PHOENIX — A New Mexico county near El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency Thursday over migrants arriving at and being released in the region.

The board of commissioners in Otero County voted unanimously on the declaration, which includes a request for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., to deploy National Guard troops to the county, which has seen a surge of migrants starting in January.

Local officials gave the state one week to take emergency action and said they will consider suing the state if nothing happens in that time.

“Otero County will also consider litigation in regards to the State of New Mexico failing to follow its constitutional duties towards the people of Otero County," County Commission Chairman Couy Griffin said in the meeting.

The development comes two days after Yuma, Ariz., a city on the international border, became the first city to declare a state of emergency because it lacks the resources to handle the influx of people.

Commissioners in Otero County have asked that National Guard troops be sent to their region so that agents can return to the field from administrative and other tasks to carry out law enforcement work at the highway checkpoints, which were closed late last month.

"Because of the crisis at the Mexican border, the Border Patrol officers who staff the highway checkpoints on U.S. 70 near the White Sands National Monument and U.S. 54 near Orogrande have been reassigned and the border checkpoints closed. This means that drug traffickers and illegal aliens can enter Otero County freely," the resolution states.

Guardsmen were deployed to the region last April as a result of President Trump's executive action. However, in February, Lujan Grisham pulled the 118 troops working with Customs and Border Protection on the southern border.

Otero County is comprised of around 63,000 residents and includes 6,628 square miles.

The El Paso Border Patrol sector includes all of New Mexico's border and has seen the second-highest number of families arriving at and illegally crossing the southern border since October.

From Oct. 1, 2018, through March 31, agents in the El Paso region apprehended 53,000 people who claimed to be traveling with a family member. Only the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas saw more members of families arrested: 78,000. The other seven sectors along the southwest border saw anywhere from approximately 500 to 25,000 family members.