Local DA says immigrant crime victims are going silent amid deportation fears, letting abusers free

For weeks, First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said she’d been looking forward to a Monday pretrial interview with a foreign-born victim of domestic violence.

The woman accused her partner, a United States citizen, of abusing her and two kids, both under age 11 and citizens themselves. As of mid-January, Carmack-Altwies said, the woman was in “wonderful” contact with prosecutors to bring the case to trial. One remaining hurdle before court was the interview. 

“All of the sudden, now she will not return our calls, return our texts,” Carmack-Altwies told Source New Mexico in her office Tuesday. “And this is a man that preyed not only on her but on two young children.”

Because she hasn’t heard from her, the district attorney can’t be certain why the woman would suddenly cease contact, but in her professional opinion only one reason makes sense: She’s afraid of being deported, due to President Donald Trump’s executive orders cracking down on immigrants. The case will likely be dismissed, she said.

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Even within the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency, Carmack-Altwies said, she’s seen a marked decrease in immigrant victims testifying against alleged perpetrators in her judicial district, which includes Santa Fe, Española and Los Alamos. She declined to provide the woman’s name because she hopes to convince her to talk and the case is still pending. 

Still, she expects more cases like the woman’s getting dismissed. 

“And what does that mean? It means that we have a domestic violence abuser and a child abuser that is going to walk away scot-free,” she said. 

Also troubling, she said, is that some defense attorneys are making a point of asking their clients’ Spanish-speaking accusers about their citizenship status. Her office declined to name the attorneys, but she sees it as a tactic to scare victims into silence.

“I think that is really scaring victims into not wanting to cooperate, because they don’t want to be on the record saying, ‘I’m undocumented.’”

In the woman’s case, Carmack-Altwies said they’d discussed the possibility of applying for a “U visa,” which allows foreign-born crime victims some deportation protection as they help law enforcement and prosecutors. The district attorney said she’d helped about 25 victims apply for that visa in 2024. 

But, these days, it’s hard to be convincing amid the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the White House. 

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“When one side of the government is telling communities, ‘You’re getting deported, you deserve to be in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay, you’re lawbreakers,’ and the other side is like, ‘No we can help. We can protect you,’ they’re never going to believe us,” Carmack-Altwies said.

President Trump issued a flurry of executive orders aimed to make deportation easier and faster, and rumors of federal immigration raids have shot fear through communities in the First Judicial District and elsewhere.

But for all the promises Trump has made about getting tough on crime, Carmack-Altwies said his immigration policies are just making her job harder and the public, immigrants and citizens alike, less safe.

“When the case comes to us, and people won’t come testify, or they won’t come to trial, they won’t talk to the DAS, they won’t talk to the police, that just means that bad actors can prey on lower income and different types of communities,” she said.