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From Courtrooms to Community: An AG's Journey to Justice · The Lawtino™

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Latino podcast where we discuss the intersection of law and our Latino communities with legal, political, and community leaders and visionaries.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get started.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, it's John Gomez.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another episode of the Law Tino, where we discuss the intersection of law and our Latino communities.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: This episode, as always, is brought to you by your sponsor, Gomez Trial Attorneys, one of our nation's largest Latino-founded consumer rights, civil rights, and uh personal injury law firm.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh today we're joined by a very, very special guest, very honored.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're here in Houston uh at the Shades of Mass Conference, a conference committed to increasing uh diversity in uh positions of leadership and major litigation.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so uh we're joined uh by this gentleman who has traveled to speak to us in just a little bit, gonna talk to the whole conference, um, has come to us from uh New Mexico out here to Houston, Texas.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: He's gonna be talking to the group as a whole, but first we have a private conversation with New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torres.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you, sir, for being here.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um what we do first, like tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up, uh, how you kind of got to where you're at right now.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the things I always try to uh warn um young attorneys about is the the risks of what could happen uh to your kids if you allow them to hang out around courtrooms and undercover police officers uh because you know, when other uh families were going on trips that were sort of normal vacations, I was headed down to the border with my dad uh because he was doing RICO conspiracy trials on behalf of the federal government when I was a little kid.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I would swim at the hotel during the day and he would go um do these multi-codefendant um cocaine cases back then in the 1980s, and at night all the undercover officers would would come over um to the hotel and I would just be fascinated and I would be a fly on the wall listening to um all of these wild stories um and hearing about what had happened in the courtroom that day.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I never really knew anything other than that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and when I ended up after a lot of twists and turns when I was a young man thinking about whether or not to go into the law, and then once I decided to go to law school, what I was gonna do with it, it took me a while to actually end up on the same path that my dad had taken as a career prosecutor.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: But um I gotta tell you, it's it's been the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life and has been something that has really enabled me to understand some of the challenges that people in our community face each and every day that kind of um are constantly there but don't get recognized as much as they should or elevated as much as they should.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I try to do now is to use the position that I have to try and be a voice for people that need it the most.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and having worked at various levels of the criminal justice system and now serving in this role, I have the ability to sort of synthesize all of that experience and bring it with me each and every day.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I I appreciate that.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it's interesting that what your dad was doing, um, I did that for a little bit.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was a federal prosecutor in San Diego, first border crimes and then narcotics, doing a lot of the same work that our friend over here, Augustine, is now doing on the state side.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and, you know, I always felt because a lot of the defendants that came before me were um they were either Mexican nationals or they were uh, you know, American citizens of uh Mexican descent.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And and many of them, you know, were acting out of, you know, at least it it it appeared economic necessity.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I could make the call.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in that position, I had the power to make the call.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was telling Augustine back then if I had a kid that that crossed a load, um marijuana, you know, if if it was fentanyl, you know, meth or whatever, I didn't have much uh, you know, um discretion.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I could divert that kid.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: I could be like, okay, if he was a good kid before this, made one error, I could send that kid to like, I could say, okay, I'm gonna divert if you enlist in the Marine Corps, we're gonna, you know, suspend.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I was allowed to do that.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so like I felt like you know, being in the position you're in as really the top law enforcement, you know, official in the state of New Mexico, which is, I believe, just crossed over, it appears demographically just crossed over 50 percent uh Latino um identification.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's super important to have people like you in those positions of authority to make those decisions.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it it it it brings um an important perspective to an institutional role that just has is very consequential for the entire state, but but for the Latino community in particular.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were talking a little bit earlier um about the kind of unique perspective that I have, not only coming from uh a family that has been sort of engaged in prosecution and law enforcement for as long as it has.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I'm I'm I'm still um cognizant and just aware of of how law enforcement um isn't always equally applied.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of the sort of really um defining experiences of my life came when I was in high school.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was um you know driving, I think I was going to pick up a pizza or something like that for my family.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad, who grew up very poor in rural New Mexico, um, decided that he was going to instill in me the virtue of hard work and what how much things cost by making me drive an old farm truck, this 1969 um, you know, three-gear farm truck that was just it was a beast to drive around.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um he lived in a nicer part of town, and so here I am um after dark in this farm truck, and I was pulled over, but I was pulled over, I was the subject of a felony stop.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was ordered out of the vehicle, um, guns were drawn, and I was ordered to be face down on the pavement.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and I remember being terrified, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I remember being um just not knowing what I had done, not knowing what had what was going on.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um the officers were there and they were asking me to kind of show my hands, and I was face down, and um out of out of desperation, I said, Maybe you know my dad.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I used his name, and this officer said, Oh, oh, you're presses kid, and oh no, no, suddenly all the guns were holstered and I was allowed to stand up, and but I was um so humiliated by it and um you know impacted by it.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was a good, you know, I was I was a teenager, so I was probably screwing up um uh the you know the regular amount, but I was a relatively good kid, I wasn't getting in trouble.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had great grades, um, I was on my way to college, but in that moment, face down on the pavement with guns out, I was um a kid that um matched the description of a suspect in a in a vehicle that did not belong in that neighborhood, and that's all it took.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I was uh I went home and shared that story, and um I was I went from being humiliated and scared to being angry.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I had so much anger.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, it my my dad was upset, but he was also trying to give me a certain amount of perspective on what had gone on.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, the first time I shared that story publicly, I was actually sitting next to the chief of police of the Albuquerque Police Department after I had been elected district attorney.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he had this look on his face, like, oh my God, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and I recognize now after having served as a prosecutor and having worked with law enforcement, that that encounter um w was originated with certain dynamics beyond my control, and and frankly, may have simply been uh a function of me matching the description of a suspect in a vehicle that matched that description at that time.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: But my perspective when I was a young man was that I had been racially profiled and that the law was treating me differently than other people.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um I share that story because it's it's lost on a lot of folks when you are a person of color and you come from a community that often has um, you know, uh a relationship with law enforcement that can be um traumatic.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: That uh I I always tried to tell young um African American and Latino law students who are almost always more inclined to go into the public defender's office than they were to being working for a prosecutor that you know in this position, like you mentioned, we have the power, we have the discretion to do real justice, right?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think it's incredibly important for people like me who have had just a you know a at least a glimpse of that kind of experience with law enforcement to sit in this role, work with police officers every day, work with prosecutors every day, and try to close the gap between what the system is and what it ought to be, what we tell ourselves it ought to be.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's it's been um a hard thing to do to be um a Latino and a prosecutor now.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't used to be that way.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: When my dad got into this work, it was a it was a position that was um just sort of more highly regarded and more highly appreciated that has sort of eroded.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I understand some of the reasons why, but um I think it's incredibly important for people like me to have a balanced perspective when it comes to law enforcement.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I couldn't agree uh more.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so when you got pulled over, you said you were on your way to college, uh you ended up at Harvard, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I don't know timing-wise, but had you already been accepted to Harvard at that time?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I yeah, I think I had.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I had an acceptance letter.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they they didn't know they were pulling over an Ivy Leaguer, you know, like get on the ground, you know, crimson guy.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so like, you know, like in your probably in your mind it was, you know, doubly humiliating because you had done all this work to get to the place where you were going.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: You'd already gotten your acceptance letter or you know, email.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um so you go to Harvard, and then I saw on there something about the London School of Economics?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I I actually I I when I graduated from Harvard, I I didn't, you know, I was young, I didn't want to go back to Albuquerque for the summer, so I actually took a position in the first dot-com boom in a young in a in a in a startup in New York City.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had been accepted to the London School of Economics.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I actually, um after that summer, they said, well, we're gonna go to California and open an office in Silicon Valley.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it wasn't actually Silicon Valley, by the way.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: They opened the office in Burlingame.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I never understood what why.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: I maybe they missed it, but uh in any event, I deferred um uh my year in London and then had my dot-com experience in 99 and 2000, and then ended up going to London and studying international trade.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I focused on um globalization, basically, um, the impact of global trade on different economic sectors on the market, and more importantly, on how policies developed and how those policies impact um the sort of um evolution of markets across borders.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I did that for a year.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I tried to take the LSAT in London, which was a disaster because I don't think the Proctors really understood how to time it correctly.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they cut off a section of a critical section of of the LSAT, and I knew it was not going to work out.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you're actually allowed to cancel your, I don't know if people know this.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can, in the middle of the LSAT, you can stand up and cancel if something goes wrong.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I canceled, it was the last date to apply for the following year.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So my whole plan for law school was blown.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I went outside, uh, went into a pub and called some friends back home.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And long story short, I ended up uh reconnecting with someone who I'd worked with in the dot com who was running the Cesarch Chavez Foundation in Los Angeles.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up being the development officer at the Chavez Foundation, um, which was wonderful.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I got to know members of the family and learn about his legacy and all the the work that he had done to try and lift up um, you know, communities across the country.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then um was there just about a year and went on to Stanford Law School after that.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so um we were just talking that our guest right before you was Dolores Huerta, who actually came out to our law firm.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we had her out there for a special event, members of our uh San Diego La Raza community, and how strong she's still going.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then I I saw that on your background, so I thought that was a neat, you know, coming together of worlds.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I I worked for a time at a very large law firm, Latham Watkins.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was on the recruiting committee, and so like if we saw a guy, uh Harvard undergraduate, London School of Economics, some interest in international issues, then goes to Stanford Law School, like you would be a very, very, very hot ticket for me.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like we would be after you hardcore, you know, especially, you know, underrepresented, you know, part of a large corporate law firm, you know, that that you would fulfill.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you could have made a ton of cash, man.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: So like, but you took a turn, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how come you decided to forego all that money?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, I I the the real answer is I had um work that I thought needed to be done back home and I had something to prove.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I and I did spend my my first summer in New York at a at a at a boutique white-collar law firm, and then I and then I worked for Oric in San Francisco.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um for my second summer.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was there was definitely You were being courted.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was definitely the the opportunities were there.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I was um, you know, I I I I saw that life of uh you know living my life in in six-minute increments and billing time for um wealthy clients and and big companies, and just thought, you know, why is this really what I went to law school to do?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um I had I got into um moot court in in Stanford and really decided, oh, this is what I want to be in court, this is what I want to do.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, there's there's no better training for courtroom fluency and just practice than the criminal justice system.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that left the public defender's office or the or the district attorney's office.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um I I ended up eventually running the largest law office in the state in the district attorney's office in Albuquerque.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: But at the time when I was talking to my dad, I, you know, he said, you should go to the one of the rural counties.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually ended up in the same county that he started off in when I was a little kid.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there were people there that used to babysit me as a child who saw, and they were on the verge of retirement, who saw me come back as a first-year ADA.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll never forget I walked in to this tiny little office.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was making$37,000 a year.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Most of my friends at Stanford were making$160,000,$170, and um they're living in London and New York and San Francisco and places like that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Oh, how's Albuquerque?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I'm not actually in Albuquerque.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: You find Albuquerque on a map and then drive south 45 minutes or 30 minutes.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and but I got what I wanted, I got what I asked for.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: They handed me a stack of files, and I'll never forget my my secretary said, and the court courthouse of the courts across the street.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the deep end of the pool.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um I ended up doing um trial work and being assigned to cases that frankly, had I been in a bigger office, I never would have had the opportunity.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: The most impactful and one that I've talked about a fair amount was um the the first major felony case I I worked on was a shaken baby case.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was involved a little boy who was about six months old, and his father had shaken him so violently that he was left permanently impaired, blind, and brain damaged.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was my job to prepare the experts in that case, and I called my dad in anticipation of the trial, thinking he was gonna give me some pointers about how to talk to the judge or enter evidence or do any of that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't do that.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Have you met this little boy?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't make any sense to me at the time.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, He's not he can't be a witness, he's he's two years old now and and he's he's impaired.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: He has no recollection of what happened.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: He says, You should do that.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so his foster parents brought him into this little conference room that we called a library, and they put him on the carrier in his carrier on the table.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, beautiful little boy, he looked like he could be a member of my family.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, they got him out, they started we started talking and I was playing with him a little bit, but you could slowly tell the the impact of what had been done to him.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh these foster parents loved him and they were you know really dedicated to to making him better.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they walked away, they took him home, and I just went outside and I just started crying.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I called my my then girlfriend, now wife, and I just said, I can't I made a mistake, I can't do this.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I can't, um this isn't what I thought it was.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um you know, she let me do that for a little little bit, and then she says, Okay, are you done?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and she says, Look, you know, you w you went you went to all these fancy schools and you did all these things.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um what are you gonna do with it?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That little boy needs somebody in court to speak for him.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it you know, if you're not gonna do this for him, who are you gonna do it for?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was sort of a light switch moment for me, and I I went and I dedicated myself and put everything that I had into um preparing for that case.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um it put me on a path where I became not just a reluctant participant in child abuse cases, but someone who volunteered.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: I used to go every weekend or every Friday, I would I would drive up to Albuquerque to the all-face receiving home and listen to safe house disclosures of little kids, young, young um um kids who had been sexually assaulted and physically assaulted.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um it just uh changed me completely.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um I can tell you that I never, you know, I still can't, you know, put together or compete with my law school classmates when it comes to the vacations that they go on or the cars that they have or the things that they do.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I wouldn't trade anything that I have done in my career for any of that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I just get a real sense of satisfaction from feeling like I have in some way done something to help people in my community who desperately need it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and very inspiring.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh congratulations for kind of making that choice, you know, to give back.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, it's it's uh a a good segue because, you know, you found that passion for helping children and some of the um most important uh work you're doing today is for children in New Mexico affected by social media.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so let's talk about that a little bit.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, in in in many respects, the the cases that we filed against the social media platforms, first against Meta last year and then against Snap just last week, are are really just extensions of the work that I did as a Frontline prosecutor so long ago.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: After I left that district attorney's office, I actually became an assistant attorney general under Patsy Madrid and then Gary King in New Mexico.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I worked in that role as an Internet Crimes Against Children prosecutor.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I prosecuted child pornography and child solicitation cases.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in those days, you would look for predators and people who were trading this material in sort of dark and hard to find places on the internet.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: What has changed through the evolution of technology and the rise of social media platforms is all of that has actually migrated not to the darkest corners of the web, but onto platforms that are readily available on devices that everyone in this country has access to, everyone in the world has access to.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was actually fairly surprised as a former ITAC prosecutor at the ease with which predators were able to use platforms to target and groom and potentially meet in real life, these children who frankly didn't understand, I think, the danger associated with this space.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know clearly now that parents don't understand what is going on.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's pretty well documented the mental health and psychological harms that are associated with extensive social media use.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of my colleagues and fellow attorneys general from around the country have filed actions focused on that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we included claims against that as well.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: But the the predation of children and the ease with which people are potentially victimized in these spaces is alarming.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: By their own account, a hundred thousand children every single day globally receive sexually explicit material or solicitations for sex sometimes in some form or fashion, just on Meta's platforms.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: After we filed the lawsuit, one of the things that is benefit is a function of my having been a prosecutor in this space, we actually organized a criminal case called Operation Medophile.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: We went on the platform and we did an undercover operation and apprehended three men who showed up at a motel in Gallup, New Mexico, thinking they were going to have sex with an underage girl at that motel.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so it what we were trying to do in that instance is demonstrate that that this threat doesn't just exist in the virtual world and on someone's phone.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It actually moves into real life each and every day, and something that that these platforms and their executives need to be accountable for.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing that work.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: What advice would you give?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because I got I got kids, I've and you know, I try to we try to super limit their access, generally speaking.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I find that hard to do with a teenager sometimes, but what's the best advice you would give to parents of children to help prevent that in the meanwhile?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well I look, I'm I'm probably the wrong guy to ask.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a prosecutor, uh a child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor who's the son of a prosecutor.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the advice I'm going to give you is probably uh a little bit harsher than what most parents are ready for.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: What I would tell and what I try to tell parents is, you know, I you need at a minimum to understand exactly what is on the your children's phones, who they're in touch with, how they're using these applications.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: My own personal view is that social media is not appropriate for anyone under the age of 18.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I mean, I have a 15-year-old right now that if she heard this podcast, she would be both rolling her eyes and disavowing me to all of her friends.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I so I recognize that.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: But um given where they the the lack of oversight by these companies and their awareness that there are predators each and every day in these spaces, I don't think it's safe for children.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's safe for children to to you know use these platforms at the at the volume that they do right now.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: That the Surgeon General has issued a call, which we have supported for Congress, to actually mandate a warning label on these things, like we did with cigarettes.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the amount of uh time that adolescents spend is extraordinarily dangerous.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And particularly for um the impact that this has on brain development um and the addictive nature of it.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a spl it's a place that enables sex tortion, cyberbullying, um, and a lot of of really dangerous things.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: From my own uh part, what we have done is eventually we gave our oldest a phone that is um a bark phone to actually control I I can control the phone.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have to approve every app on the phone, and I'm able to see communications on the phone.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I know um exactly what she's saying and who she's communicating with and what apps are are available to her or not.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's probably m more than a lot of parents feel is necessary, but I think if they saw what I saw each and every day, um they would probably be doing the same thing.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: I have I have a 15-year-old daughter myself, 15-year-old son, twins, and a 17-year-old.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um I appreciate your comments because they're gonna give me and their mom license to uh increase scrutiny and control of those communications.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think probably, you know, not only because of who you are as our guest, but because of what you just said, this may be the most listened-to podcast episode we ever have, because every parent that has a teenage kid is gonna make their kid listen to this now and say, This is why I'm doing this, kid.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, you know, take take the complaint that we filed against Meta.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: There was there were nearly it's over 200 pages.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: We spent days scrubbing images and messages because they were they were literally too explicit to be included in a public file.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think there's a there's a distance between when I say, oh, this is dangerous, and and parents kind of say, Oh yeah, oh yeah, sure it is, sure it is.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing if I filled this room with parents and I showed them the unaltered, unredacted images that were being sent and the solicitations that were being sent to what the the perpetrators thought was an 11-year-old girl, they would be astonished.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: They would be horrified.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I frankly think that um most of them would um be very reluctant to allow their kids to have the kind of access that they do right now.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, we talk you talked about your children.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Is there any hope of or expression of desire to have a third generation of trial lawyer or prosecutor in the family?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so my so let's start with the youngest, my my boy.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: He he is he's not interested in politics, he's not interested in the law, and he's starting to figure out that the stock market looks a lot like a video game.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we, you know, there may be, he's probably going in a different direction.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: My oldest, my my girl, um she is uh a natural-born advocate, let's just say that.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: She is passionate about a great many things.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: She is very passionate about immigration.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think because some of her earliest memories were sort of born in the in the in the hateful rhetoric that came from former President Trump.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that kind of has motivated her to be interested in those issues.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so we'll we'll see if she ends up following in our footsteps.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um she's also a very gifted artist, so she may go in a different direction, but uh there's there's a decent chance that she ends up um you know making a case in court one day.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that that's interesting because I was thinking about talking to you about a subject um that that kind of combines uh rhetoric around immigration, around criminal stuff, around politics.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that is um, you know, we see lately, and especially when elections roll around, this suggestion that immigrants or particular groups of immigrants are a threat to public safety and in fact are the biggest threat of criminal activity, you know, that we can face.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: And hence, you know, we must shut down the borders, you know, to protect our families and our and our children.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we see some um talk of Haitian immigrants, you know, attacking and you know, eating animals.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, last election cycle it was MS-13, you know, this great threat from El Salvador.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, now we hear um in your neighboring state Texas, you know, this suggestion that this Venezuelan gang is some great threat.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um how do you view like actually being in the seat looking at criminal activity on a daily basis?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: How do you see, you know, what I would say is a hijacking of the criminal justice system as a political ploy, you know, to scare mainly white people into having, you know, this anti-immigrant rhetoric that that your daughter's so passionate about?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, this this is a this is a very old, old um political ploy.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would imagine that if you could go back to the to the Roman Empire, right, there was probably some um ill-informed, um xenophobic uh public figure who was pounding on the table about you know all of the immigrants pouring into Rome and um The Persians.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, who who knows what it was.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: But this is this is not new.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and frankly, it is um it's not just offensive, it's tired and it's played out.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um now, as a as somebody who has worked in law enforcement on the border, including as an assistant United States attorney, I have prosecuted prosecuted people for criminal re-entry.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've done more of those cases than I can count.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: 1326.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: 1326, I think.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I remember those.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's over and over and over again.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's no doubt that we need more enforcement at the border.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: We need an orderly process at the border.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think we need to create and provide the kinds of resources that we need for immigration judges, border patrol agents, investments in technology, all of those things.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: But we also have to recognize that immigrants in this country, number one, commit crimes at a much lower rate than the Native-born Americans.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: They try to lay low.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: They do they do.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I've seen that time and again.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I saw it as district attorney.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: I would constantly, I would go on on radio programs, sometimes conservative talk radio, and they would say, oh, it's immigrants driving this crime problem.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I would have to remind them, no, and to your point, the reason for that is there most of them are here to try and improve their lives and make things better for the next generation.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, they came here for the exact same reasons that every previous generation of immigrants from all over the world have come to try and achieve because they believe that this is a place where they can have a better life and they can build something for their future.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's it's simply not true that they're driving the crime and public safety challenges in our cities.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it is also true that we we can't turn a blind eye to chaotic scenes.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have to have a border that is functional, um, and we have to be able to um have a dynamic and thoughtful response to the challenges of a nation that frankly has a declining birth rate.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at some of this is me now looking back towards my time at the London School of Economics, uh productivity growth is actually directly connected to your birth rate.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: So part of the problem, I don't know if you remember the rise of Japan in the 80s and 90s, right?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to him?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to him is a decl is a stagnating birth rate, a declining birth rate.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot, it's a it's a there was a whole, there were banking issues and lots of other issues, but there that was a place where, in part, the reluctance of the Japanese to open up their country to thoughtful immigration meant that they were destined to lower levels of productivity because they had a lower birth rate.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have the same challenges here.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is how we come up with a system that actually enables the best and the brightest from all over the world, not just Latin America, but from all over the world, to come to this country and enrich our country, to enrich our communities, to bring important skills that we need to build a modern economy.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um we can do that, and and we've done it before, but what you are seeing in the rhetoric around immigration in the last 10 years is really, I think, a function of some of the failed agreements and some of the failed perspectives that um came to pass in the 90s, right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: We had just won the Cold War, we were knocking down barriers to trade, we enacted NAFTA.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, had a devastating impact on the agricultural economy in Mexico, which actually animated and promoted more immigration.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: It also devastated and undermined manufacturing and industrial communities across the upper Midwest.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you walk, when someone like former President Trump goes into Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio and places that had used to have thriving manufacturing economies, it is absolutely true that those communities were devastated when those businesses pulled up and went to Mexico.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's an easy case in those communities to make, hey, not only did your government sell you out by shipping these jobs over to Mexico, but now we have people coming over the border, right?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is a there's a trauma that occurred in these communities, and now a simple, bigoted answer to all of the country's challenges resonates with people.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the challenge for Democrats in this environment is not just to reject hateful, bigoted language that tries to ostracize a community and demean a community, but also to recognize and ask ourselves hard questions about why that rhetoric is resonating with fellow citizens, right?
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes we have a hard time doing that.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have a hard time recognizing um how much has happened in those places that used to have these mill towns and small factories where people could have a great middle class life.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um now they feel like they've been left behind.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is part of what um sort of prompted me to study globalization nearly 25 years ago and grappling and dealing with that um is at the heart of the dynamics that you're seeing unfold right now.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the Democratic Party really needs to be thoughtful about how it approaches international trade and immigration, because here's the last point.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have a tendency, especially in this country, to only think about what's going on in the political and economic spheres that are impacting our day-to-day lives.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: What we are not recognizing, though, is that this same argument, you're seeing the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric and right-wing authoritarianism all over the world.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's happening in Europe, it's happening all over the world.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that should tell us something about this isn't just uh a function or a feature of Donald Trump and his rhetoric.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a function of a failed economic worldview that didn't fully account for um how destructive these new policies would be to communities on the margins.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and how we have a conversation that respects the dignity of an aspiring immigrant community while also respecting the dignity of um, you know, folks in in hard-hit towns in Ohio and Michigan, that's the challenge for modern leaders in the in the Democratic Party.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a tough issue.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um you came over here to Texas to talk to us from New Mexico at a time.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know this, but um the state of Texas recently installed, had their um, I think State National Guard go out and install razor wire uh between the on the state border, not the international border, the state border uh between New Mexico and Texas.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: Are are you aware of that?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I am and and and it they were so incompetent in doing it that we actually there was some.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Were you able to get through?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: I uh well I somehow managed to get here, but but aside from that, they they actually um didn't have their lines and their maps correct.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they were actually laying wire separating Texas from Texas at certain points.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you know it it's it's again, it it is a another example of this kind of pathetic modern phenomenon of uh political theater, right?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Masquerading as real policy.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's what this is.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not in any way an attempt to either solve that crisis um or come up with a thoughtful response to a complicated issue.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just theater and and and and sound and fury signifying nothing.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's um also, as as my you know, some of my people would say, just tonteria.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's a some of it was um the laying of razor wire along the river right next to a bridge.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: So literally somebody could walk across the bridge and take a look at the razor wire.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's just dumb, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I d I don't think I think people are tired of dumb political theater.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is a yearning in this country for serious people who just want to make things work and have hard conversations.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and frankly, what that's gonna mean is being able to find some consensus between evolving but very different views of how the world should be organized.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what was such a tragedy about um this latest bill that was proposed by Congress that was negotiated with very conservative members of the Republican uh caucus.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was a significant bill.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: It would have had, I think, an impact on what was going on at the border and put us on a more sustainable path.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: President Biden said he would sign it.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um President Trump, former President Trump, um issued a call to kill that bill.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Not because he disagreed with the policy, but because he wanted to run on this empty, hateful rhetoric.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think people are worn out because there was a time when American government was capable of tackling big challenges and big problems in an in an unwieldy and very diverse nation.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think we're looking for uh a return to that sense of of what is possible.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree um completely.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so kind of in closing, um what uh advice you know, we have a lot of listeners and viewers that are maybe um, you know, law students, younger people thinking about law, uh maybe um you know, new lawyers, you know, thinking about what they'd like to do.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I like to think a lot of our, you know, viewers and listeners are of Latino descent.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, what advice would you give to them to have a a happy, successful, and fulfilling life and career?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, um You you have to be mindful of w why it is that you will started walking down this road to begin with.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, to your earlier question about what was what was on the table in terms of salary and money and all of those things.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have I have dear friends of mine who made a choice early in their career either to get rid of debt or do other things that they were going to go down that path.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not mindful, that short detour to trying to pay down your debt or do those sorts of things becomes a life.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I get it, right?
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you're young.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's nice to have the ability to do things that you weren't able to, especially for young Latino lawyers who probably are coming from backgrounds oftentimes where they didn't have those things.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: But you get to a certain point in your life where the measure of what you have accomplished is not found in what you have.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of measured by what you've done.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what that really means is, you know, was seen in an early memory that I had with people who had come up to my dad in the community.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they would kind of tap him on the shoulder or pull him aside, and they would have a private conversation, and they would oftentimes be crying, and I didn't really know what it was.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it dawned on me later on that those were victims, those were family members of people who he had tried to help.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I know that happens in private practice, and I and I applaud it when it does.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, when they when we're all gonna go to the same place, uh, we're all gonna end our journey in the same way.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you were lucky, people are gonna gather around and they're gonna share stories about what it meant and what you meant.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they're probably not gonna share stories about that deposition that you argued, you know, better than the next lawyer or that contract that you wrote that really, you know, handled that one issue that your client was worried about.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be what impact you had in the world.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so even if you've decided that public service and public interest isn't your path, then take the time to do important pro bono work.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Take the time to give back, take the time to, you know, if you're gonna focus on building that practice, well, what is my legacy outside of the practice?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: What groups did I help?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: What children did I lift up?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: What communities have I served and saved in some important way?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, from my perspective, that's all that really matters are the stories that they tell on the day after you leave.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's really good stuff.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: I can't think of a better uh way to end our conversation with that.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so thank you, sir, for spending the time with us.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: Super appreciate it.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this concludes uh this episode of the Latino, where we talk about the intersection of the law and our Latino communities.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh look forward to uh our next episode and and having you uh join us.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but thank you again, sir.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Latino podcast.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.