FBI’s missing and murdered Indigenous people operation brings new leads to old cases

Earlier this year, a dozen or so suits descended on the deserts of New Mexico’s remote reservations, tribes and pueblos.

Their goal? To close cold cases and backlogs and hand off the accused with enough evidence for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute.

The extra lift, called Operation Not Forgotten by the FBI, has helped the federal government move the needle and close cases nationwide. But it’s not just about cutting down the numbers. Bringing a case to trial means the beginning of the end of a yearslong, or sometimes decadeslong, nightmare for many families.

One of those families’ is that of Zachariah Juwaun Shorty.

Even those who briefly met then 23-year-old Shorty remembered him, whether he counted out their change as a cashier or changed their tire as a technician, his mother, Vangie Randall-Shorty, said.

Shorty was the father of a 3-year-old girl he called his “princess,” was known for his sarcastic sense of humor and released rap music about his struggles with grief and substance use under the online alias Isol8ted.

Five years ago, Shorty left his hotel in Farmington and never came back.

He was found face down on a dirt road in the Navajo Nation with gunshot wounds several days after his family notified police of his disappearance.

Last week, three men were indicted in his death, a feat considering many homicides that occur on reservations don’t make it to trial at all, most often due to lack of evidence.

“Today is a good day,” said Randall-Shorty while dabbing tears from her eyes with a neatly folded napkin.

In seeking justice for her son, Randall-Shorty has found herself at the forefront of a national movement decrying the disproportionate rate of violence against Native Americans.

In 2020, Native Americans had the second-highest rate of being victims of homicide of all racial groups. These high rates of violence paired with a perceived lack of justice for victims have culminated in what activists call the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s Crisis.

The operation

In reaction to the staggering number of unsolved cases, an estimated 4,200, the FBI began surging agents to field offices bordering reservations. This year marked the third deployment of Operation Not Forgotten, which sent 64 agents to 11 field offices from Portland, Oregon, to Jackson, Mississippi. An additional 36 personnel from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Unit were sent as a part of the operation.

The FBI would not disclose how many of those agents were sent to the Albuquerque field office citing “security concerns,” although FBI Special Agent in Charge Justin Garris said there were “under a dozen” working in his office.

Nationally, as a result of the operation, 1,260 people were charged in violent crimes and 1,123 people were arrested. The FBI would not break down the statistics for New Mexico, although five of the six cases highlighted by the bureau in its national news release occurred in New Mexico.

Garris said the success of the operation largely relied on partnerships with other law enforcement agencies and the community. He called the investigation a “collective team effort.”

The investigation

One of those law enforcement agencies was the Farmington Police Department.

Operating out of a squat brick building just 10 minutes from the Navajo Nation’s eastern border, the FPD is often the first point of contact for many of those who go missing in the borderlands.

It was for Randall-Shorty when she reported her son missing after two days of searching with no call, text or sign from her son. One thing she regrets, she said, is not filing the missing persons report sooner.

“If I had known, I would’ve,” she said through tears.

A critical misconception is that a person needs to be missing for 24 hours before you can file a report, said Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe. If you have any concern for a loved one, he said, you should call the police right away because those first hours and days of an investigation are critical.

Beyond those first 72 hours, family members and the police working well together is still crucial for ongoing investigations.

Hebbe admitted that the police could communicate better with grieving families about ongoing investigations, although he said local police are often the law enforcement most embedded in their communities.

Still, there are many things outside of the local officer’s control, including underlying federal law, whether the FBI picks up a case and whether the U.S. attorney decides to prosecute.

Getting public attention on these cases also helps, Hebbe said, as it draws witnesses out of the woodwork.

“We need this in the national consciousness to make it more difficult to look away,” Hebbe said.

Another complication is where someone dies.

Whether someone is killed on or off the reservation changes who investigates their homicide, with Farmington Police handling cases off-the-reservation and the FBI investigating those inside.

In Shorty’s case, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court of New Mexico last week, he and three other men rode together in a car from the Journey Inn in Farmington into the Navajo Nation.

After crossing the border, Austin Begay, 31, allegedly shot Shorty with a semiautomic pistol, leaving his body on a dirt road where it would be discovered four days later. His body was found in Nenahnezad on the Navajo Nation — less than 30 minutes from his hotel.

Begay has been charged with first-degree murder, using a firearm in a crime of violence, concealing a federal felony and issuing false statements. An alleged accomplice, Jaymes Fage, 38, has been charged with aiding and abetting first-degree murder and other charges associated with concealing the crime. A third man, Joshua Watkins, 40, was also charged with concealing a federal felony.

The future

Operation Not Forgotten is a step forward, but not nearly enough to stop the pattern of violence, said Darlene Gomez, a prominent local lawyer who has represented dozens of Native families with missing or murdered loved ones.

Of her 30 pro bono cases over the years — many of which have stretched from years to decades — only five have gone to trial, she said.

One of those cases is the Shorty case, which Gomez worked for three and a half years. Gomez no longer represents the Shorty family, but her voice shook when learning that the case had been picked up by the U.S. attorney.

“To take it to the point of having a federal arrest is a tremendous amount of effort by so many people, and mostly by his mother, who is the driving force of being the voice of Zachariah,” Gomez said.

Though securing a federal indictment in the Shorty case is an achievement, Gomez said, there is still a lot of work to be done with dozens of families still awaiting justice.

Gomez has continually criticized the FBI for a lack of transparency in sharing data from Operation Not Forgotten. Declining to break down national statistics by region is just one example, she said, of a culture of evasiveness that keeps grieving families, journalists and taxpayers in the dark.

Gomez is somewhat cynical of the operation’s success, she said, because there are no statistics to show how many cases were declined, what stage the cases were at when new agents arrived and how many cases have been left unfinished.

“They only release the data that they want to release,” Gomez said.

Gomez also said if the FBI really wants to make a dent in cases, they need to send additional agents for a year, not just 30 to 90 days stints, in order to build trust with the community.

“(Agents) see it as a stepping stone to get to the assignment that they ultimately want to be at,” Gomez said. “We get lots of new agents, lots of agents that have very little experience and then we also have agents who have never even met a Indigenous person, or have never even spent any time on reservations. So, it makes it very difficult.”

The Albuquerque FBI field office declined to comment on Gomez’s criticism of the operation.

Still, Gomez sees the operation as a net positive.

“Justice for Zach is justice for every family out there who has a murdered loved one,” Gomez said. “This arrest equals hope for others.”

For Randall-Shorty, no sentence will mend the pain of losing her son, so young and so violently, but the experience has galvanized her into a force for change. Randall-Shorty, a short but fiercely outspoken woman, has become an advocate for other mothers in her situation.

Her social media is flooded with reposts of missing people and she is often seen at rallies and vigils for those who have disappeared, dressed always in her signature turquoise jewelry.

She is also a member of the New Mexico Department of Justice’s MMIP Task Force, a problem-solving group of lawyers, law enforcement and families affected by the crisis.

Although Randall-Shorty was often frustrated with the investigation’s pace, through it she learned persistence that she will carry with her.

“I was frustrated because they couldn’t give me those answers, which I understand,” Randall-Shorty said. “That did not stop me from knocking on their door and reminding them that I’m still here.”