In the days leading up to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, U.S. attorneys appointed by the Biden Administration are waiting to learn if they will be forced to resign or quit. U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alexander Uballez recently sat down with New Mexico in Focus executive producer Jeff Proctor to talk about his accomplishments during his time in office.
ALEXANDER UBALLEZ: There's a lot that I'm proud of. The first is working on violent crime, which was our priority and a priority for the attorney general. We worked very closely with the City of Albuquerque and its police department to build what now is ACS and the violence intervention program within ACS. But that was just an idea that we got from John Jay College with me and the mayor and the now chief, the DA and a number of the folks went out there to learn about this idea called group violence intervention. There are ways to approach crime that are smart, that have been proven and that will work, and they're not just prosecution and not just enforcement and also not just social services. They are combining all of these things together.
One of the great honors of this position is serving very specifically our tribal partners. So we are responsible for enforcement investigations across all of our 23 tribes and pueblos and so by expanding our services there. We doubled the number of prosecutors in that division, we expanded the responsibilities to include not just prosecuting, investigating, but the liaison duties, right? So they are responsible for being a person to call for tribal governors when they need something from the federal government.
We also built the state's first federal re-entry court. Over 90% of people we send the federal prison come back to our communities, and so a component of public safety is making sure that they have the support that they need when they come back to become members of our community, full members of our community.
NMPBS: I want to ask a little bit about how the relationship worked between you and your office and main justice. Was it a sort of top down edict thing where you got from Attorney General Garland, you are going to do X, Y and Z to effectuate the policy goals and ideological goals of the administration? How did that work?
UBALLEZ: Early in my tenure we go up there for orientation groups of us, you know, as we're sworn in. And one of his edicts has been, violent crime is our priority, you need to reduce violent crime. I said, ‘Sir, to accomplish this goal, we're going to reduce the number of people that we charge. But we're doing it because of this program that we're investing in that both invests more time and energy into more meaningful cases, but also time and energy into the prevention intervention piece. That's going to mean that we are on paper, less effective, but it'll work. And he's like, ‘as long as violent crime drops, I have your back.’
Lots of things are illegal, but not everything that's illegal should be prosecuted, right? And so, especially in a world that we all always live in of limited resources, we have to pick for impact the things that we do. And so when I came in, we completely changed our intake criteria. There are a number of factors that indicate a person or a group might be threats to community safety. Those are the reasons that we choose who we investigate and prosecute, not, for example, simply based on the weight of the drug that is seized, which has been a traditional metric for us.
Should we is the biggest question that we are faced with. Because having the judgment to know when we should use these tools is the most important factor serving in the Department of Justice. But here in Albuquerque, which is the project Safe Neighborhoods zone, since 2021 homicides have dropped by 30%, robberies have dropped by 40%. This is a function of this effort that combines both strategic and targeted prosecution and enforcement with the outreach on the front end of providing services and supports, and at the end of day, really this message of hope.
NMPBS: So for a guy like you, assuming that you are about to get canned or asked to resign, what are you going to do next?
UBALLEZ: I'm going to serve the people of New Mexico. It's what I've always done. It's what's driven me to where I am today. I can honestly tell you I don't know where I will be in a few weeks, but I know that I'm really bad at doing things I don't care about, and a lot better at doing things that I do. And so I will continue to serve the people of New Mexico, and I'll find a way to do that.
NMPBS: I am a fan of the Aaron Sorkin show the West Wing, which sort of romanticized and popularized the notion of an outgoing President sitting down with pen and paper and scratching out a letter to the successor, the next president coming in, putting it in an envelope and stuffing it in a drawer of the resolute desk in the Oval Office. If you were going to do that for whoever takes your job after you, what would the letter say?
UBALLEZ: The most important frame for this job that I've had is that it is not me, right? I am a temporary custodian of a role that belongs to the people, and so in that frame, always think about how you can make this office better so that it serves the people better. You have to dream as if we have the power to create a world that we deserve to live in. We have a safer world for the people here in New Mexico. And keeping that dream in mind, keeping the goals big, will always push you forward, and you will fail. We all fail. But what matters is having that big dream and always pursuing it, never losing sight of that as your North Star, which is public safety here, making this place better for New Mexicans.
And I think finally, is forgiveness. I'm big on forgiveness in the criminal justice world. It's a thing that we don't think too much about, or we don't think enough about. I should say, because at the end of the day, the rebuilding of the community happens when the person comes back to the community. The rebuilding of the community happens when we all together, prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, victims, witnesses, engage in forgiveness with each other, accepting that we are all people and that we all fall short. We win when the community is safer.
This interview ran on New Mexico in Focus on New Mexico PBS. You can see the full interview here.
