More than nine months after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham intervened in what was deemed a “public safety emergency” in the Española Valley, millions of state dollars have been allocated to law enforcement agencies and increasing numbers of New Mexico National Guard members have been deployed to assist in policing.
The governor, who has signed a dozen emergency orders authorizing $9 million for the region, pointed to what she called “a significant surge in violent crime, drug trafficking and public safety threats that have overwhelmed local resources” in Española and surrounding Rio Arriba County. The first order came after Lujan Grisham had deployed Guard members to Albuquerque.
The emergency state funding for the Española Valley is more than double the annual budget of the Española Police Department, which is about $4.2 million.
About $3.3 million has flowed so far to law enforcement agencies — covering officer overtime pay and new technology like traffic cameras and license plate-reading cameras — and another $3.3 million has been spent keeping scores of National Guard members deployed in the area.
While some law enforcement officials and other local government leaders have touted the effort for its effects in reducing public safety problems — for instance, data shows a 35% drop in drug overdose reports — others have cast it as an expensive Band-Aid on the region’s issues or expressed seeing neither police officers nor National Guard members around town.
Crime statistics from the region also are inconclusive overall when it comes to the effects of the state resources.
National Guard officers assist Española police officers while making as arrest in Española last month.
Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
“People aren’t really saying they feel better, or that it’s a noticeable difference,” said Ben Sandoval, director of the Española YMCA Teen Center. “The conversation is more that we don’t have police officers. There’s a sense of concern that we won’t have the numbers of law enforcement that we need.”
Sandoval said he has seen some Guard members patrolling in their vehicles, particularly along the business corridor of Riverside Drive, but he said he takes regular, late-night drives around town and often sees no officers or Guard members.
Guard in ‘support role’
The New Mexico National Guard deployed about 20 troops to the Española Valley late last year to perform tasks like traffic control, and to help with prisoner transport and patrols. The number of Guard members has increased to 66, spokesperson Hank Minitrez said.
“We remain in a support role to the police department, essentially administrative work behind the scenes, or manning perimeters or checkpoints,” Minitrez said. “That frees up the actual law enforcement officers to actively pursue cases.”
Guard members also have been assigned to help the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office prosecute cases in Rio Arriba County.
Officials from the District Attorney’s Office did not return messages seeking more information about the program.
A spokesperson at the Governor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Española interim police Chief Pablo Montoya said he believes the deployment has been “positive” for the community, and the Guard members’ presence has not gone unnoticed in the city.
“In my opinion, it’s having a positive effect because you have more actual people on the ground, and not every incident needs to be handled by a commissioned officer — you know, not everybody gets arrested, not everybody gets citations,” Montoya said.
He noted, “even if it’s just more command presence — if you have a limited amount of officers on duty that day, and you get some sort of response — having two extra military guys just standing there, even, just makes a difference to kind of create a safer or calmer scene.”
The city was especially lucky, Montoya said, to have Guard members in town in April when a fire broke out in the bosque along the Rio Grande. He noted they were able to help evacuate homes and businesses and direct traffic.
The Guard deployed 23 vehicles during the fire, helping to evacuate more than 1,400 residents and 131 animals while the fire burned about 50 acres, according to information provided by Minitrez. Several structures also burned.
Montoya has been leading the Española Police Department on an interim basis for only a few weeks. The agency experienced a shakeup following the municipal election in March, losing an interim chief, a detective and another senior officer — part of a series of departures.
The department currently has 22 positions filled out of 30, according to numbers provided by Montoya. The eight vacancies, a rate of 27%, is a jump from late last year, when the agency had only three vacancies.
Española City Councilor Sam Ledoux said he believes the National Guard deployment has gone “extremely well.”
He has seen Guard members out and about in the community, he said, and has received fewer complaints about shoplifting since they arrived. He thinks it’s proof, “if you have enough personnel to keep eyes and ears on the ground, that you can really make a difference when it comes to the service.”
“I am concerned, though, that particularly since there was a shift in the administration, we’ve lost some police officers, and that if the National Guard were to pull out anytime soon, our police force would have an adjustment period,” Ledoux said.
“I am a little concerned about that, but the governor has basically said that she plans to keep them as long as we need them,” he added.
What the numbers say
The state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management provided data from the Española Police Department since August 2025, when the governor issued the emergency declaration, showing the agency has made 91 felony arrests and 306 misdemeanor arrests. It has seized 10 guns and about 23 grams of illegal drugs.
The number of outstanding arrest warrants — often an important metric for measuring the efficiency of the criminal justice system or the number of people entangled in it — has remained static in Española over that time.
The city started with 575 warrants in August, and there were 583 as of earlier this month.
Other agencies have provided similar statistics to the Governor’s Office in weekly reports. While some of the participating Indigenous pueblos have reported large numbers of arrests and drug seizures, it isn’t clear how those criminal cases have been resolved because tribal courts have been resistant to provide records to the public.
Officials from Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara Pueblo declined to comment on impacts they are seeing in their communities from the emergency funding and National Guard deployment.
Rio Arriba County Sheriff Lorenzo Aguilar, who is running in the June 2 Democratic primary to retain the position, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
County dispatch data from recent months shows an increase in total calls for service — which includes 911 calls, non-emergency calls and self-dispatched calls by police — from the previous year, according to reports provided by the Española-Rio Arriba E-911 Center.
From January to April, there were about 4% more calls than over the same four months the previous year — before the state of emergency was declared. Much of the increase can be attributed to traffic stops, which increased by about 48%.
The number of calls regarding assaults also increased, and calls for shots fired remained steady. Calls about suspicious or unwanted people dropped.
The 35% decline in overdose calls is the most significant change during the time period.
However, some people have argued the millions of dollars spent on policing would be better used to improve access to drug addiction treatment in the region, which lacks capacity to address a decades-long opioid addiction crisis.
Rio Arriba County has by far the highest death rate from drug overdoses in the state, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The number of monthly overdose deaths in the county more than doubled between 2020 and 2025. In September 2025 — the last month for which the CDC has data — 69 people in the county died from a drug overdose, a rate of more than two deaths every day.
Leadership, partnership
The governor’s deployment of National Guard members to assist law enforcement in Albuquerque and Española — as well as surrounding pueblos and communities — were announced last year amid President Donald Trump’s controversial National Guard deployments to cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., which followed immigration raids and protests in those cities.
Lujan Grisham has rejected comparisons to Trump’s use of Guard members, noting local officials in Albuquerque and Española welcomed the National Guard’s assistance, calling it “cooperation not occupation.”
The Albuquerque operation was called off in December.
Lujan Grisham said during a news conference in March the deployment in Albuquerque was not as “successful” as the one in the Española Valley, perhaps due to “leadership” and “partnership” among agencies.
“That’s not a complaint, but just a statement of fact — for whatever reason, maybe the liability issues, maybe the partnering, maybe the change in elections, it just didn’t come together like this has come together,” she said, speaking outside the Rio Arriba County complex in Española.
Lujan Grisham pointed to a drop in emergency room visits related to drug overdoses as well as a decrease in outstanding felony warrants as indicators the National Guard deployment was working in the Española Valley.
“For other communities in the state and other tribal nations that are interested in marshaling this kind of cooperative effort, we will do everything in our power,” she said.
