Staffing problems stall federal investigations of missing and killed Native people - By Sarah Raza and Savannah Peters, Associated Press
Peter Martin went missing two years ago from the Fond Du Lac reservation in Minnesota. His family hasn't stopped looking, but they say the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation into Martin's disappearance has stalled since the agent assigned to the case left the role in early 2025.
"They've never had a person take his space for this region and yeah, we haven't heard from them since," said family friend Kayla Jackson.
The bureau's Missing and Murdered Unit was created in 2021 to address the crisis of violence against Native Americans and put new resources toward solving cold cases. But a recent federal audit by the Interior Department's internal watchdog found staffing issues have plagued the unit since its formation during President Joe Biden's administration, creating a backlog of cases and leaving families without required victim services.
Federal spending on the initiative grew from $12 to $17 million between 2021 and 2024. During the same period, the audit found that 39% of money for the Missing and Murdered Unit was redirected toward other Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement costs, including upgrading vehicles. Nearly half the unit's posts remained unfilled as of last year, even as the bureau overall has lost a third of its workforce due to staffing cuts under President Donald Trump.
The bureau says it has adopted many of the report's recommendations, from streamlining its case referral pipeline to training staff on victim services requirements. But federal auditors say weaknesses in its hiring process remain. And some families are still in the dark about their loved ones' cases.
"It is nothing but heartbreaking just to see how inadequate the response has already been for so many of these situations," said David Adams, an Albuquerque-based attorney, former federal prosecutor and member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
Hundreds of cases languished for years
The Missing and Murdered Unit had 83 open cases and nearly 400 pending referrals as of November 2024, according to the audit released Sept. 9 by Interior's Office of Inspector General. The unit did not have a timeframe for assessing referrals.
The audit also found agents had unmanageable caseloads, with some assigned administrative duties, like conducting research on referrals, on top of their active investigations.
Relatives of Kaysera Stops Pretty Places were hopeful when, in 2022, a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent was assigned to her still-unsolved case. Stops Pretty Places had just turned 18 when her body was found in a town bordering the Crow Reservation in 2019.
Her aunt, Grace Bulltail, said the agent was difficult to reach and provided few updates. Last year, Bulltail learned the agent never had full access to the files of local investigators before the agent was reassigned to other duties.
The Associated Press emailed bureau officials seeking comment about the case.
Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, said delays and dysfunction among federal investigators are compounding families' grief.
"These are families who have often experienced institutional failure already," she said. "A system designed as a response to that history cannot ask families to keep waiting."
Victims' families fell through the cracks
In 8 of 13 cases reviewed by the inspector general's office, the assigned agent did not contact bureau staff who specialize in helping victims' families. One staff member said they referred families to outside programs because the unit had only two victim specialists nationwide.
Martin was 31 years old when he was reported missing after a welfare check on the Fond Du Lac reservation in 2024. Relatives described him as an outgoing man who played sports with kids and took his nieces and nephews out trick-or-treating . Family members said they get periodic updates from the Fond Du Lac Police Department, but were never connected to BIA victim specialists.
The BIA website does not list a case agent in Martin's case. The AP asked bureau officials for comment.
Federal efforts on missing and murdered cases
The Trump administration says it has been ramping up efforts to address high rates of violence against Native people. Last month, the FBI announced it would set a minimum reward of $25,000 for public information in dozens of cold cases on tribal land.
Bureau of Indian Affairs officials said in a statement they have taken steps under President Donald Trump to improve case processing and make sure families get support. They said most of the recommendations from the audit had been acted upon.
"The deficiencies identified in the OIG audit reflect operations under the previous administration that were inconsistent with the objectives outlined in Operation Lady Justice," the statement said, referring to a presidential task force established by the first Trump administration in 2019 to address the crisis of missing and killed Indigenous persons.
In February, the Missing and Murdered Unit assisted in recovering and identifying two sets of remains on the Chickasaw Nation, closing a missing persons case that had run cold more than a decade before.
Deer said new federal and state task forces and specialized law enforcement initiatives have increased public awareness of the crisis.
"The government has stepped up in some ways to appropriate resources, but implementation matters," she said.
Meanwhile tribal police departments, which are often the first to respond to cases involving Native people, remain under-resourced with limited capacity to investigate complex crimes, she said.
"What I always come back to is whether or not this money could be better utilized by tribes themselves," Deer said.
Deb Haaland's big cash advantage over Gregg Hull grows in New Mexico's gubernatorial race - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
Deb Haaland’s cash train is showing no signs of slowing down with less than two months before Election Day in New Mexico’s open race for governor.
The Democratic nominee reported this week having raised more than $3.4 million during a two-month-plus time period that began in late June and ended last week.
That fundraising haul means the former U.S. Interior secretary has raised an unprecedented $17.3 million since launching her campaign in February 2025 — and has spent roughly $13.9 million of that amount so far.
Her Republican general election opponent, Gregg Hull, has struggled to keep up with Haaland’s prolific fundraising.
The GOP nominee reported having received more than $943,000 in contributions during the recent reporting period, which came after he won a three-way Republican primary race.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
UNM police open first campus station – Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
After decades of operating out of a dorm building, the University of New Mexico Police Department now has its own station.
University officials hope the $16.3 million building, which opened Tuesday on Greek Row near University and Mesa Vista NE, will increase response times to campus crimes.
For years, UNMPD was based out of Hokona Hall, student housing on UNM’s central campus, until the police force outgrew the building, said UNM Police Chief Joseph Silva.
The two-story, 16,142 square-foot building — equipped with a dispatch center, intake and holding facilities and a community meeting area — was funded via $9 million in bonds and the rest from the university, school officials said.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
Google announces it is ‘exploring’ a potential data center in rural New Mexico county - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
In a brief blog post with few details published on Monday, Google announced it is “exploring” a potential data center in Lea County, New Mexico.
The tech giant’s announcement did not say what type of data center it hopes to build in Lea County, which includes the oil-rich Permian Basin, or when it might present a detailed proposal to the local Board of County Commissioners. Instead, it stated a goal “to be transparent and start our conversation with the community early” while “many details remain outstanding.”
In an email to Source NM, a Google spokesperson did not answer detailed questions — such as whether the company has a specific location in mind or whether the data center would generate its own power — and wrote that company leaders “look forward to working with elected officials and community leaders to make sure any Google project benefits local residents.”
Google has set up a website for the project, leacountydatacenter.com, which says that company leaders are in talks with local officials to determine “if Lea County is the right fit for a long-term partnership.”
Upon visiting, the website displays a pop-up questionnaire that asks visitors to select their top two priorities for the development from a list of choices that includes: economic opportunities, parks and green spaces, education and schools, water stewardship, workforce incentives and first responders and emergency services.
The website says water use during construction will average more than 900,000 gallons daily and that its energy source is “likely to be a mix” of solar, wind, batteries and a “moderate amount of firming, gas-powered resources.”
It also says the company expects to create “hundreds of long-term, operational jobs initially” and thousands of construction jobs.
Tyson Pierce, the chair of the Lea County Board of County Commissioners, told Source NM he also did not have many details regarding the site.
He said he did not know if Google was interested in building a hyperscale data center, a term that refers to massive developments that generally service a tech company’s artificial intelligence platforms, or a smaller cloud computing data center.
Several state lawmakers plan to propose a statewide data center moratorium in the upcoming legislative session. Several New Mexico counties, from Santa Fe to Sierra, have adopted moratoria of their own this year as data center developers pitch massive developments across the state.
Pierce said he and his commission colleagues have long been aware that controversy often follows data centers proposals, especially in regions like his that deal with environmental concerns such as water insecurity. So, in February, the commission unanimously adopted a resolution that established specific guidelines for data center developments in the area.
The guidelines state that data centers on a public utility grid in the area cannot raise residents’ or business’ rates; that data center operators must publish annual water use reports; and that the development’s water needs must include separate amounts for cooling, landscaping, on-site power generation, plumbing and “any other uses.”
The resolution also prohibited the use of evaporative cooling.
“I’ve lived here my entire life, so you understand the use of water and where we’re at right now…the water table at my house has dropped considerably,” Pierce said by phone on Tuesday. “We as a commission are going to do everything in our power…to come out on top, no matter what.”
Uranium mines pose first test for state-recognized Mount Taylor cultural landscape in New Mexico - By Bella Davis, New Mexico In Depth
For Native communities in northwest New Mexico's Grants mineral belt, one of the central concerns with the idea of resumed uranium mining is the potential harm to Mount Taylor. That concern led the state to designate Mount Taylor as a traditional cultural property nearly two decades ago. But as uranium mining companies hoping to operate within the area move through the state permitting process, state regulators still can't say what role the designation will play in their decisions.
Mount Taylor is sacred to the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, and the pueblos of Laguna, Acoma and Zuni.
"We have, and other peoples have, a really millennia-long relationship with the mountain," June Lorenzo (Laguna/Diné) told the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee during a meeting in the Laguna Pueblo village of Paguate on Friday. "It's part of our vocabulary. It features largely in our creation stories."
It's not only the mountain that's important, but also the surrounding landscape, said Lorenzo, a former tribal court judge who's done academic research and advocacy work on legacy uranium issues.
The five tribes undertook a legal fight in the late 2000s in an effort to protect Mount Taylor from extraction, resulting in the state designation of 400,000 acres as a traditional cultural property. At the time, Lorenzo said, the tribes were accused of using the process to try to acquire the land, but that's a misunderstanding of their relationships with Mount Taylor. Besides, the designation didn't actually transfer ownership to them.
"None of us want to own—we will never own the mountain," she said. "It's like a relative."
The designation is meant to give tribes a stronger voice in decisions about mining and other development, but because New Mexico hasn't permitted a uranium mine since the designation took effect, it's never been tested.
Two proposed underground uranium mines — Roca Honda and La Jara Mesa — would fall within the state-designated acreage.
Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, asked state regulators whether they can deny a permit based on concerns about cultural sites.
"I don't have an answer to that question. We have yet to get to that stage of how impacts to the (traditional cultural property) will be mitigated," said David "D.J." Ennis, program manager of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department's Mining Act Reclamation Program.
Ennis said the department is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to evaluate the issue.
Energy Fuels, the top producer of uranium in the U.S., proposes having dewatering well pads used to remove groundwater from the mine and ventilation shafts on about 30 acres of the designated land.
In response to tribal input, the company revised previous iterations of its plan to remove "significant disturbance" from the area, including a mine shaft, said Nick Martin, environmental manager at Energy Fuels.
Steinborn seemed to be unconvinced.
"We have tremendous concern for cultural sites, not to mention the environmental issues and the worker safety issues," he told Martin and two other Energy Fuels representatives.
How do they plan to mitigate impacts to the area, the state senator asked.
Martin mentioned independent engagement with tribes and a review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider how projects they carry out or permit will affect historic properties.
Sen. Angel Charley (Laguna/Zuni/Diné), a Democrat who grew up in Laguna Pueblo and lives in nearby Acoma Pueblo, pushed back on that, noting the Trump administration is trying to weaken Section 106.
That includes a proposal to make tribal consultation no longer required.
As Friday's meeting wrapped up, New Mexico In Depth asked Misael Cabrera, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at Energy Fuels, to respond to the concern Charley — who has called for a moratorium on uranium mining — raised about Section 106.
"Sometimes politicians deregulate, other times politicians re-regulate," Cabrera said. "Irrespective of what those folks do, we want to make sure that we're being good neighbors for the communities that we're in. Why? Because it makes business sense. If the people around you are always fighting you, it makes things harder."
He pointed to an agreement Energy Fuels and the Navajo Nation signed in January 2025 that allows the company to transport uranium ore through Navajo lands. In exchange, the company agreed to more protections than what's legally required and to haul away up to 10,000 tons of waste from abandoned uranium mines spread across the Navajo Nation, according to a press release.
The agreement came after the Navajo Nation and the Havasupai Tribe condemned Energy Fuels in 2024 for moving ore across their lands without their permission.
"One of the things that folks don't understand when I say middle ground, some might ask, 'Well, why can't you just leave? Why can't you just leave that place alone?' It's because these projects, they actually don't start making money until like year five, after you've started producing," Cabrera said. "And until then, we actually work on borrowed money. We borrow money from shareholders. … So we've got to analyze all of that in our decisions."
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This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
