[2] At the age of 18 Ramón Ortiz moved to Durango to study theology under Bishop José Antonio Laureano de Zubiría.

[5] He was appointed parish priest of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in El Paso del Norte (now Ciudad Juárez) in 1836, where he had a spacious house surrounded by orchards and vineyards.

When the Texan prisoners passed through El Paso, maltreated by their captors and exhausted by the rigors of the desert crossing, Padre Ortiz gave them food and drink and helped them recover.

Colonel Alexander William Doniphan took him along as a hostage on his advance to the city of Chihuahua, while allowing him to perform his priestly duties to the Catholics among the U.S. troops.

[7] Ortiz had powerful friends, and after the war he temporarily left the church to run for congress, winning a seat in Mexico City.

He was held up in El Paso del Norte by poor weather, and began to actively recruit migrants while there, finding many people in the border region keen to be helped to move to Chihuahua State.

[12] In April 1849 Father Ortiz arrived in Santa Fe, where he was welcomed by Governor John M. Washington and Territorial Secretary Donaciano Vigil, who both thought he was unlikely to succeed and even offered to supply transport to Mexicans seeking repatriation.

[15] In mid-1849 Ortiz was forced to return from the United States to Chihuahua, where the Governor, General Ángel Trías, granted him powers to "announce and give possession of the land needed to form new towns.

Since the Mexican government did not provide the promised incentives to repatriates, as Father Ortiz had urged, most residents of New Mexico chose to remain in the United States.

[22][23] In 1853 Ortiz was subject to an investigation by the Foreign Ministry into his activities as repatriation commissioner in which he was accused of mishandling funds allocated to the new colonies.