Advocates and families who have lost relatives to a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people march in Albuquerque on May 5, 2025. One poster calls for justice for Emily Pike, a 14-year-old San Carlos Apache girl who was missing for several weeks before being found murdered in Arizona earlier this year. (Bella Davis/New Mexico In Depth)
A new alert system meant to help find Native people who go missing in New Mexico went into effect last Tuesday, but a key detail remains unsettled: How will police determine who’s eligible for an alert?
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Turquoise Alert system into law in April. At least five other states — Arizona, California, Colorado, North Dakota and Washington — have created similar notifications as part of an effort to address a crisis of Native people going missing and being killed at disproportionate rates. According to an FBI list, 199 Native people are missing from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation…