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Divisions

Appeals Division

The Appeals Division is responsible for drafting, editing, and submitting briefs in criminal cases from the district on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The section also conducts oral arguments before the Tenth Circuit in criminal cases.

Civil Division

The Civil Division, which handles a large number and wide variety of civil actions encompassing both affirmative and defensive cases. Affirmative actions include affirmative civil enforcement, eminent domain actions, enforced collection of student loans, criminal monetary impositions, bond forfeitures, judgment debts and other types of collection cases including bankruptcies, mortgage foreclosures, and judicial foreclosures. Defensive actions include those brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, Title VII (employment discrimination), the Freedom of Information Act, and a myriad of other civil actions. Affirmative civil enforcement actions include cases under the False Claims Act such as Medicaid/Medicare fraud, government contract fraud, qui tams actions, anti-kickback cases.

Criminal Division

The Criminal Division is the largest of the District’s divisions, consisting of over seventy Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) in Albuquerque and Las Cruces.  AUSAs in the Criminal Division work with agents from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to prosecute a wide variety of criminal activity, including violent crime in Indian Country, complex white collar crime, public corruption, illegal immigration, national security, child exploitation, firearms offenses, human trafficking, and drug trafficking.  Criminal Division AUSAs are assigned to four sections in the Albuquerque office – Indian Country Crimes, Violent and Community Crimes, Fraud and Public Corruption, and Narcotics – as well as the Las Cruces Branch Office (described below).  In addition, the Asset Recovery Unit is responsible for the litigation of criminal and civil forfeiture cases and the enforcement of monetary impositions ordered as a result of civil judgments and criminal convictions in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico.

Las Cruces Branch Office

The Las Cruces office is approximately 225 miles south of Albuquerque. The Las Cruces Branch Office is responsible for prosecutions arising out of the southern portion of New Mexico. The branch office prosecutes principally narcotics and immigration-related offenses, but is also responsible for an assortment of firearms, public integrity, Indian Country and other types of cases.

Updated August 6, 2019