New Mexico law opens police force to non-citizens

A recent Democratic-backed law in New Mexico seeks to solve the state’s rampant crime problem and shortage of cops by letting foreign nationals become police officers.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on April 7 signed Senate Bill 364, which opens the door for anyone with a federal work permit to serve as a cop. In 2024 alone, the Biden administration issued over two million new work permits to non-citizens — many through hotly debated parole programs with major oversight flaws.

Over the last several years, New Mexico has experienced an exodus of cops and a spike in crime, something Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story attributes to the anti-police sentiment stemming from the George Floyd riots.

“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,” he told the Las Cruces Bulletin.

New Mexico has the highest rate of violent crime in America and the lowest percentage of violent crimes that are solved.

Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization that supports stricter immigration laws, argues that allowing illegal non-citizens to become police officers is not a reasonable solution to these problems.

“It is illogical to place people who are violating our laws in a position of enforcing laws against others,” FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman said in a statement to the DCNF.

Mehlman also pointed out that federal law “prohibits illegal aliens from possessing firearms, which law enforcement officer must carry.”

However, even though non-citizens who become law enforcement officers in New Mexico will presumably now be in a position to carry a firearm, Grisham had previously suspended Second Amendment rights in the state.

In 2023, she issued an executive order banning citizens from carrying guns in Albuquerque that even David Hogg opposed. The executive order expired in 2024.

One of the bill’s main proponents argued it would address the state’s police shortage.

“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,” Sen. Cindy Nava, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said when the legislation was introduced.

However, Mehlman said that allowing non-citizens to join police ranks presents a host of vetting issues: “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.”

The New York Times describes Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, as a place where “people in drug-induced psychosis wander into busy streets and parking lots, oblivious to traffic.” One store alone has had seven murders in the last five years.

Not having enough police officers leads to crime, according to Chief Story.

“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,” Story told a local Fox affiliate.

“New Mexico’s crime problems are unrelated to the lack of illegal aliens serving as law enforcement officers,” Mehlman told the DCNF. “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 aliens to service as cops.”

New Mexico’s move follows other left wing strongholds like California, Illinois, and Colorado, where state Democrats have similarly allowed non-citizens to join law enforcement ranks.

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