Arizona Legislature unanimously approves Turquoise Alert System for missing Indigenous people

The creation of the Turquoise Alert System cleared its final legislative hurdle on Wednesday when it passed the state House of Representatives unanimously

The new system, which would function similarly to the existing Amber Alert and Silver Alert notification systems, would coordinate alerts for missing Indigenous or endangered persons through the federally authorized Emergency Alert System.

The final passage comes less than a week after the state Senate amended the legislation, House Bill 2281, to include minors who go missing. The change allows the alert system to be activated in cases like Emily Pike’s, an Indigenous teen whose disappearance and murder earlier this year was cited by lawmakers as the impetus for the measure.

Rep. Teresa Martinez, R-Casa Grande, said she introduced the bill before Pike’s story became public, and that the Turquoise Alert could have prevented her murder.

“It breaks my heart that we, the State of Arizona, didn’t even go looking for this little girl,” she said. “We cannot let children go missing without somebody being alerted.”

Democratic Rep. Brian Garcia, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, said the alert will save lives.

“One day, what happened to Emily won’t happen to another child,” he said.

More than 10,600 Indigenous people were reported missing in the U.S. in 2023, roughly 3,300 of whom were 18 or older, according to the FBI. 

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System reported that more than 23,700 missing persons cases were in the database at the end of 2023, and 255 of those were for Indigenous people. 

In 2021, Arizona was ranked as the state with the third-largest number of unresolved missing Indigenous people cases in the country, according to NamUs. There are currently 91 missing Indigenous people cases in the NamUs database for Arizona.

A study from the Urban Indian Health Institute found that Arizona also has the third-largest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the country. 

That study reported 506 known cases in 71 urban areas across the country, 54 of which were in Arizona, including 31 in Tucson.

There is still no single database that provides accurate numbers or data related to missing and murdered Indigenous peoples across the country. With no centralized database among the thousands of federal, state and tribal entities, the information available is limited.

The Turquoise Alert system has been a priority for Indigenous advocates for years, and was requested in 2019, when Arizona’s first Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women study committee examined the crisis. 

“Indigenous people go missing at a higher rate than any other ethnicity,” Elayne Gregg, whose 7-year-old daughter was abducted and killed in 2009, told the Arizona Mirror earlier this year. “Because that rate is so high, something like this needs to happen.”

The bill has received broad bipartisan support as it moved through the legislative process, making it likely that Gov. Katie Hobbs will sign it into law. Hobbs has already directed the Arizona Department of Public Safety to develop a plan for implementing a new alert for Indigenous people by summer.