New Mexico Drone Laws (2026): Privacy, Hunting & Border Bills

New Mexico does not control drone airspace, the FAA does that nationally, and unlike many states it has also repeatedly tried and failed to pass a dedicated drone privacy law, most recently in 2026. What New Mexico does regulate is narrower: an existing voyeurism statute broad enough to reach a drone-mounted camera, a strict wildlife rule, and general trespass law.

This guide is part of our Drone Laws by State series, which also covers how state law intersects with surveillance camera laws more broadly.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses New Mexico state law on drone-related privacy, hunting, and the failed legislative attempts to regulate drones further, plus the federal baseline that applies in every state. It does not address a civilian's right to record police, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Does the FAA or New Mexico control where a drone can fly?

The Federal Aviation Administration is the exclusive regulator of the airspace itself. Under 14 CFR Part 107, a commercial or non-recreational drone operator must hold a Remote Pilot Certificate, register the aircraft, fly at or below 400 feet, and stay within visual line of sight; recreational flyers register and follow a similar, separate framework under 49 U.S.C. Section 44809. New Mexico has no power to add its own altitude limits, registration rules, or pilot licensing on top of that federal scheme, and as a practical matter it has not tried to. What New Mexico can regulate is conduct, what a person does with a drone once it is airborne over New Mexico soil, and on that front the state has been unusually slow to legislate compared to many of its neighbors.

Does New Mexico have a drone privacy law?

Not currently, and not for lack of trying. New Mexico's Legislature has introduced a dedicated drone privacy or surveillance bill in at least four separate sessions since 2013, and every one has failed. Senate Bill 556, the original "Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act," got a committee do-pass recommendation in 2013 but was then postponed indefinitely. A similar bill reappeared in 2017 as Senate Bill 167 and again went nowhere. In 2021, House Bill 69, the "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Use and Privacy Safeguarding Act," would have created a civil aerial-trespass claim and a law-enforcement warrant requirement modeled on other states' statutes; it was referred to committee on the first day of the session and never received a floor vote. Most recently, Senate Bill 136, introduced in the 2026 session by Senators George Munoz and Pete Campos, would have made it a misdemeanor, or a fourth-degree felony in aggravated cases, to use a drone to surveil a person, private property, or a critical-infrastructure facility, and a separate fourth-degree felony to operate a drone that interferes with or contacts critical infrastructure. The bill was postponed indefinitely on January 29, 2026, the same fate as its predecessors. Until New Mexico's Legislature actually passes one of these bills, claims online that the state has an enacted "Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act" are describing a bill, not a law.

New Mexico's voyeurism statute can already reach a spying drone

While New Mexico has no dedicated drone privacy law, one of its existing criminal statutes can still reach a meaningful slice of drone misconduct. NMSA 30-9-20, the voyeurism statute, enacted in 2007, makes it unlawful to intentionally use an "instrumentality" to view, photograph, videotape, film, webcast, or record the intimate areas of another person without consent, while that person is in a place such as a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, or anywhere else they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The statute defines instrumentality to include a periscope, telescope, binoculars, camcorder, digital or photographic camera, or, in its catch-all clause, an "electronic device of any type"; the statute does not name drones specifically, but that catch-all language is broad enough for a drone-mounted camera to qualify. A violation is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to 364 days and a $1,000 fine, but becomes a fourth-degree felony, carrying an 18-month basic sentence and up to a $5,000 fine, if the person recorded is under 18. The statute is narrower than a general drone privacy law, since it is limited to intimate areas and reasonable-expectation-of-privacy settings, but it means a drone used to peer through a bedroom window already carries felony risk in New Mexico even without a dedicated drone statute.

Does police need a warrant to fly a drone over my property in New Mexico?

No New Mexico statute requires it. The 2021 bill that would have created a warrant requirement for law-enforcement drone use, House Bill 69, died in committee, and the earlier Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act bills met the same fate. Without a state-specific statute, a New Mexico resident's claim that police unlawfully surveilled them by drone falls back on ordinary Fourth Amendment analysis. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that aerial observation of a yard from public airspace by a manned aircraft, without a warrant, generally does not violate the Fourth Amendment. See California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986) (fixed-wing flyover at 1,000 feet); Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989) (helicopter at 400 feet). Neither case involved a drone, and no New Mexico appellate decision has squarely extended that reasoning to a small drone hovering much closer to a home; police agencies in the state, including the Albuquerque Police Department's drone program, currently operate under ordinary constitutional doctrine and internal policy rather than a dedicated statute.

Hunting with a drone: New Mexico's wildlife rules

New Mexico's clearest drone-specific rule is not about privacy at all; it is about hunting. Under 19.31.10 NMAC, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish's rules on the use of vehicles, boats, aircraft, and roads in hunting, it is unlawful at any time to pursue, harass, harry, drive, or rally any protected species by use of a drone, and separately unlawful to use a drone to spot, locate, or relay the location of a protected species to anyone on the ground. The rule goes further than most states' manned-aircraft restrictions: while New Mexico allows hunting with information from a manned aircraft after a 48-hour waiting period, it is unlawful to hunt or take a protected species using information gained from a drone at any time, with no waiting period that cures the violation. A violation is enforced as a misdemeanor under the general game-and-fish penalty statute, NMSA 17-2-10, and can cost a hunter their license.

Cartel drones and the failed critical-infrastructure bill

The most recent push to regulate drones in New Mexico, Senate Bill 136, was driven less by neighborhood privacy complaints than by the state's southern border. New Mexico's Organized Crime Commission presented lawmakers with video of a cartel-operated drone tracking a law enforcement convoy in Chihuahua, part of a documented pattern of Mexican cartels using drones for reconnaissance, contraband smuggling, and in some cases dropping small explosive devices, activity researchers and federal officials have tracked escalating through 2025 and 2026. SB 136 would have created a fourth-degree felony for operating a drone that interferes with or contacts critical infrastructure, including facilities like pipelines, power plants, prisons, military installations, and municipal airports, and a separate crime for using a drone to surveil critical infrastructure. Its failure means New Mexico currently has no drone-specific critical-infrastructure statute; a person bringing contraband into a New Mexico prison, by drone or otherwise, is instead prosecuted under the state's general contraband statute, NMSA 30-22-14, a third-degree felony that does not mention drones specifically.

Trespass, nuisance, and local ordinances

Outside the voyeurism and wildlife statutes, a New Mexico resident dealing with a persistent nuisance drone has to rely on ordinary trespass and nuisance principles, since New Mexico's appellate courts have not squarely decided how far a landowner's rights extend into the airspace above their land for drone purposes. Local government has mostly stayed out of the gap. Albuquerque has no broad civilian drone ordinance; its Parks and Recreation Department designates a model-aircraft flying area, and its Film Office defers all drone filming to FAA authorization rather than issuing its own permits. Santa Fe requires drone users to comply with FAA rules and observes restrictions near its airport. Neither city, nor the state, has enacted the kind of broad local drone ordinance seen in some other states, which also means New Mexico has not needed to pass a preemption statute like New Jersey's or Arizona's.

The federal shoot-down rule: destroying a drone is a felony

A persistent misconception is that a landowner may legally shoot down a drone hovering over their own property. Federal law says otherwise. The FAA classifies drones as aircraft within the National Airspace System, which means 18 U.S.C. Section 32, the federal Aircraft Sabotage Act, applies to them: willfully damaging, destroying, or disabling a drone is a federal felony carrying up to 20 years in prison, regardless of whose property the drone is over, because the federal government, not the landowner, controls the airspace. The widely publicized 2015 "Kentucky Drone Slayer" case, in which a Hillview, Kentucky, man shot down a neighbor's drone and had state criminal-mischief charges dismissed by a local judge, is often cited as evidence that shooting down a drone is low-risk. It is not. The drone owner's related federal civil suit, Boggs v. Meredith, was dismissed in 2017 for lack of federal jurisdiction without any court ever ruling on whether the shoot-down itself was lawful, and no state, including New Mexico, has passed a law authorizing a landowner to disable a drone over their own property.