EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — El Paso District Court Judge Marlene Gonzalez is stepping back from cases involving migrant children, following allegations that she behaved impartially and prejudiced toward them in hearings.
El Paso District Court Judge Marlene Gonzalez
“As a judge, the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct prevents me from submitting to an interview or commenting on a case that I have recused myself from hearing. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide this response,” read a statement from Gonzalez who noted she voluntarily recused herself from hearings regarding unaccompanied migrant children’s cases.
On Dec. 17, 2025, attorneys from Estrella del Paso – an immigrant advocacy organization – filed a motion to recuse Gonzalez from hearings involving unaccompanied migrant children – children entering the U.S. illegally and without a parent or guardian.
In the court filing, attorneys and social services workers with the organization submitted written declarations detailing allegations that Gonzalez showed a “pattern and practice of cruelty” towards migrant children during the hearings.
You can read the filing here.
The declarations made allegations that Gonzalez would subject children to humiliating interrogations about why they left their country, and that on multiple occasions she shamed the children for abandoning their parents.
In one account an attorney alleged that Gonzalez interrogated a 17-year-old Guatemalan boy who testified that he fled his country to Mexico from an abusive alcoholic father, but that he was kidnapped and beat up twice while in Mexico. The attorney alleged that in response, Gonzalez “harangued” the boy: “Why didn’t you stay in another part of Mexico? It’s beautiful, and it’s big. Why didn’t you stay in another part of Mexico?” the document read.
In another hearing involving a 16-year old Venezuelan girl from Venezuela who had been a victim of child prostitution, an attorney alleged that Gonzalez scolded the child “not to engage in prostitution.”
The filing went on to note that despite these alleged practices by Gonzalez, she would “unexpectedly” grant children their petitions seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Visas, but that she recently began denying the petitions without providing any reasoning in 2025.
Estrella del Paso declined an interview request with KTSM and instead offered the following statement:
“For nearly 40 years, Estrella del Paso has provided legal representation and other legal services to immigrants in El Paso. We are a non-profit law firm. As attorneys, we take our legal and ethical duties to our clients very seriously, and we file every motion and document with the court with these duties in mind. The motion filed includes several detailed examples that our legal team took time and detailed care to compile. For accuracy and completeness, we encourage you to refer directly to that filing. We will not comment on the motions or our interactions with the court. All our clients are owed a duty of confidentiality, and we will not violate this duty, especially in the case of vulnerable children.”
Gonzalez’s current term runs through 2028.
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