A former federal prosecutor under the Trump administration and current Fresno City Council candidate made comments at a recent election forum implying he deliberately undermined immigration-related cases he worked on, according to two witnesses who were in attendance that day.<\/p>\n
Reached for comment Monday, District 1 candidate Rob Fuentes, did not address direct questions about his comments and did not deny making them. He accused his political opponent of trying to \u201crevive\u201d the controversy.<\/p>\n
Fuentes\u2019 track record as a now-former Trump DOJ prosecutor has been scrutinized since late June when he defended his work arguing on behalf of ICE<\/a> in at least 124 immigration-related cases while also advocating for the abolition of ICE on the campaign trail \u2014 only to be placed on administrative leave and then quit<\/a> his federal prosecutor job in early July following his comments.<\/p>\n Fuentes has stressed that these ICE-related cases made up a small percentage of his workload as a prosecutor before he says he was \u201cpushed out by the Trump administration\u201d and that while he considered leaving his job, he felt he could still engage in \u201charm reduction\u201d through the immigration cases he worked on.<\/p>\n At an Aug. 6 candidate forum hosted by the Fresno chapter of SEIU Local 2015, Fuentes went even further, said attendee Reza Nekumanesh.<\/p>\n In Nekumanesh\u2019s recollection, Fuentes brought up the number of ICE-related cases before asking the audience, consisting of SEIU Local 2015 members, if they were aware how many of those cases he actually won. Fuentes then added that he \u201cobviously wasn\u2019t working very hard\u201d on the cases, Nekumanesh said.<\/p>\n Nekumanesh recalled an SEIU member asking: \u201cSo what you\u2019re saying is you purposely lost the case? That\u2019s even worse,\u201d to which Fuentes responded that he wasn\u2019t going to say that publicly but would say it to the audience that day \u2014 which Nekumanesh said consisted of no more than 25 people, including the five council candidates in attendance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs if it wasn\u2019t a public gathering,\u201d Nekumanesh said. \u201cThere\u2019s no secrecy here.\u201d<\/p>\n Ariana Martinez-Lott, a candidate in the District 7 council race who also attended the SEIU forum, similarly recalled the exchange in which Fuentes was asked about and did not deny losing cases deliberately.<\/p>\n Fuentes didn\u2019t respond to specific questions regarding his comments at the Aug. 6 forum, instead issuing a statement saying that he approached the immigration cases assigned to him \u201cin line with my ethical duties, a strong commitment to the rule of law, and a deep respect for individuals\u2019 constitutional rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Fuentes also invoked the tense city council District 1 race<\/a> in his statement, accusing his opponent Naindeep Singh, who he\u2019ll face in a November runoff, of being behind efforts to keep Fuentes\u2019 track record at the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in the headlines.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m disappointed \u2014 but not at all surprised \u2014 that my opponent and his supporters keep trying to revive this story,\u201d he said, \u201cto distract from the real issues facing Fresno residents.\u201d<\/p>\n Singh fired back in a statement Monday evening, saying Fuentes has a \u201ccharacter problem.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe hid his ICE work. He spun it. He played the victim. Now he claims he was sabotaging cases he took an oath and a paycheck to defend,\u201d said Singh, who also participated in the Aug. 6 candidate forum. \u201cAsk yourself, if true, that\u2019s disqualifying and reveals he is untrustworthy. If false, he\u2019s lying to survive the news cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n Thousands of federal prosecutors have quit, taken buyouts or gotten fired<\/a> since the start of the Trump administration. Federal departments are struggling to fill open positions<\/a> with experienced prosecutors.<\/p>\n Fresnoland reached out to the California Department of Justice and California Bar Association for comment.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/2026\/08\/18\/rob-fuentes-2\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/fresnoland.org”>Fresnoland<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fresnoland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/cropped-Fresnoland_FacebookProfile.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=91196″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/2026\/08\/18\/rob-fuentes-2\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/fresnoland.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Julianna Morano, Fresnoland August 18, 2026 A former federal prosecutor under the Trump administration and current Fresno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-436262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}