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.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The holiday shopping season is underway, with thousands of New Mexicans visiting local businesses Saturday.
Last night, Winrock hosted a tree lighting ceremony, transforming their shopping center. Today, shoppers enjoyed treats from food vendors and photos with Santa.
Unlike major retailers, small businesses rely on a few peak weekends with high foot traffic. Organizers say the Artisan Market, happening this weekend, attracts thousands each year.
“Our artists work all year for this,” said Raquel Chambers, New Mexico Artisan Market Executive Director. “This is the biggest weekend of the year for them.”
The New Mexican Artisan Market is at Hotel Albuquerque and open for the rest of the weekend from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Next week, Old Town will celebrate the Christmas season with a tree lighting and holiday stroll on Dec. 5 at 6 p.m.
This post is brought to you by FanDuel, proud partner of SBNation.
Lobos most likely to join the Aztecs in MW Championship.
The voters picked Boise State over Utah State by the slimmest of margins… and that’s exactly what happened in the game on Friday, with the Broncos securing a one-point victory over the Aggies. With the win, they keep their conference championship hopes alive.
Utah State going bowling?
Fans went 2 for 2 this week predicting games. They picked New Mexico to beat San Diego State at home and that’s exactly what happened. Will it be enough for the Lobos to find a place in the MW Championship?
Dashcam shows moment UPS cargo plane crashed in Louisville
Dashcam video shows the UPS cargo plane crashing shortly past the runway of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
Two people were killed in a private plane crash in southern New Mexico ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
The plane took off around 11:30 a.m. Nov. 26 and was scheduled to return to its “airport of origin” an hour later, according to New Mexico State Police.
Officials didn’t specify what airport that was, though they said the plane was last known to be near the Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport, around 60 miles northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
A family member of one of the passengers reported the plane missing after the person didn’t return from the flight, according to KOAT-TV in Albuquerque.
Search and rescue personnel found the plane on the morning of Nov. 27 near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, a small community within the Lincoln National Forest that’s just over a dozen miles away from the Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport.
New Mexico State Police, the Alamogordo police and fire departments and New Mexico Search and Rescue were among the agencies involved in the effort.
The plane was found burned with two bodies inside. The names of the deceased were not immediately made public.
The incident was listed as an accidental crash on the National Transportation Safety Board’s incident database as of Nov. 28. An investigation is ongoing.
Incident follows other plane crashes in 2025
The New Mexico crash comes toward the end of a tumultuous year for aviation.
A mid-air collision between a commercial passenger jet and a military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killed 67 people in January. It marked the first high-profile commercial aviation crash since 2009, when a commercial plane crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing 50 people.
Two more people were killed several weeks after the Potomac River crash when two fixed-wing, single-engine planes crashed mid-air near Marana, Arizona.
Earlier in November, a UPS cargo plane burst into flames and crashed shortly after takeoff in Louisville, Kentucky, killing 14 people.
Amid flight and airport chaos stemming from the historic government shutdown, President Donald Trump pledged on Nov. 10 that the United States would soon be “getting the finest air traffic control system anywhere in the world.”
Trump did not provide many details but said companies including IBM and Raytheon were bidding to build the new national infrastructure.
“…We’re going to pick the best one, and it’ll get built relatively quickly, and we’re going to have the greatest air traffic control system anywhere in the world,” he said.
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