I spoke with Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez today about her comments published in the Albuquerque Journal regarding former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, and she said she can detail a number of examples of problems with Iglesias’ leadership.
Martinez said she’s speaking publicly now because many have defended Iglesias as a top prosecutor who was doing a stellar job.
It’s well documented that officials with the Justice Department thought highly of Iglesias throughout most of his tenure despite the repeated complaints of U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and others.
But Martinez provided two examples of what she said were poor decisions by Iglesias. About two years ago, Martinez said, a deputy with the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Department tried to take an undocumented immigrant through a border patrol checkpoint. Martinez said the deputy was not on duty, but placed his badge “in a way that the Border Patrol could see it.”
It was an incident Martinez said ultimately ended with the deputy’s firing. But the case was never thoroughly investigated or prosecuted.
State district attorneys can’t prosecute immigration violations. Only the U.S. attorney’s office can do that.
Martinez said she doubted the case would be prosecuted by Iglesias’ office. At an earlier meeting with concerned citizens from Hatch, an official from the U.S. attorney’s office said his office wouldn’t pursue an immigration smuggling case there because it was too small. She said she believes the office refused to prosecute cases that involved the smuggling of fewer than five immigrants.
Martinez said she sent the Border Patrol report on the incident directly to Iglesias and argued that, because it was an “unusual situation” involving a law enforcement officer, any threshold for pursuing cases should be disregarded.
She said she received no response from Iglesias.
Another example of poor judgment, Martinez said, involved the Welcome Inn case. Miguel O. “Mike” Gonzales and his son, Michael Gonzales Jr., the bar’s owners, were arrested in 1999 and charged with running a crime ring out of the business. At the time, the elder Gonzales was the Mesilla marshal, and was accused of abusing that position to help run the crime ring.
The case was a joint state-federal investigation on which the U.S. attorney’s office worked, but was given to Martinez to prosecute.
Both Gonzaleses worked with Martinez under then-District Attorney Greg Valdez in the mid-1990s. Valdez fired Martinez. She sued for wrongful termination and won a settlement that allowed her to switch parties and beat Valdez in the next election, and there has been bad blood ever since.
After a protracted legal battle, the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in 2006 that Martinez and her office could not prosecute the case because of the conflict. Martinez tried to get the attorney general to prosecute, but was told there weren’t enough resources. She then went to the U.S. attorney’s office but, even though it had helped investigate the case, her request was denied.
Having nowhere else to turn, Martinez dropped the charges. She said today that the U.S. attorney should have taken the public corruption case, and called its refusal to do so “frustrating.”
She said the U.S. attorney’s office has often said it didn’t have the resources to prosecute some cases, but said that’s a poor excuse.
“If I get seven murders or 20 murders, I have to prosecute them all,” Martinez said. “I don’t get to say, ‘Well, I’ve met my quota.’”
I spoke with Doña Ana County District Attorney Susana Martinez today about her comments published in the Albuquerque Journal regarding former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, and she said she can detail a number of examples of problems with Iglesias’ leadership. 
But