Joseph Romero is running to give HD-14 a representative who fights for safer streets, safer schools, and safer neighborhoods. Every family in our district deserves to feel secure at home, at work, and on the way to school. Joseph’s plan gets tough on violent crime while investing in the prevention, treatment, and accountability that build lasting safety.

Back our officers, hold the bad ones accountable. Joseph will support the creation of a statewide Office of Community Safety that puts trained social workers and behavioral health clinicians on the front line of mental health calls so officers can focus their time on violent crime. He’ll make sure violent offenders stay locked up and push courts to move their cases faster so victims aren’t left waiting years for justice. Joseph will bar officers who commit serious misconduct from ever wearing a badge again and keep New Mexico’s body camera rules strong so every interaction stays transparent. He’ll fully fund public defender offices with the recruitment dollars, housing help, loan forgiveness, and support staff they need to guarantee every New Mexican a fair defense. And he’ll go after sexual assault, domestic violence, and crimes against children by expanding forensic exam services, clearing the rape kit backlog once and for all, growing the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and closing the business loopholes that let human traffickers hide in plain sight.

Keep HD-14 kids on the right path. Joseph will give kids a real off-ramp from violence with a Youth Opportunity and Safety Initiative built around school attendance, job pathways, and behavioral health access. He’ll pull the patchwork of juvenile programs under one roof and set a single statewide diversion standard so justice doesn’t depend on a kid’s zip code. Joseph will fill the after-school hours with mentorship, paid internships, and reliable transportation so kids have somewhere to be and something meaningful to do, and he’ll bring local businesses and nonprofits to the table to wrap struggling kids in support before they land in the system. He’ll push back on the damage social media does to young minds, keep phones out of classrooms, flag juvenile posts that show illegal firearms so families get help before tragedy strikes, and grow the community school model so real behavioral health services live inside every school.

Fix our courts. HD-14 families deserve a justice system that actually works. Joseph will add court capacity so judges can prioritize violent crime first, convene a task force to study how other states run specialized dockets, and break the logjam in our district courts with real funding and modern data systems that finally talk to each other. He’ll put competency evaluations and forensic services under one roof so nobody sits in jail for months waiting on a basic assessment, and he’ll give district attorney screening units the resources to sort cases correctly from day one while building a statewide digital evidence platform so nothing slips through the cracks.

Treat addiction and end homelessness. Two-thirds of people incarcerated in New Mexico struggle with substance use, and Joseph knows real safety means meeting addiction and mental illness with treatment and recovery, not just a jail cell. He’ll hit the fentanyl crisis head-on with expanded addiction services and a treatment-first approach, invest in prevention by growing the Home Visiting Program and catching substance-use problems at the school level, and end chronic homelessness with a Housing First model that proves people recover faster when they have a roof over their head. Joseph will open more outpatient clinics and send mobile clinics into rural New Mexico, build out the 988 crisis line with mobile crisis teams in every corner of the state including Tribal communities, and fund violence interruption programs that stop shootings before they happen. He’ll create real pathways to behavioral health care that don’t require getting arrested first, hold insurance companies to their word on mental

health coverage, and train, credential, and pay back the student loans of the counselors and clinicians New Mexico desperately needs. Joseph will give Tribal communities full access to the Behavioral Health Trust Fund and Medicaid reimbursement for traditional healing, grow treatment courts and reentry programs that help non-violent offenders rebuild their lives, put every dollar of opioid settlement money where it belongs into treatment and recovery, get free naloxone into community health workers’ hands in the care deserts where EMS response times are longest, and send peer supporters and clinicians to people right after an overdose when they’re most ready to accept help.

Overhaul CYFD. Every time a New Mexico child slips through the cracks, the whole state fails. Joseph will bring in a CYFD cabinet secretary with the experience and the spine to rebuild the agency from the inside out, and stop the caseworker exodus by raising wages, lowering caseloads, and giving frontline staff the mental health support they need to do one of the toughest jobs in state government. He’ll grow children’s court capacity so kids and families aren’t stuck waiting months for a hearing, recruit more foster families while standardizing how they’re certified, and give the Office of Child Advocate real authority and mandatory data sharing from every agency that touches a child’s case.

Stand up to ICE. HD-14 will not be a staging ground for Trump’s ICE. Joseph will pull the masks off ICE agents so New Mexicans know exactly who is operating in their neighborhoods, force ICE personnel to identify themselves, and make impersonating a federal agent a felony under state law. He’ll create 500-yard buffer zones around schools, daycares, courthouses, state buildings, churches, health clinics, parks, and sacred sites where ICE has no business, cut the cooperation agreements that let ICE commandeer local police for political raids, and block any out-of-state National Guard deployment into New Mexico without the Governor’s explicit permission.

Joseph Romero will show up, do the work, and deliver the public safety HD-14 families deserve