New Mexico National Guard troops could soon be deployed to Española and Rio Arriba County to address a surge in crime and public safety concerns.
Española Police Chief Mizel Garcia told members of the Courts, Corrections, and Justice Committee of the New Mexico Legislature that his department and the New Mexico National Guard have been in conversations about how the Guard could be utilized to assist police in Española and the surrounding areas.
“During our last meeting with the governor’s office, we discussed establishing the parameters and the criteria for how we’re going to bring in the National Guard at Española,” Garcia said. He added that they will send National Guard personnel to Española sometime soon. Neither the police chief nor Major Gen. Miguel Aguilar, the Adjunct General of the New Mexico National Guard, who also spoke at the meeting, provided specifics about how many troops would be sent.
Aguilar confirmed troops had not yet been deployed to Española, but there have been discussions with the different jurisdictions, including nearby tribal communities, about how troops could be used.
“To this day, we’re not there yet. I don’t think that we necessarily intended to do that right away,” he said.
In August, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency in Española, Rio Arriba County and the nearby Santa Clara and Ohkay Owingeh pueblos, due to rising crime and drug overdoses that have overwhelmed local officials.
The executive order authorized the state to allocate up to $750,000 to cover the cost of services and resources needed to address the emergency. It also directed the National Guard troops to provide military support to civil authorities to assist with the response to the declared emergency.
Garcia said his department has received the first disbursement of emergency funds authorized under the order, of which $75,000 was used for overtime pay for Española Police Department personnel, $40,000 for overtime pay for dispatchers and another $40,000 to buy a piece of equipment used to test for the presence of narcotics.
In his remarks, Garcia said that his department of 30 officers has faced staffing shortages and that only about five of his officers live within the city of Española. He added that much of what is at the core of the problems in Española and surrounding areas is due to generational drug use.
“We consistently have led the state in overdose death rates. We are [at the] top of the nation because it’s generational. It makes it that much more difficult for us to deal with,” he said.
Ahead of the deployment, Garcia said there is a sense of unease among some about the National Guard coming into those jurisdictions.
“Because of the cultural background that we have in Española, there’s always been a fear of the National Guard coming in,” he said. To remedy that, Garcia said that he and his department have been attending community meetings and informing the public that when guard personnel come to the area, they will be working alongside police and the community.
At Monday’s meeting, Aguilar also gave an update to lawmakers about the ongoing operations in Albuquerque, as part of Operation Zia Shield. Lujan Grisham signed an executive order in April to deploy National Guard troops to Albuquerque to alleviate pressure on Albuquerque Police as they deal with an uptick in juvenile crime and high fentanyl use. According to the order, local officials and law enforcement requested the deployment.
In his presentation, Aguilar said that about 140 guard troops have been deployed to Albuquerque since May. He noted that none of them are commissioned law enforcement officers, that they lack the authority to make arrests and that they do not wear military uniforms.
“The intent of the mission is to take Albuquerque Police Department officers that are doing roles either for an hour or two at a time or on a daily basis, that take them away from being able to answer calls for service, and replace them with a National Guardsman so that…the police department can respond to either more calls to service faster or be more proactive in certain areas,” Aguilar said.
Duties troops are performing include monitoring security cameras, license plate readers and drones at the Albuquerque Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center. They also provide security at crime and crash scenes, as well as for traffic control and large-scale events.
Aguilar said some troops are patrolling the streets in marked vehicles and contacting police when they see criminal activity.
“So it just gets another set of eyeballs out on the streets,” he said.
Critics have expressed concern about the increasing use of the National Guard in policing.
Naureen Shah, director of governmental affairs, Equity Division for the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke at the meeting. She said that historically, the deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes has been reserved for rare and extraordinary circumstances.
However, she said the Trump administration has departed from that norm with its use of the National Guard in the District of Columbia and Los Angeles, and threats to deploy those forces to other jurisdictions to address crime. She accused Trump of using the military not to maintain order but as a weapon against his critics. Governors, she argued, are normalizing those deployments.
“To put it another way, that if the Trump administration is trying to tell a story that it’s okay for the military to be permanently on the streets of Washington, DC and New Orleans and Memphis and Los Angeles, that what happens in New Mexico with the deployment of the State National Guard may actually enable the president to do that, and when he does, it is not for the purpose simply of supplementing criminal legal enforcement and improving public safety,” she said.