Searchlight New Mexico was founded to produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Whoever is in power — at any level of government — the mission remains the same.

On an afternoon in early October, inside a bland, beige office on Albuquerque’s Kirtland Air Force Base, two uniformed ...

Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become ...

Ryan Martinez at the Rio Arriba County Adult Detention Center. Credit: Office of the First Judicial District Attorney. In a deal made on the eve of his criminal trial, 24-year-old Ryan Martinez — a ...

Searchlight New Mexico is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative and public service journalism in the interest of the people of New Mexico. Our mission is to deliver ...

When officers from the Rio Rancho Police Department first approached Patrick Ethridge, he was self-scanning a cart of groceries at a Walmart on Unser Boulevard, the city’s main drag. It was shortly ...

One month ago, Searchlight New Mexico reported on the findings of analytical chemist Michael Ketterer: Acid Canyon, a popular recreation area in Los Alamos, may have the oldest plutonium contamination ...

Bernice Gutierrez was eight days old when a light 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun cracked open the predawn sky. No one in south-central New Mexico knew where it came from, or that the ...

The sun was setting as parents waited for the Christmas Day call from their incarcerated children, unaware of the fraught situation that had broken out hours earlier: a so-called “riot” at New ...

A sensational raid three years ago put an end to his illegal marijuana empire on the Navajo Nation, manned by trafficking victims. But when Benally wanted to grow weed again, New Mexico said yes. On ...