New Mexico became the first state in the nation to ban civil forfeiture in 2015, ending a practice known as “policing for profit” — seizing and selling the property of people who had been accused of a crime but not convicted.
The first year of the law saw robust compliance from most of the three dozen agencies required to report data accounting for any seized goods and cash. But reporting dropped sharply after that.
A decade later, the most recent reports to the New Mexico Department of Public Safety consist of a blank page.
Whether agencies have completely stopped seizing cash, cars and other property from suspects during criminal investigations — a controversial practice that critics call unconstitutional and supporters say provides critical funding for police operations — or whether they just aren’t reporting seizures isn’t entirely clear. The annual reports the Department of Public Safety publishes each spring haven’t reflected a single seizure since 2018.
However, the State Treasurer’s Office received about $209,000 in forfeited assets from law enforcement agencies between 2019 and 2024.
One fatal flaw of the law — which received bipartisan support in the Legislature but faced opposition from law enforcement — is that it lacks teeth.
Another issue: There were no allocations to ensure compliance.
“It came to the Treasurer’s Office unfunded with no policy guide, and I have no way to enforce it,” then State Treasurer Tim Eichenberg told The New Mexican in 2018.
The law still lacked enforcement provisions and remained unfunded when current State Treasurer Laura Montoya took office in 2023. But Montoya is taking steps to change that.
Safety concerns
Under the decade-old forfeiture law, agencies are directed to turn over seized items and money to the State Treasurer’s Office. After a conviction in a criminal case, the office is tasked with selling seized property at an auction and depositing the proceeds — plus any cash seized — in the state general fund.
The law also requires all law enforcement agencies to file annual reports accounting for seized goods with the Department of Public Safety, which is required to publish aggregate reports by April 1 of each year.
The State Treasurer’s Office couldn’t provide details last week about which law enforcement agencies have submitted seized money in recent years because the employee responsible for collecting the information was out of the office, spokesperson Bushra Elfarissi wrote in an email.
Montoya hopes to secure funding for an employee to oversee the administration of forfeited assets and pay for a secure storage facility to hold valuables, Elfarissi added.
The office included program funds in its 2024 spending plan, noting the agency had deposited $80,000 of forfeited money into the state’s general fund in 2023.
“The program requires funding so STO can continue to protect people’s constitutional rights, deter criminal activity by reducing its economic incentives, decrease pecuniary loss from criminal activity, and help protect against wrongful forfeiture,” the office argued.
But the request was denied, Elfarissi wrote in an email last week.
“At present,” she added, “there is no budget allocated for a secure facility to store forfeited items, which raises serious safety and accountability concerns, especially given the nature of potential items such as firearms, vehicles, or valuables.”
The office’s chief financial officer is working to add funds for a forfeiture employee and secure storage facility in its budget request for fiscal year 2027, Elfarissi wrote. “The other recommendation is to request a legislative study to assess what resources are needed to fully meet our responsibilities under the statute.”
SFPD: Cost for reporting
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office said it stopped filing the annual forfeiture reports because it stopped the practice of seizing cash and goods.
“The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office changed practices in 2015 to comply with House Bill 560 which was signed into law by then Governor Susana Martinez,” sheriff’s office spokesperson Denise Womack Avila wrote in an email.
“During Sheriff Adan Mendoza’s term (2019 to present), there have not been any asset/property seizures,” she added.
The Santa Fe Police Department did the same, according to Deputy Chief Ben Valdez.
Complying with the law has come at a cost for the department, he added.
“When the change to the asset forfeiture law was signed ... our department no longer utilized asset forfeiture under the New Mexico law to disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations, including drug trafficking and human trafficking organizations,” Valdez wrote.
In addition, asset sharing with federal law enforcement agencies ceased, Valdez wrote, so the local agency no longer gets a share of proceeds when it works with federal agents.
“The federal law enforcement agencies have separate authority and continue to utilize asset forfeiture to disrupt and dismantle criminal organizations,” he wrote. “Their forfeitures did not stop when the state law changed.”
Previously, he wrote, his department would receive a percentage of an asset forfeiture, “which was evaluated based on the level of participation and contribution to the case.”
The supplemental funding the department received from asset sharing in joint cases with federal agencies varied, “but could range from $20k to several hundred thousand dollars or more per year,” Valdez wrote.
“This would provide supplemental funding for operational and overtime expenses for investigating trafficking organizations, training, and equipment,” he added.
The city of Santa Fe in 2018 discontinued its own DWI forfeiture program — under which vehicles seized as part of drunken-driving cases were sold at auction — after the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled a similar program run by the city of Albuquerque was unlawful.
The program had generated about $500,000 and provided money for its own operations, including salaries for two full-time employees, according to Valdez.
“The funding was used for education material for the community, classes for DWI offenders and other operating costs,” he wrote.
When the program was suspended, a balance of about $400,000 was transferred to the city’s Community Services Department, Valdez added.
Former state Rep. Zachary Cook, R-Ruidoso — a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who sponsored HB 560 — said Friday he was angry but not surprised law enforcement agencies still aren’t filing annual reports more than a decade after the bill was passed.
Despite its lack of popularity with law enforcement, Cook said the purpose of the law was a “not a defund the police” measure but a “government accountability” measure.
“I heard some awful stories of people getting essentially robbed by the police that were innocent, and the police stole their money, and then they have to spend tons of money hiring a lawyer to get it back,” he said.
