New Mexico Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples task force proposes creating state-level office

New Mexico state lawmakers in the upcoming legislative session may consider a proposal to create a state-level office dedicated to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons.

Members of the New Mexico Department of Justice’s MMIP Task Force testified Thursday in Santa Fe before the interim Indian Affairs Committee, where they said “many members” of the task force have been advocating for a state-level office.

State lawmakers had several questions for the task force members about how such an office would coordinate with other state agencies. The task force members said they have had varying levels of success getting in touch with state agency heads and hope to make more progress in the weeks between Gov.-elect Deb Haaland’s inauguration and the beginning of the legislative session.

“While there has been really strong interest and we want to push this forward, we do recognize the need for additional expertise and guidance to determine how such an office should be structured, what its responsibilities should include,” Birga Alden, a task force member who also works as the chief communications officer of the anti-human trafficking nonprofit New Mexico Dream Center, said at Thursday’s hearing held at the Santa Fe Indian School. “We welcome your input as we continue to develop the proposal.”

Previously, New Mexico had an MMIP task force within the state Indian Affairs Department. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham scrapped the task force in 2023, and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez created one within his New Mexico Department of Justice in early 2024 after the Legislature passed a joint memorial directing him to do so.

Any legislative proposals will come during Haaland’s first term as governor. Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, previously served as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, where she established a Missing and Murdered Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. At the time, she said the unit would coordinate with tribal governments, law enforcement agencies and families of missing people to help address the crisis.

Before her June primary election for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Haaland told Source NM that she would revisit the state Indian Affairs Department’s defunct task force and “be transparent about the issue and bring people to the table and find out what we need.”

State Sen. Shannon Pinto (D-Tohatchi), a Diné woman who chairs the interim Indian Affairs Committee, said that efforts to find missing and murdered Indigenous people often proves difficult because “jurisdiction has always been the conundrum.”

“We shouldn’t be having to do this because our current law and our justice system — it’s for everybody,” she said. “There should be no conundrum on having any kind of action taken for a loved one…but that’s not where we are with this issue.”