SANTA FE, NM – On April 7th, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed Senate Bill 364, a Democrat-backed law that was put together to solve the state’s rampant crime problem and staffing shortage of police by letting those in the country with no citizenship become cops.
According to the Daily Caller, Senate Bill 364 opens the door for anyone with a federal work permit to serve as a police officer in the state of New Mexico. In 2024 alone, the Biden administration reportedly issued over two million new work permits to non-citizens, many of which were granted through highly debated parole programs with major oversight flaws.
Over the last handful of years, New Mexico has lost many of its officers and seen a spike in crime, something Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story attributes to the anti-police and defund the police movement stemming from the death of George Floyd.
He said, “That’s an objective fact. You look at our application numbers over time, you can look at state police, Albuquerque or even Portland. It has a lot to do with the environment or the climate around policing especially from 2020 on.” Data shows that New Mexico has the highest rate of violent crime and the lowest percentage of violent crimes that are solved.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization that supports stricter immigration laws, says that allowing non-citizens to become police officers is not a reasonable solution to the problems the state is facing. FAIR spokesperson Ira Mehlman said, “It is illogical to place people who are violating our laws in a position of enforcing laws against others.”
Mehlman also pointed out that federal law “prohibit illegal immigrants from possessing firearms, which law enforcement officers must carry.” However, even though non-citizens who become police officers in New Mexico will presumably now be in a position to carry a firearm, Governor Grisham had previously suspended the Second Amendment rights in the state.
In 2023, she issued an executive order banning citizens from carrying guns in Albuquerque. That executive order expired in 2024. One of the main proponents of Senate Bill 364 is that it will address the state’s police shortage. Senator Cindy Niva, one of the bill’s co-sponsors said, “With fewer recruits entering the profession and more officers retiring or leaving for other opportunities, law enforcement agencies have struggled to maintain adequate staffing levels.
SB 364 opens the door for individuals who might otherwise have never considered a career in law enforcement; people who are already working, living and contributing to our communities but were previously excluded from this essential work.” Mehlman said that allowing non-citizens to join the police force presents a host of vetting issues.
She said, “In some cases, it is impossible to do any sort of background check, especially those who come from countries that may be adversarial or hostile to the United States.” According to Chief Story, not having enough police officers leads to the high crime levels the state is seeing.
He said, “They can’t take the time to do traffic enforcement, go around and look for crimes to occur or try to prevent crimes, that needs to happen. We need to have officers and the time to go and make sure that people aren’t committing crimes, decent traffic enforcement, do special enforcements on retail theft to avoid shoplifting. There’s a number of things.”
Mehlman does not agree, saying, “New Mexico’s crime problems are unrelated to the lack of illegal immigrants serving as law enforcement officers. As in other places with high crime rates, they are due to lax enforcement policies and unaddressed social issues. None of those issues would be fixed by allowing illegal immigrants to serve as cops.”
New Mexico’s move follows other Democratic-led states like California, Illinois, and Colorado, where they have similarly allowed non-citizens to join police departments.
