Austin Fisher
Source New Mexico

After Donald Trump was reelected as United States president last year, Alex Flores had no plans to leave his job at the federal Department of Justice.

But after Trump’s second inauguration, Flores said it quickly became clear to him that the administration “is politicizing and weaponizing the department, turning its powers on political enemies, punishing dissenters and turning its mission on its head,” he told Source NM in an interview on Thursday.

Flores, who lives in Albuquerque, resigned from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico on March 7, but made sure to outline his work in response to the infamous directive by Elon Musk to list five work accomplishments.

In his last week at work, Flores wrote in his resignation letter, he “reminded my fellow prosecutors that although we have now witnessed certain senior government officials engage in gross, politically motivated abuses of power, each of us can stand firm by our oath. By doing so, we safeguard New Mexico’s citizens and preserve our own honor.”

Flores told Source NM the request from the independent Office of Personnel Management for five work accomplishments stood out as “highly unusual” based on his experience in the Marine Corps and at DOJ. Every federal employee is required to report their work to be held accountable to a chain of command, he said.

“The idea that an external entity, not even belonging to the U.S. government, would demand work updates was asinine,” Flores said. “I think that the purpose of that organization has not been to increase the efficiency of government, but instead to gut and handicap government.”

He said no one thing caused him to leave, but rather the cumulative effect of the department’s promise to punish law firms that provide legal support to the president’s political opponents; its discontinuation of the Civil Rights and Public Integrity sections’ work; and its elimination of due process protections for whole classes of people being deported under the Alien Sedition Act.

But one situation that “really got under my skin,” Flores said, was when federal prosecutors implemented Trump’s policy by questioning Native Americans’ U.S. citizenship in court.

“The United States’ connection with the children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors is weaker than its connection with members of Indian tribes. If the latter link is insufficient for birthright citizenship, the former certainly is,” the Trump administration argued in a case challenging his birthright citizenship executive order.

Flores is married to and a father of enrolled members of New Mexico Pueblos.

“I found it unconscionable that we were citing that kind of law in legal arguments,” he told Source NM.

‘Good people remain’

Earlier in Flores’ legal career, he clerked for then New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Edward Chávez until joining the Marine Corps in 2014 as a prosecutor and then an instructor on the law of war. He took the job at the DOJ in February 2020, during the first Trump administration, according to his resume.

“I have only ever worked in public service, in government, and so it was a natural continuation on that path,” he said.

Flores worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico for five years, where he co-led the Indian Country Crimes Section, a team of six prosecutors who handle cases in and affecting Native sovereign lands in New Mexico.

He said he personally prosecuted nearly 200 federal felony cases and supervised the prosecution of approximately 200 to 400 felony cases.

Flores said he will continue service in the military reserves and is joining a plaintiffs’ law firm in Albuquerque called Singleton Schreiber, where he will focus on personal injury lawsuits, environmental injury, mass tort claims and wildfire litigation.

The Indian Country Crimes Section’s mission had not fundamentally changed when Flores left earlier this month, he said, and his departure was not about what was happening to the section.

“Good people remain in the department and remain in government doing the good, critical and necessary work,” Flores said. “This was a very personal decision, and even though I could not go on serving in this administration, I am glad, heartened and grateful that other people are staying.”