by way of Ohio, where he serves the University of Cincinnati’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

The search for NMSU’s top executive began when former President and Chancellor Dan Arvizu resigned last year. The Associated Press reported at the time that “the embattled chancellor” stepped down amid “a climate of deep distrust and frustration with school leadership.”

The process appeared to be nearing its end back in February, when the New Mexican reports the regents announced a list of finalists for the position. However, they rejected the entire pool the following month.

A new list of candidates was pulled together, including Ferme and then-New Mexico Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero.

Romero resigned from his post late last month in response to an ultimatum from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to either withdraw from the NMSU hiring process or step down from leading the state department.

In a statement, Ferme said he is “ready for this challenge.” He says he plans to travel around the state to learn how NMSU can support residents’ educational growth, maintaining the university’s commitment to diversity.

$70M officially on its way to Ruidoso area to help governments recover from fires, floods – By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico 

A state agency has awarded $70 million in zero-interest loans to local governments in and around Ruidoso, cutting checks that the New Mexico Legislature authorized during a special legislative session in July.

The loans are to help public entities like the Village of Ruidoso stay afloat as they pay millions of dollars to rebuild from a natural disaster that began with the South Fork and Salt fires. The fires began in mid-June, and destruction continues today with flash floods.

According to a news release Wednesday from the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration, $36 million is going to Lincoln County to repair road and bridge damages in the Cedar Creek and Gavilan Canyon areas.

The state will also give $44 million to the Village of Ruidoso for road and bridge repairs in the Upper Canyon area.

Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford said $22 million had already been deposited in the village’s bank account on Tuesday morning. He was concerned it would take three more months or longer to see the money, so he was pleased that it came so quickly.

“It came at a great time,” he said.

The bills for Ruidoso Village are piling up, the mayor said, as it works to dig out and prevent future damage floods.

Ruidoso Village has two contracts worth $70 million for watershed restoration and infrastructure repair, Crawford said, and expenses keep accruing. A recent estimate he saw of costs for the village alone was $81 million, though calculations are ongoing and “numbers are being compiled constantly,” he said.

The South Fork and Salt fires burned about 25,000 acres and destroyed or badly damaged more than 1,100 homes, including about 230 lost in post-fire flooding.

The disaster loans were included in a lone piece of legislation New Mexico lawmakers passed during a special session in mid-July. The loans were granted to get money quickly to disaster-stricken areas to cover expenses while they wait for reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance program.

State lawmakers passed a similar measure following the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in April 2022.It took more than a year, in some cases, for local governments like Mora County to receive the loan funds after that fire.

This time around, it took less than two months. Awards for loans were announced 50 days between when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the bill in late July to Wednesday.

“(Department of Finance and Administration) got this money out the door so it can be put to use as the community rebuilds and recovers from the fires,” secretary Wayne Propst said in a news release. “We treated this with the utmost urgency and completed the process as quickly as possible.

In addition to the $70 million in loans, lawmakers included $30 million in grants for agencies and governments involved in the recovery, including $10 million apiece for the Mescalero Apache Reservation, the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

Governor’s cabinet hosts 2-day resource event in the Ruidoso area – By Nash Jones, KUNM News 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s cabinet will be in the Ruidoso area Friday and Saturday, Sept. 20 and 21, offering assistance and information to disaster victims.

The community events are part of the executive branch’s Cabinet in Your Community series, which the Governor’s Office says are meant to improve how it serves constituents and educate the public about available resources.

Held in a community devastated by this summer’s Salt and South Fork fires, and the flash flooding that has followed, this fifth stop on the tour will focus on disaster recovery.

According to the announcement, the events will offer information on accessing health and unemployment benefits, as well as finding work. The cabinet will also provide immediate resource like free food, books and backpacks.

The state Environment Department announced Thursday that it will offer well water testing both days. The agency is asking attendees to properly collect water samples and bring them to the department’s booth.

The event begins Friday at 3 p.m. at the Inn of Mountain Gods in Mescalero. A town hall is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. On Saturday, the state agencies will set up in the Ruidoso High School Cafeteria beginning at 11 a.m. Another town hall is set for 1 p.m. that day

Bracing for another warmer, drier winter in New Mexico – By Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico

While monsoons returned to New Mexico this summer and alleviated some of the state’s acute drought concerns, areas hit by wildfire faced dangerous debris flows, and other places lost out on needed rain.

“Monsoons are a mixed blessing,” said Andrew Mangham, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque. “They are a very important part of our hydrology in the state, helping with our drought conditions and our crop conditions. But they come with some struggles, flooding in areas.”

New Mexico’s monsoons are always difficult to predict. This year, monsoon rains were pretty active across much of the state, including the Four Corners region and portions of Albuquerque. More rain meant severe flooding in the Hermit Peak/Calf Canyon and South Fork and Salt fire burn scars, which caused evacuations and damage.

One particularly fierce storm dropped five to six inches of rain in three hours, sending water and a slurry of soil and ash barreling down Highway 70. The debris, remnants of destruction from the South Fork and Salt fires, swept up trucks and dumpsters in a bout of flash flooding.

One of the fingerprints of climate change is the hotter air boosting storms, delivering high amounts of rain, said Mangham, a development that’s been visible in New Mexico the last 30 years.

“We’re seeing fewer storms, but when they do manifest, they’re much more intense, and that is exactly what you don’t want over burn scars,” he said.

On the other side of the mountains, in the area around Cloudcroft, rainfall accumulation is nine inches below its average, according to Anthony Brown, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service El Paso office in Santa Teresa.

Brown said this area has only received seven inches of rain since June.

More than 40% of the state was in extreme drought earlier this year, and after the rains, only 3% of the state remains in that dire condition. This includes portions of the bootheel and the southeastern plains in Otero and Eddy counties.

Much of the southern third of New Mexico remains in severe drought conditions, receiving less rain over the summer.

But while it didn’t rain, the moisture in the air trapped more heat, and raised the temperatures of the coldest parts of the mornings.

The summer in New Mexico may have felt cooler than last year’s string of triple-digit days and ‘nonsoon’ weather, but 2024’s nights were measurably hotter.

In fact, those sweltering nights bumped this summer to Las Cruces’ hottest on record, according to the National Weather Service.

Hotter nights pose health risks, exacerbating underlying heart conditions or diabetes, and worsen people’s sleep and keeps energy use up to use air conditioning at night.

“It compounds to the heat stress that people feel, because there’s just no relief at night,” Brown said.

Eyes will be on any drought areas, as forecasters expect a drier and warmer winter for New Mexico with a La Niña atmospheric pattern developing in the Pacific Ocean.

That atmospheric pattern can bring warmer temperatures, but also increases the risk of extreme cold, building a ridge of pressure that can push air from Northern Alaska and Sibera into the lower 48 states.

“The thing about La Nina is, even though, on average, our temperatures tend to be warmer than normal, we’re more likely to get cold snaps – those arctic air masses coming down,” Brown said.

But typically, the winters have less snow and rain. If the forecast holds true, drier landscapes and soils may grow thirstier over the fall and winter, Mangham said.

“Having a warm, dry winter sets the stage for a really problematic expansion of drought conditions in the spring,” Mangham said. “If we don’t get the good runoff through the area that doesn’t wet the soils, it doesn’t wet the fine fuels, it doesn’t recharge our aquifers and our reservoirs at all, then we’re in pretty rough shape when we get to our very dry spring season.”

NMED releases draft feasibility study for controversial Strategic Water Supply – By Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report 

The New Mexico Environment Department released a draft feasibility study for a controversial water proposal on Tuesday.

The study looks at using treated brackish and produced water, which is a byproduct of oil and gas extraction, for industrial purposes in an effort to reduce demands on freshwater supplies. That proposal is known as the Strategic Water Supply. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced plans to pursue this effort last year.

Climate change is reducing the amount of water available in the state and officials estimate there will be 25 percent less water available in rivers and aquifers by 2072. At the same time, demand for that water is increasing, particularly in the San Juan Basin region and the Middle Rio Grande area.

Meanwhile, there are untapped reserves of brackish underground water as well as wastewater from the oil and gas industry. The state officials hope these can help reduce demands on freshwater resources, though they say adequate regulatory controls are needed to protect both environment and human health.

Critics point to the expensive nature of desalination as well as various unknowns, including questions about how much brackish water is actually present in the aquifers and whether produced water can safely be treated for beneficial use.

According to the draft study, some of the important factors to consider when weighing treatment projects include location, water source, labor force, end users and infrastructure.

The draft study also states that more information is needed about the chemical composition of produced water in New Mexico. It also states that desalination, which is needed for both brackish and produced water treatment, is an energy-intensive process and that support for desalination projects should “be considered within the context of the State’s decarbonization goals.”

When looking at brackish water, the draft study states that there may be three basins in New Mexico where the saline aquifers could provide an alternative water supply. Those include the Española Basin near Santa Fe, the Mesilla Basin south of Las Cruces and the Albuquerque Basin.

“Though there are data that suggest areas that may be most promising for developing brackish water resources…full characterization of these resources at the localized level is needed to site the well and understand the treatment processes required to treat the brackish water to the desired water quality of the end user,” the study states.

Some of the concerns the study highlights around use of brackish water include land subsidence, saltwater intrusion into freshwater aquifers, decreased surface water flows, energy demands and disposal of residual constituents.

The draft study also looks at potential end uses for the treated water including green hydrogen production, data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, solar panel manufacturing, electric vehicle manufacturing, pumped hydro energy storage and cement or concrete production.

In terms of costs, produced water projects in the San Juan Basin could cost between $13 million and $191 million and, in the Permian Basin, those costs could be between $38 million and $667 million. Brackish water projects could cost between $3 million and $107 million.