Structural inequalities at home take back seat to war abroad

I work as an assistant federal public defender in Albuquerque. I am also one of 12 fellows, selected out of a pool of hundreds, for a two-year defender services program created in 2022. The Federal Public Defender Non-Capital Diversity Fellowship seeks to bring diverse perspectives to federal defense.

As an Iranian-American, a first-generation immigrant to the United States, the geographical reality of where I was born determined the trajectory of my life. My family immigrated to the U.S. after the Iranian revolution of 1979 to live in a free society that values human rights. We placed our faith in the guarantees of the Constitution.

I became a lawyer to uphold those guarantees, chief among them the Sixth Amendment guarantee of zealous representation. That promise requires that I address underlying structural inequities that often account for my clients being in court in the first place.

Over the past 14 months in New Mexico, I have witnessed a devastating picture of a justice system focused on punishment that fails to grapple with those structural inequities. Most of my clients struggle with substance use disorder. All of them are abjectly poor. Many of them are Native Americans.

With respect to my Native clients, their inability to do better does not arise in a void. History is relevant. Their failure to conform to the law stems from intergenerational trauma unmitigated by adequate resources. Our government took Native land, displaced Native people, and split families apart when it removed children from parents and sent them to boarding schools. The substance use disorders that are rampant in this population are directly linked to this history.

Given this context, I note, with dismay the (Nov. 5 Sunday Journal’s) front page that fails to mention the protests in the nation’s capital (on Nov. 4). Tens of thousands marched to protest our federal government underwriting the mass bombing of civilians in the Middle East.

There is no legal basis under international law for bombing children, men and women. Nor for killing journalists, bombing hospitals and refugee camps.

There is no logic to the U.S. government funding the decimation of a people across the globe, when it fails to provide needed resources right here in Albuquerque.

My clients languish in jail, even after the court orders them to a halfway house, because there are no available beds in Albuquerque. Jails are overrun with drugs and clients regularly overdose. The court, probation (system), the U.S. marshals, defense lawyers, and attorneys for the United States all know this. We need infrastructure and utilities across Native lands. We need work programs. We need rehabilitation centers. We need educational resources.

Yet none of this is forthcoming.

Meanwhile, we have the economic wherewithal to support the indiscriminate killing of children, men and women in Gaza.

On the day after thousands of individuals raised their voices to supplicate the government to stop funding a genocide, I expect more from the Fourth Estate than to devote its front page to a story about a defendant again facing charges, and a story about scattered debris from an Air Force jet crash in the Sandias.

The Journal had a responsibility to report on the protests.

Dorna Khazeni is a United States public defender for the District of New Mexico.