For the Turnstiles

Alexander Uballez tossed his name in the hat to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico in 2020 after spending four years as a line prosecutor in federal court. It took a couple of years — the Senate confirmation process is an impenetrable bramble of bureaucratic bickering in this cursed political age — but he finally got the nod in May 2022. 

Uballez signed a four-year commission and went to work on a slate of anti-violent-crime, tribal-relationship-building and other initiatives — all while dragging the office from the Gutenberg era of paper-only files into the world of e-litigation, where much of the country’s federal cop shops already live.  
Uballez likens the work of a U.S. Attorney to that of King David: laying the first bricks of a temple to God, knowing all along that the work will be left for Solomon to complete. He’d have had a bit more time to build were it not for the aforementioned curse. 

I’ll do the math, so you don’t have to: A four-year commission, signed in May 2022, would expire in May 2026. But it ain’t going down like that. 

Instead, Uballez is eyeballing his wristwatch, waiting for Inauguration Day, when Donald Trump will saunter back into the White House and, unless division suddenly becomes unity or some other cosmic inversion occurs, either fire Uballez or offer him the chance to resign.  

Americans have come to expect these Game-of-Thrones-style, quadrennial Red Weddings in U.S. Attorney’s offices around the nation as de rigueur, though they are in fact a somewhat more recently begun tradition of bloodsport. (Ronald Reagan was the first true aficionado of this Justice Department lion-feeding exercise.) 

The politicization of these positions is where Uballez and I began an exit interview of sorts for this week’s episode of New Mexico in Focus. We returned to that theme a few times, unspooling the past and present of weaponized federal law enforcement and a handful of what Uballez sees as common misperceptions about government service. 

We spelunked several other caves, too, including the root causes — and some potential fixes — of the violence that continues to plague Albuquerque and other New Mexico cities; what might come after Trump drops the ax for a guy who talks about equities instead of privileges, about accused criminals and taxpayers alike as clients of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in court, yet made a career as a prosecutor; and what he’d write in a letter to whoever takes the job next. 

We spoke for nearly 50 minutes and, afterward, the NMiF crew and I decided to break tradition and air the whole conversation on this week’s show. That’s unusual for us, but this felt worth viewers’ time. We hope you’ll agree. (We broke it into three parts to let everyone catch their breath a few times. You can watch the first, second and third parts on YouTube.)  

Uballez appeared on NMiF for the first time in 2023 for a conversation about his background and his approach to the job with correspondent Russell Contreras. He came back last March to discuss a criminal investigation his office is leading into alleged corruption within the Albuquerque Police Department’s DWI Unit.  

I wrote after that second interview how unusual it was for someone in Uballez’ position to speak publicly about such a sensitive matter.  

We touched on that corruption investigation again this week — to date, no one has been charged, but Uballez says he has a timeline for when the probe will conclude, and he maintains that the public should expect a full accounting regardless of the end result and no matter who sits in his office after he leaves.  

I asked him why. 

“I think it’s important for folks to understand that this is not a mystery institution. This is a lot of why I like to come and talk with you and speak with reporters,” he said. “This is why I have a policy of never saying, ‘No comment,’ unless I absolutely have to. It’s because people have a right to understand who we are and what we are doing — and to ask questions of it. We’re not going to answer every question, but we should at least be able to tell you why we can’t answer it. And so, for the people here: Know that your U.S. Attorney’s Office is full of people just like you who care just as much as you do about this community.” 

Here’s hoping that whoever Trump taps as New Mexico’s next top federal cop will be as open to demystifying such a historically opaque institution as Uballez has been. 

-Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer