Rio Arriba sheriff to deputize Ohkay Owingeh officers, citing multijurisdictional drug crisis

OHKAY OWINGEH — First Lt. Gov. Matthew Martinez says tribal officers here have worked for decades to uproot drug traffickers who see the Pueblo’s location near two highways and outside the reach of non-tribal law enforcement as an ideal place to operate.

But he says a historic memorandum of agreement announced Monday would make it easier for tribal officers and Rio Arriba County deputies to work together, leveling the playing field when it comes to illicit fentanyl trafficking by primarily non-tribal members.

Rio Arriba County Sheriff Lorenzo Aguilar said his office plans to deputize tribal officers through the MOU, which is intended to “strengthen interagency collaboration, enhance public safety, and improve coordinated law enforcement services between the Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Office and Ohkay Owingeh Police Department.”

“Rio Arriba County is in a state of emergency because of opioid overdoses,” Aguilar told the Journal in a phone interview on Monday, referring to an emergency order New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced in August in response to the drug crisis.

The order allocated over $750,000 in funding for Rio Arriba and neighboring tribal public safety agencies. Last fall, the governor also deployed New Mexico National Guardsmen to the streets of Española — a cross-jurisdictional focal point skirting Santa Fe County and lying between the tribal boundaries of Ohkay Owingeh and Pojoaque Pueblos.

Rio Arriba’s proximity to U.S. 285 and N.M. 68 have made the area a historic drug corridor, especially amid the backdrop of the evolving opioid crisis, now headlined by the potent and often deadly variant, fentanyl.

Drug overdose deaths increased 48% in Rio Arriba from 2024 to 2025, according to the New Mexico Department of Health. Presbyterian Española Hospital last year expanded its addiction services to help combat the crisis, but law enforcement continue to struggle to address its root causes.

Martinez said drug trafficking is particularly prevalent on Ohkay Owingeh, which he said has been the site of significant drug seizures in recent weeks, though he reserved further detail for a press conference regarding the MOU set for March 31.

“With these two major corridors running through, we see a lot of challenges regarding arrests, including misdemeanors all the way to felonies, drug busts, related overdoses and violent crime,” he said. “The majority of the stats we have are on non-Natives coming through our tribal boundaries.”

He said Ohkay Owingeh Police Department has eight officers, who are not currently authorized to bring charges against non-tribal members engaged in criminal activity on tribal land. He said non-Natives long ago began to exploit tribal land as a kind of safe haven to do business.

But Martinez called the MOU “a major step” toward “bringing law enforcement together” in a “coordinated effort.”

“This has not been done in the past,” he said, “so this will really formalize that process so that we can work together, because crime has no boundaries and no jurisdictions.”

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.