Federal grand jury charges ex-GOP candidate with shootings on lawmakers' homes - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
A failed political candidate has been indicted on federal charges including interference with the electoral process in connection with a series of drive-by shootings at the homes of state and local lawmakers in Albuquerque, according to a grand jury indictment that was unsealed Wednesday.
The indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque takes aim at failed Republican candidate Solomon Peña and two named accomplices with felony charges of interfering with federally protected activities, as well as weapons-related counts, in connection with the shootings in December 2022 and January of this year on the homes of four Democratic officials, including the current state House speaker.
The attacks came amid a surge of threats and acts of intimidation against election workers and public officials across the country after former President Donald Trump and his allies spread false claims about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The new indictment outlines smart-phone communications including text messages by Peña in the days following the Nov. 8, 2022, election that pinpoint the locations of official's homes, allege election-rigging and call on conspirators to "press the attack."
Text messages show Peña bristling with outrage as a county commission certified the results of the midterm election and his own overwhelming defeat as candidate for a seat in the state House of Representatives.
"It is our duty as Statesmen and Patriots, to stop the oligarchs from taking over our country," Peña texted one of two conspirators who is not named in the indictment.
Federal charges were also filed against Jose Louise Trujillo and Demetrio Trujillo on allegations that they assisted Peña in obtaining vehicles and firearms — and that they "pulled the trigger themselves to fire bullets into the homes of the victims."
A defense attorney for Peña could not be reached immediately. Peña is being held without bail after his January arrest on charges in state district court that include criminal solicitation to commit a shooting at a dwelling, shooting at a dwelling, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Police have described Peña as the instigator of a politically motivated conspiracy leading to shootings at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators. No one was injured in the shootings but in one case bullets passed through the bedroom of a state senator's 10-year-old daughter.
The shootings began Dec. 4, when eight rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa. Days later, state Rep. Javier Martínez's home was targeted. On Dec. 11, more than a dozen rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O'Malley, police said. Martínez became the Democratic state House speaker in January.
The final related shooting, targeting state Sen. Linda Lopez's home, unfolded in the midnight hour of Jan. 3. Police said more than a dozen shots were fired, including three that Lopez said passed through the bedroom of her sleeping 10-year-old daughter.
Judge halts efforts by city of Eunice to sue the state over abortion access - Alice Fordham, KUNM News
A judge has stayed a lawsuit filed by the city of Eunice, after the city tried to sue the state over a law related to access to reproductive and transgender healthcare.
In a hearing Tuesday, Judge Lee A. Kirksey of the Fifth Judicial District Court granted the state’s request to stay a lawsuit filed by the city of Eunice in April.
In that lawsuit, the small city sued Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Raúl Torrez. It sought to overturn a new state law prohibiting municipalities from restricting an individual's right to access reproductive healthcare. In the suit, the city cites a 19th century federal law known as the Comstock Act, which restricts abortion but has been largely dormant for decades.
Attorney General Torrez then filed a motion in May asking the district court to refrain from acting on Eunice’s lawsuit until the state supreme court rules on a case the attorney-general previously filed against several communities in eastern New Mexico who sought to restrict access to abortion care, also citing the Comstock Act.
The attorney general’s motion was granted, and Eunice’s lawsuit will not proceed for now. The Supreme Court has stayed all the other local ordinances and will consider their legality in a hearing that is yet to be scheduled.
Feds update map detailing New Mexico internet access, revised after inaccuracies - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
A federal map, released on Tuesday, lays out who does and doesn’t have reliable, high-speed internet access in New Mexico. After errors in the map released previously, the updated version could make the difference in the state getting hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money to set up broadband.
New Mexico’s broadband officials have been, for half a year, trying to correct errors they found in the first version of the map that federal officials released in November 2022.
Federal Communications Commission chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel called that initial map a “pre-production draft” that was just a starting point in drafting communities’ internet access. She said it was also the first location-based map of broadband access and the most accurate to date.
The new version of the map fixed mistakes in three million places, and officials are still working on addressing another one million inaccuracies states found, according to the FCC.
Natalie Runyan is the geospatial information officer with New Mexico’s Office of Broadband Access and Expansion. She explained at the state’s annual broadband summit last week that there are many more New Mexicans that don’t have good access to internet than were displayed in the first map.
State officials took up over 188,000 broadband inaccuracies they found in the first version of the map with the FCC. That includes mistakes in pinning down communities with broadband, without it or with bad internet in the state.
New Mexico broadband officials also challenged locations that weren’t on the map at all.
The updated map released Tuesday shows more than 20,000 locations in New Mexico with or without broadband that didn’t make it onto the first version, according to the FCC.
That includes 13,329 tribal land locations. Taos and Cochiti Pueblos nearly weren’t on the map at all until this update, according to the FCC.
New Mexico can continue to work with the FCC on any remaining or future inaccuracies on the revised map.
Prosecutors seek pretrial detention without bail in deadly shootout at New Mexico biker rally — Associated Press
Two men from Texas appeared in court Tuesday to confront drug-possession and firearms-related charges in connection with a deadly shootout at a motorcycle rally in northern New Mexico that left three people dead.
Authorities say three men were killed and five people wounded during Saturday's shootout in the mountain resort town of Red River, where the rally was held. Police say the violence stemmed from a previous altercation in Albuquerque between rival motorcycle gangs known as the Banditos and Waterdogs.
Matthew Charles Jackson, 39, of Austin, Texas, entered initial pleas of not guilty to charges of carrying a firearm in a liquor establishment and methamphetamine possession at a state District Court appearance in Taos, a court-appointed defense attorney said.
Texas resident Christopher Garcia also appeared in court to plead not guilty to a felony charge of cocaine possession and a misdemeanor charge of tampering with evidence.
The Taos-based district attorney's office filed a request to deny bail that will require further court deliberations while Jackson and Garcia remain in jail.
Public defense attorney Aleksander Kostich said the circumstances don't appear to warrant pretrial detention.
"From what was presented in court thus far, it is a misuse of pretrial detention rules," said Kostich, managing attorney for the state Law Offices of the Public Defender.
New Mexico State Police say that 30-year-old Jacob Castillo of Rio Rancho will be charged with an open count of murder when he is released from a hospital.
On Tuesday, State Police Lt. Mark Soriano said that Castillo remained hospitalized under police guard. He said federal law enforcement agencies are participating in the investigation of Saturday's shooting.
The criminal complaint against Jackson says that he presented identification for a Texas concealed gun permit and told police he didn't know that he wasn't allowed to carry a firearm at a saloon in Red River, where he was arrested.
The charging document says that Jackson was carrying a 9-mm handgun loaded with one hollow-point bullet in the firing chamber.
Guilt-ridden man confesses to landlord's killing 15 years later, recordings show -Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
Police officers found Tony Peralta earlier this month sitting on a curb not far from the convenience store in a small southeastern New Mexico community where he borrowed a cellphone — so he could call 911 and confess to killing his landlord 15 years earlier.
Sweating and taking puffs from his cigarette, he told them he's tired of covering it up, tired of living with the lie and tired of being overwhelmed by guilt. He agreed to take the officers to where he buried the body before standing up and volunteering to be cuffed.
Police in Roswell released the 911 recording and nearly an hour of officer body camera video in response to a records request filed by The Associated Press. The May 1 footage shows Peralta repeatedly thanking the officers for picking him up.
"I confess, man. I confess. I don't want to live life anymore without confessing," he said while sitting in an interview room at police headquarters.
The uniformed officers and detectives who talked with Peralta peppered him with questions about when the killing happened, how he did it and why. Peralta kept answering that he didn't know or didn't remember, acknowledging that he had been drinking "a lot" the day he called 911.
Peralta, 37, was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of first-degree murder but did not attend the hearing. He pleaded not guilty to the charge through his public defender, Ray Conley, who declined to comment after the hearing. Conley has said he will ensure Peralta's due process is respected as the case moves through court.
A judge on Tuesday also set Peralta's trial for October but said that date could change.
At times, the authorities had asked if Peralta was making up the story and leading them on a goose chase since he wasn't providing many details, other than saying he had killed someone a long time ago.
"There's a dead body in there, dude!" he told one officer while in the back of a patrol car parked in front of the home where he once was a tenant of 69-year-old William Blodgett. Peralta said he'd feel better once the body was found.
Investigators said they obtained a search warrant and found a boot, bones and dentures after removing plywood floorboards from a detached room on the side of the house.
The dentures were compared with Blodgett's dental records — obtained in early 2009 after he was reported missing — and that led to a positive identification, according to police.
A tearful Peralta told police he didn't know why he had killed Blodgett. At one point, police video shows him putting his head down onto a table during an interview and sobbing.
Peralta told police he decided to come forward because "his heart hurts" and that he thought about it every day. He told an officer that Blodgett was a good man and that he took his life for no reason while high on methamphetamine.
"I don't have an excuse," he told police. "A lot of people have an excuse. I don't have one."
Blodgett's girlfriend and family had not seen him since late December 2008. She told police that Peralta, who was considered a suspect by police early on, allegedly had some sort or argument or fight with Blodgett, who had tried to evict him.
Authorities at the time had talked to Blodgett's family, friends and neighbors and visited the home the two men shared, which appeared to have been abandoned with personal belongings still in place. Police found no immediate signs of foul play and Blodgett's vehicle was still there, according to the original missing person report.
Detectives would periodically drive by the house but never spotted anyone. They also brought a dog trained to sniff for bodies to the property but found nothing.
Police said the case went cold after investigators exhausted all leads until Peralta's 911 call.
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Associated Press writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Nev., contributed to this report.
New Mexico trying to build and train new workforce for broadband expansion - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
Tamara Rosenberg successfully wrote a grant to get Luna County $75,000 to help set up high-speed internet for rural New Mexicans.
The problem? There isn’t much of a workforce to pay to get broadband going.
“We don’t have enough people with skill sets to make the materials, to install the materials, to know how to use the materials,” she said on a panel during the New Mexico Broadband Summit. “That’s where we really struggle.”
While much of the discussion at the summit was about the upcoming opportunities the state will have to increase internet access and the millions in federal dollars soon to be headed toward these projects, there is a looming concern that the workforce issues Rosenberg faces will soon be a statewide problem.
There is already a worker shortage affecting people’s ability to make the internet accessible in New Mexico, said Rosenberg, who is a business advisor at Western New Mexico University.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is supposed to announce how much money New Mexico will get for broadband at the end of June. State officials expect it’ll be hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even with that money to come in for projects, a lack of workers causes headaches for local communities trying to set up brand new infrastructure.
Rosenberg said the people who are setting up the broadband in Luna County are “completely overwhelmed” with their overly large workload already.
“They’ve got more work than they have hours to complete,” she said.
Other communities with federal broadband grants like Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos are also struggling to find people to set up internet, in addition to dealing with obstacles of supply chain issues.
Kris Swedin is a dean at Santa Fe Community College. She told Source NM she doesn’t think the broadband worker shortage is a big issue now, but it will be in the future if more people don’t start getting trained soon.
Even students can get certified to do the work.
Swedin told summit attendees during a panel that Santa Fe Community College recently held a one-week fiber optic technician training course where students got certifications recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor that are good for three years and can be renewed.
That was just the first training and more will come in the future around New Mexico, she said. The college will have another free week-long training in June.
New Mexico State University also offers fiber optic courses, with future trainings happening in June and October.
And even people younger than college students are getting trained to work in technical positions to help ramp up internet infrastructure.
Shara Montoya is the career technical education director at Tularosa Municipal Schools and said the schools offer a program where students can get paid to work in computer-related jobs.
“My focus is to talk about the role of schools and how schools can promote opportunities for students to create digital equity in New Mexico,” she said.
Swedin said people should be getting trained in a broad variety of tech-related skill sets. She asked the broadband companies that filled the room at the summit to communicate with educators what other skills internet experts need to have, such as digital literacy or safety certifications.
“Fiber optic alone is not a skill unless it’s supported by other skills,” she said.
All of these skills should be paid for, too, said Lenelle Sernam. She’s a 19-year-old working for Teeniors, a technology support service where teenagers and young adults help seniors understand how to navigate the internet.
“If you know something, you shouldn’t just be expected to teach it for free,” Sernam said.
State leadership agrees. Sarita Nair is the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions secretary and moderated the panel at the broadband summit. She said it’s important to pay people for the work that they’re doing.
Nair said her department has apprenticeship funds from the Legislature that can help businesses pay interns for internet-related work.
Although lawmakers put aside millions of dollars in 2022 for youth apprenticeships, the Legislative Finance Committee noted in April that the Workforce Solutions Department hadn’t used any of the funds nearly a year later.
Sernam said jobs like those at Teeniors, which don’t necessarily require a certification, will really help New Mexicans in this transition to setting up good internet around the state.
A similar business, Mama Cibernéticas, helps teach parents how to use the internet. Founder Maria Chaparro said local businesses like these are key to solving an issue that speakers repeatedly brought up at the conference — the sustainability of broadband after the infrastructure grants are gone.
Chaparro said grassroots organizations are a reliable source of work that broadband companies should invest in. She said these local New Mexicans will help sustain broadband by explaining the benefits of the internet to people who don’t regularly use it and educating people on how to use it.
“This problem has a solution if you just invest in us,” she said.
US Border Patrol chief is retiring after seeing through end of Title 42 immigration restrictions — Colleen Long, Associated Press
The head of the U.S. Border Patrol announced Tuesday that he was retiring, after seeing through a major policy shift that seeks to clamp down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border following the end of Title 42 pandemic restrictions.
Chief Raul Ortiz said in a note to staff Tuesday obtained by The Associated Press that he will leave June 30. It's not clear yet who will replace him.
"I leave at ease, knowing we have a tremendous uniformed and professional workforce, strong relationships with our union partners, and outstanding leaders who will continue to tirelessly advocate for you each day," Ortiz said in the note.
Ortiz managed the Border Patrol and its roughly 20,000 agents through the COVID-19 pandemic and Title 42 emergency health restrictions that began in March 2020 and allowed agents to quickly return migrants over the border. He also oversaw a new set of restrictions rolled out May 11 meant to discourage migrants from crossing illegally while opening up other legal pathways. While there are concerns about overcrowding at stations, so far, the massive chaotic scenes anticipated by even President Joe Biden have not materialized.
The Border Patrol, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, has been been under a constant spotlight for years as the number of illegal crossings has reached record highs. Agents take into custody migrants who cross the border illegally which has increasingly become families. Agents wade into the Rio Grande to rescue drowning migrants and search for children dumped alone by smugglers along the 1,951-mile U.S.-Mexico border.
But the agency was also at the center of a firestorm during the Trump administration's policy of separating families. And during the Biden administration, some agents were found to have engaged in "unnecessary use of force" against non-threatening Haitian migrants. Two weeks ago, an 8-year-old Panamanian girl died in their custody on her family's ninth day in custody; the most time allowed is 72 hours under agency policy.
Ortiz took over as chief in August 2021, following the ouster of Rodney Scott, who enthusiastically embraced Trump's policies, including construction of a border wall with Mexico. Ortiz, like Scott, was a career official who slowly climbed the ranks over his 30-year career, and was Scott's top deputy at the time he became the agency's leader but stayed away from more charged issues like the border wall.
Still, he didn't avoid blunt discussion of the border. During a hearing before a congressional committee in March, a frustrated Ortiz tried to articulate the issues he was seeing at the border.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., asked him: "Does DHS have operational control of our entire border?"
Ortiz replied: "No, sir."
Almost from the start of his tenure, Ortiz faced extraordinary frustration within his ranks as illegal crossings reached the highest levels ever recorded. Ortiz acknowledged at a meeting with agents in Laredo, Texas, in January 2022 that morale was at an "all-time low" after an agent complained about "doing nothing" but releasing migrants in the U.S. to pursue their cases in immigration court, according to leaked video published in the Washington Examiner. At another meeting in Yuma, Arizona, an agent turned his back on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
On Tuesday, Mayorkas praised Ortiz as a great leader who was committed to the well-being of his agents.
"Selecting him to lead the Border Patrol was among the most important decisions I have made," he said. "Chief Ortiz agreed to postpone his retirement several times since and the Border Patrol, the Department, and our country have been all the better for it."
New Mexico governor appoints new State Police chief, effective June 24— Associated Press
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Tuesday that W. Troy Weisler will be the next State Police chief, effective June 24.
Weisler will become the state's 23rd police chief and succeeds Tim Johnson, who is retiring after 23 years on the job.
Weisler, a 21-year State Police veteran, has served as deputy chief since 2021. He is the deputy chief for strategic development, special projects, communications and recruiting and has worked in every division of the state Department of Public Safety's Law Enforcement Program.
Weisler now will lead a force of more than 700 officers stationed throughout New Mexico.
Weisler began his career with the State Police as a patrol officer in Deming and Moriarty in 2002.
He then served in various investigation, research and narcotics roles in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.