New Mexico
Some New Mexico attorneys stop taking public defense work due to ‘funding crisis’
This article was published by Source New Mexico. To read more visit sourcenm.org.
Private attorneys representing people who otherwise can’t afford a legal defense in federal courts in New Mexico are working for free because the public program that pays them — and private federal defenders across the country — ran out of money at the start of July.
In interviews this week, private defense attorneys told Source NM the lack of pay is especially urgent in Southern New Mexico because of the massive volume of cases being prosecuted by the U.S. government as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, specifically the newly created military buffer zone along New Mexico’s border with Mexico.
The funding crisis has raised concerns in the federal judiciary about providing adequate and legally mandated representation to defendants who can’t afford an attorney — approximately 90% of all defendants in federal court, according to a United States Courts news release on Tuesday. Federal defender organizations handle approximately 60% of such cases, while private attorneys who agree and are qualified to serve on a state-level Criminal Justice Act panel take on the rest.
Funding for those panels, however, ran out July 3, after Congress in March froze all judicial branch funding at last year’s levels as part of its continuing budget resolution.
In New Mexico, some private defense attorneys have stopped taking cases until funding resumes, Ryan Villa, the CJA panel representative for the District of New Mexico, told Source NM.
If more lawyers start turning down CJA appointments, then it is unclear who will represent those people, Villa said.
This places at risk the “fundamental right” of a person facing criminal charges “to effective counsel regardless of the defendant’s economic status,” Judge Amy St. Eve, chair of the national Judicial Conference’s Budget Committee, said in a statement.
St. Eve’s statement also notes that the attorneys won’t be paid until Oct. 1 “for the work they have done and for the work that we continue to ask them to do, unless the Judiciary receives supplemental funding from Congress before then.”
Cori Harbour, an El Paso-based attorney who also works as a private federal defender on the New Mexico CJA panel’s Las Cruces division, told Source she had to stop taking on new cases in the Western District of Texas, and has pivoted to find other kinds of legal work in order to pay her staff. She said next week, she will have to decide whether to continue taking cases in the District of New Mexico.
There are 73 lawyers on the Albuquerque division of the CJA panel in New Mexico, and 29 private attorneys who are on the CJA panel’s Las Cruces division, according to court records. There are approximately 12,000 CJA attorneys across the country, Villa said.
In addition to their own billing, defense attorneys also have to pay out experts such as paralegals, investigators, language interpreters, social workers, mitigation specialists and forensic psychologists.
Such experts have asked attorneys to delay their cases because they can’t sustain working trials without being paid, Villa said. Harbour confirmed her investigator has had to turn down unpaid CJA jobs and instead look for other income sources.
Moreover, the Las Cruces court has seen a surge of defendants being charged under the federal government’s new criminal trespassing laws for entering the so-called National Defense Area on New Mexico’s border.
Those additional military trespass charges come on top of the unlawful entry charges brought against migrants before the buffer zone existed, Harbour said, creating more work for the defense.
“The case numbers have been astronomical because they are prosecuting everything,” Harbour said. “There’s just no way for us to handle the number of cases that are coming in, and then to expect us to do it now without compensation is just a lot.”
Harbour said she has 71 open CJA cases, her largest caseload ever in her 20-year career. Almost all of her cases require an interpreter, usually for Spanish, she said, which is yet another expense no longer covered.
Federal public defenders can’t step in because they are already understaffed and overworked, and have been under a hiring freeze for 17 of the past 24 months because of tight budgets from Congress, according to the judiciary’s news release.
Margaret Katze, federal public defender for the District of New Mexico, told Source NM it is “more than unfair” to expect attorneys to work for almost three months without getting paid for that work.
“It is a terribly difficult situation,” Katze said in an emailed statement. “The federal defense function, one that is critical to the justice system, must be appropriately funded. People do this work because they believe that it is important that people accused of crimes in federal court, who cannot afford to hire attorneys, deserve equally strong representation.”
Austin Fisher is a journalist based in Santa Fe.
El Paso police seek suspect in East Side robbery, burglary
An unidentified man is suspected in an East Side robbery and a restaurant burglary on Oct. 20, 2025, in Crime Stoppers of El Paso’s Crime of the Week.
Provided by Crime Stoppers of El Paso
An Anthony, New Mexico man was sentenced to nearly two decades in federal prison for selling methamphetamine from a trailer on his parents’ property, authorities said.
A federal judge sentenced David Amaya, 43, to 19 years and seven months in prison on one count of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine, New Mexico federal court records show. He was also sentenced to five years of supervised release after he serves his prison term.
U.S. District Judge Margaret I. Strickland handed down the sentence on Wednesday, Dec. 10, at the federal courthouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Williams prosecuted the case.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico Ryan Ellison and FBI Albuquerque Field Office Special Agent in Charge Justin A. Garris announced Amaya’s sentencing in a joint news release.
Amaya pleaded guilty to the charge in September as part of a plea agreement that dismissed one count of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, court records show.
Anthony, New Mexico man sells meth on parents’ property
FBI agents began investigating Amaya after he sold methamphetamine to a “controlled buyer” in July and August 2024, the news release states. Controlled buys are when law enforcement uses an undercover agent or a witness to purchase drugs from a suspected drug dealer.
The agents obtained a search warrant on Aug. 22, 2024, for a “specific tow-behind type trailer that Amaya was known to be living in and conducting narcotics transfers out of,” a federal complaint affidavit states. The trailer was located on property owned by Amaya’s parents in Anthony, New Mexico, the news release states.
The trailer did not have a restroom, but agents found a small makeshift bathroom structure with a porta-potty inside next to the trailer. The agents then obtained a warrant to also search the small bathroom structure.
The agents found “a large quantity of white crystalline substance suspected to be methamphetamine” throughout the trailer and bathroom structure, the affidavit states. In the bathroom, agents found a clothing hamper with “a gallon zip lock bag full of suspected methamphetamine” hidden inside.
Agents found a black Ruger .357 caliber handgun containing five rounds of .357 caliber ammunition and a black Mossberg 500 E410 gauge shotgun on the bed inside the trailer, the affidavit states. The news release states agents found “hundreds of rounds of ammunition.”
They also found about 4.42 grams of methamphetamine on the bed and another 26 grams under the bed, the affidavit states. Agents found eight more grams of methamphetamine on a nightstand.
Amaya told agents during an interview that the methamphetamine was his, he had acquired it over a period of time, and did not realize how much it was, the affidavit states. He added he “needed the guns for protection, so people would know he has them, making him safer,” the affidavit states.
In total, the agents found 1,183 grams of methamphetamine.
Aaron Martinez covers the criminal justice system for the El Paso Times. He may be reached at amartinez1@elpasotimes.com.
GRANTS, N.M. – The City of Grants is canceling this year’s annual Christmas light parade, citing the safety of the public and their own officers.
Dozens of floats were supposed to roll down Santa Fe Avenue on Saturday night, but Grants police are holding off until next year after three incidents where someone shot at law enforcement officers.
“It was definitely a difficult decision, but due to the incident that took place on December 8, where law enforcement was shot at in the area of Santa Fe Avenue, we made that decision to protect the citizens of Grants,” says Grants Police Chief Maxine Monte.
She says a New Mexico State Police officer was shot at while making a traffic stop. The officer walked away uninjured, but this was too much for the chief.
“We’ve had three different incidents where law enforcement was shot at. One was May of 2025, the other one was August of 2025, and then the recent event of December 8 of 2025,” says Monte.
It’s not a risk the chief wants to take, and points out people would be standing exactly where the last shooting happened.
“We have a lot of citizens that attend our parade, and our main concern was that they were out in the open in the middle of the night, and in the same area that our latest shooting took place.”
Grant residents will be able to see the floats during the day on Saturday. But even some daylight isn’t convincing some residents.
“I’ll be staying home,” said Amy Brigdon. “There’s too many people in the world that want to see bad things happen to other people. I’m not one of them.”
Police still don’t have a suspect for this week’s attempted shooting. Anyone with information is asked to get in touch with the Grants Police Department.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife rereleased a wolf into Grand County this week after it had traveled into New Mexico, according to a news release.
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish captured gray wolf 2403 and returned the animal to Colorado.
Colorado wildlife officials decided to release the wolf in Grand County yesterday because of the proximity to “an unpaired female gray wolf,” nearby prey populations and distance from livestock, according to the release.
“Gray wolf 2403 has been returned to Colorado and released in a location where it can best contribute to CPW’s efforts to establish a self-sustaining wolf population while concurrently attempting to minimize potential wolf-related livestock conflicts,” said acting director of CPW Laura Clellan, according to the release.
The wolf was once a member of the Copper Creek pack but departed from it this fall.
A memorandum of understanding between Colorado and Arizona, New Mexico and Utah requires that any gray wolves that leave Colorado and enter those states be returned. That was created in part to maintain the integrity of a Mexican wolf recovery program.
“We recognized during the planning process that we would need to have consideration and plans to protect the genetic integrity of the Mexican wolf recovery program, while also establishing a gray wolf population in Colorado,” said CPW’s Wolf Conservation Program Manager Eric Odell, according to the release.
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