New El Paso County Sheriff Oscar Ugarte does not yet have his own office space at the command headquarters on the Eastside, but he has been busy over the last seven weeks doing operational assessments, meeting with his leadership teams and spending time in the county jails to determine the department’s needs.
The 6-foot-6, 41-year-old is hard to miss walking through headquarters, and although he towers over most people, his friendly disposition makes him approachable.
Ugarte easily stepped into the driver’s seat of a Sheriff’s Office 2023 F150 full-size commercial vehicle inspection truck on a Monday afternoon ridealong with El Paso Matters. He enthusiastically pointed out some of the features, including the video recording system that includes a dashcam and backseat cameras that send footage to a cloud storage system. It is not equipped for arrests.
Driving along Montana Avenue, he mentioned the vehicle’s cost and how one was recently involved in an accident during an operation with other law enforcement agencies.
“So we were working that operation and a drunk driver ran into one of the constable units, and it was a truck like this, a 2023 F150 – it was totaled – so that’s like $100,000 right there,” Ugarte said.
As he drove, Ugarte talked about wanting to have balance with the community that is concerned about immigration enforcement, but having to continue with their operations to ensure safety.
“It’s hard to keep everybody happy,” Ugarte said.
On the drive, Ugarte shared that his favorite ramen dish from Kaedama on Boston Avenue is the Tejano.
“Every time I go I get the Tejano. The Tejano it has, like, pork belly, and then they put a little bit of barbecue, and then it has corn, and then it has toreado – ugh! it’s delicious,” Ugarte said.
Ugarte took office while the county is facing budgetary challenges and as President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders that may impact the Sheriff’s Office, from ordering mass deportations to temporarily freezing federal grants and loans.
He is the third person elected as El Paso County sheriff in the past 40 years, succeeding Richard Wiles, who retired at the end of 2024 after 16 years serving in the role.
During his four-year term, Ugarte told El Paso Matters he wants to work on increasing staffing and improving community relations, develop a program that includes social workers to work alongside the crisis intervention teams, and continue to have a good relationship with state and federal agencies. He said immigration enforcement is not one of those priorities.
Taking the helm
During the ride-along in the Montana Vista area of the county Monday, Ugarte said he does not want to lead the department by making decisions in a silo.
“I want a command staff that is going to challenge me, you know, I don’t want somebody that is like, ‘OK, do this and just yes, sir.’ I want (their) input as well to make sure that I’m making the right decisions for the community,” Ugarte said.
Ugarte’s law enforcement career started in 2005 with the Socorro Police Department. He later became a bailiff for the El Paso County Council of Judges and elected constable of Precinct 1 in 2016 and was reelected four years later.
Ugarte said he always wanted to do more for the community while serving as constable, but was limited in resources.
“Now, here at the Sheriff’s Office I have resources, I have sections like the special traffic investigators, I have a narcotics unit, I have a traffic unit, a motor unit – so, I do have more resources that actually can tap into community services,” Ugarte said. “That’s something I’m excited about.”
Ugarte said the Sheriff’s Office has a budget of about $122 million.
His job, which pays more than $199,000 per year, mostly involves administrative duties such as executing and developing policy and setting budgets. The office has about 1,000 employees, including 270 deputies and 551 detention officers. It also manages criminal investigations and drug detection programs and provides law enforcement in the unincorporated parts of the county and operates both the Downtown jail and the jail annex on the Far Eastside.
Addressing concerns over immigration enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies in recent weeks have been increasingly publicizing immigration enforcement activities in the area, although ICE arrests have long been common in El Paso and surrounding areas.
Ugarte said the Sheriff’s Office is in no position to help with immigration enforcement.
“Our priority is never going to be immigration,” Ugarte said. “I think regular crimes that affect our community on a daily basis are our focus: answering 911 calls, accidents, the DWI enforcement – what really affects our community.”
Ugarte said he is more focused on the needs of his department and the community rather than the vague orders that have been issued by the Trump administration.
“It’s something that is on everybody’s radar,” Ugarte said. “But as far as the Sheriff’s Office being actively involved in immigration raids or anything like that – we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the training, and there’s no clear directive from the federal government.”
He said until told otherwise or given specific orders from the federal government, he is operating the department as “business as usual.” Ugarte said that includes cooperating with state and federal agencies as the department has done for years prior.
“We’ve always had a working relationship with immigration, well, not just immigration (but) with federal agencies, you know, DHS (Department of Homeland Security), HSI (Homeland Security Investigations), border patrol (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) – we honor detainers. We share information with them (as required by law),” Ugarte said.
Community misconceptions of sheriff operations
Ugarte said he is already hearing that the community is concerned that regular department operations such as stationary vehicle checks are being mistaken for immigration enforcement operations.
“Yes, we do stationary vehicle checks, but they’re not for immigration and these have been going on for years… but, I guess people pay a little bit more attention because of what’s going on at the national level,” he said.
The department will periodically place the checkpoints at intersections or streets in areas like Montana Vista, Tornillo and San Elizario, where deputies set up cones and funnel traffic through to stop and check for driver’s licenses and insurance. If the driver has the necessary documentation they pass through, but if they do not they get a citation.
Ugarte said the stops are placed where data has shown an increase in traffic accidents where one of the drivers did not have insurance, or for speeding incidents and the like.
“I guess sometimes people don’t understand the jurisdictions (of the county) – it’s not that I’m targeting those areas, but those are the areas where the Sheriff’s Office is responsible to patrol,” he said.
Samantha Singleton, with the Border Network for Human Rights, said BNHR has had members drive through the checks to get a sense for what the department is doing.
“The member did express to the officer that there is a lot of fear in the community and with the checkpoints – individuals are fearful of going out and things of that nature, but they just said it was a regular routine checkpoint,” Singleton said.
Singleton said BNHR, which has developed a police accountability task force, has been talking with concerned members of the community and explaining when possible, that the Sheriff’s Office operations are thus far routine.
But she said it would behoove the Sheriff’s Office to be transparent with the community by making statements when a high profile operation has been done to put the people at ease and reaffirm that they are not conducting immigration operations.
“If they’re doing these routine checkpoints, and this is something that they do every year, make a statement on that,” Singleton said. “If they’re not doing immigration enforcement, make a statement on that – community members need to hear it from the sheriff himself or from his department.”
Ugarte said he’s heard from community members concerned that they often see sheriff vehicles along with Border Patrol units when responding to incidents.
“Just because you see a Border Patrol agent talking to us or stops by, it doesn’t mean we’re working or checking immigration,” he said.
Ugarte said the relationship with Border Patrol is advantageous for a department that is often stretched thin in areas like Tornillo or San Elizario, where only one unit may be on patrol.
He said Border Patrol agents can tune in to the Sheriff’s Office scanners and if they hear a “hot” call where a high-risk incident is unfolding, they may respond to assist.
“We want that relationship to be there, that support, and vice versa. As far as working together it’s a good relationship, and I think we need it, especially when you have one unit out there in Tornillo (and) the only backup that you have is just sometimes a Border Patrol agent out there,” he said.
She said she understands that the Sheriff’s Office has a working relationship with other agencies, but the deputies should always take the lead on a response.
“They (the Sheriff’s Office) should ask for the (Border Patrol) to just kind of stand back unless they need them, and if they realize they don’t need them at all, then ask them to go ahead and just remove themselves, so that would take away some of the fear,” Singleton said.
Addressing staffing needs
Ugarte said one of the biggest staffing challenges in the department is with detention officers in the jails, where there are about 20 vacancies, but he also wants to hire more deputies.
“We do have shortages on patrol, but I think we were able to manage that a little bit better, but inside (the jails) with the detention officers – they are getting burnt out,” Ugarte said.
Detention officers and patrol officers work 12-hour shifts, but the strain of working in the jails takes a toll on new officers, he said. Deputies begin their careers with the Sheriff’s Office as detention officers and can then be promoted to other levels. He said many new officers work a short time in the jails and then get recruited by outside agencies.
“I’ve been actually working the (jail) shifts with them, understanding, how can I help you? How can I make it better, and to really see what changes we need to make,” he said.
In order to hire more deputies, the El Paso County Commissioners Court would have to approve more funding for the Sheriff’s Office while it faces budget shortfalls, in part, from prior collective bargaining agreements that raised the salary for sheriff officers.
But, Ugarte said in order to properly serve the community, they need more funding.
“Public safety is very expensive, you know, and just with fringe benefits, like for an officer, you’re looking at almost $100,000 a year with their salaries and all the insurance and everything that the county pays for those positions, but we need more – we need more,” he said.
Not getting more deputies and detention officers hired could be detrimental in the long run and just as expensive.
“I’d rather invest a couple of more millions to get the proper staffing and the proper resources to properly serve instead of us as the Sheriff’s Office falling short, and then we get in a bind and are in some type of lawsuit, and we’re still going to have to pay (and) we’re still going to be short,” he said.
Ugarte also said he is in the process of putting together a proposal to get a civilian social services unit that would be involved with the department’s crisis intervention teams in an effort to address underlying family issues with resources rather than having people enter the criminal justice system. The move to begin a program with civilian social workers was also a campaign promise Ugarte made.
He said he anticipates the cost will be about $450,000, which would mainly go toward the salaries of the social workers.
The post Oscar Ugarte discusses first several weeks as El Paso County sheriff appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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