EL PASO, Tx., January 14, 2026: A court document filed on December 17 alleges that El Paso Judge Marlene Gonzalez has a “pattern and practice of cruelty towards” migrant children in her courtroom. Last Friday, El Paso Herald Post received a copy of the court document from El Paso attorney Joy Degenhart. An attorney for the non-profit Estrella del Paso filed the motion to remove Gonzalez from a case he was working on alleging that Gonzalez was abusive towards migrants children in her courtroom.
The Estrella del Paso, formerly the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services (DMRS) is a nonprofit organization established in 1986 to help asylum seekers. Estrella del Paso is a ministry of the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso. It changed its name from DMRS to Estrella del Paso in 2023.
Estrella del Paso attorney, Jacob Wedemeyer, filed a recusal request asking that Gonzalez be removed from presiding over his case involving a migrant child because of Gonzalez’s “pattern and practice of cruelty towards unaccompanied noncitizen children.”
According to the court filing, the nonprofit provides legal representation to unaccompanied noncitizen children “who enter the United States without legal status and without a parent.” Migrant children without authority to be in the U.S. have access to a Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) visa that provides them a pathway to citizenship. To obtain the SIJ visa, the migrant minor must have a state court issue a finding that under state law the “reunification with one or both parents is not viable because of abuse, abandonment, or neglect, and it is not in the best interest of the child” to return to their home country.
If the state court issues the finding that the migrant child meets the requirements under state law, then the child can use the finding to file for the SIJ visa to allow the child to remain in the country.
According to the recusal motion, Gonzalez “has engaged in a pattern and practice of cruelty towards unaccompanied noncitizen children who appear before her court since 2021.” The motion alleges that “her cruelty has escalated over the years.”
In one case, a 17-year-old who had been admitted to several psychiatric facilities was asked by Gonzalez if he “believe[s] that coming to the United States was a free-for-all, and that you could do whatever, and you can go to any place you want,” after the boy had told her that he “would just get sad” because he wasn’t allowed to leave the shelter and would start cutting his arms. Gonzalez then asked the lawyers to present evidence of “the boy abandoning his mother.”
According to Wedemeyer’s filing, Gonzalez “commonly shames the children by accusing them of abandoning their parents,” in leading questions like, “isn’t it true that you abandoned your parents when you came to the United States?” The court filing states that the question is not appropriate because “nothing in the Texas Family Code imposes a duty on minor children not to abandon their parents.”
In another case presented by Wedemeyer, Gonzalez “scolded” a 16-year-old Venezuelan girl who was the victim of child protestation, telling her “not to engage in prostitution.”
The court filing includes affidavits from lawyers and social services providers documenting how Gonzalez treats migrant children in her courtroom. In one affidavit by Valgina Rodriguez Calderon, also an Estrella del Paso attorney, she wrote that Gonzalez “has engaged in conduct that demonstrates bias, prejudice, hostility, or disregard toward migrant children” in her courtroom.
Calderon goes on to write in her affidavit that Gonzalez expresses “a view of superiority and bias” when children in her courtroom communicate in any Mayan language. According to Calderon, when Gonzalez publicly labels Mayan “are dialects instead of languages,” it “marginalizes groups erroneously linked with ‘poverty’ and ‘ignorance’,” through “a stigma that connects their Indigenous heritage” by using their native Mayan language.
The are more than 20 Mayan languages that are separate languages and not dialects. University of Illinois professor Ryan Shosted explained that the language label is “a reflection of power,” and that “people get to call the thing they speak a language if the[y] have socioeconomic and political power.”
Labelling Maya as a dialect can lead to problems in the courtroom because the assumption is made that a Spanish interpreter is enough for the court proceeding leading to factual problems detrimental to the Mayan speaker.
Last Wednesday, January 7, Gonzalez filed a signed order voluntarily recusing herself from the Wedemeyer case. The latest recusal by Gonzalez adds to several others filed by other attorneys for the last three years.
Several Attorneys Have Filed Recusals Against Gonzalez
The Wedemeyer recusal is not the only recusal granted to an attorney complaining about Gonzalez. El Paso Herald Post reviewed several other recusals that were granted to attorneys accusing Gonzalez of migrant or other bias. In a 2022 recusal case filed by Robert R. Feuille, Gonzalez recused herself citing an “adversarial position.” In another case, this one in July 2025 case, attorney Joe Rosales filed a motion against Gonzalez asking for her recusal from a case he was representing, also citing an “adversarial position.”
In September, local attorney and former opponent for Gonzalez’s court seat, Joy Degenhart, filed a motion to recuse her from a case Degenhart was working on. According to Degenhart’s filing, she felt that Gonzalez “would be unable to maintain a fair and impartial appearance.” Degenhart explained in her filing that Gonzalez filed a grievance against her on February 26, 2024. Degenhart was challenging Gonzalez for her seat in the 2024 elections.
Degenhart’s motion explains that Gonzalez had also filed grievances against Feuille, Rosales and now Degenhart without disclosing the grievances to the attorneys who continued trying cases in Gonzalez’s courtroom. According to the court filing, Gonzalez should have notified the attorneys about the grievances so that they could seek a recusal if they wished to.
In another case filed in September, local attorney Doris Sipes also filed a recusal request against Gonzalez. Sipes’ recusal request cites that prior recusals were granted because of the bias Gonzalez had exhibited towards Sipes.
In December, attorney Maria Elena Grasheim filed another motion asking that Gonzalez recuse herself from Grasheim’s case. According to Grasheim’s filing, the animosity between her and Gonzalez began during the 2020 Democratic primary where Gonzalez was challenging the incumbent Laura Strathman for the seat currently held by Gonzalez.
The highly contention campaign led to several accusations between the candidates with accusations exchanged on social media, including a video of Strathman removing a Gonzalez campaign banner.
Grasheim alleges in her filing that her and her law firm’s public support for Strathman led to the animosity between them requiring the recusal.
We asked Marlene Gonzalez for a comment on Monday regarding the allegations. We have not heard back from her. We also asked Estrella del Paso and Joy Degenhart for comments.
In an email comment yesterday, Degenhart wrote that “the allegations in this [Estrella del Paso] recusal should cause concern for each member of the El Paso County community.” She added that “when our sitting judges are accused of a ‘pattern and practice of cruelty towards unaccompanied non-citizen children’, we must ask ourselves what is going wrong with our judicial system.” She also added that “these are child[ren] at their most vulnerable, seeking protection from our family courts,” and that “the allegations made by numerous attorneys in the recusal filed by Attorney Jacob Wedemeyer raise serious concerns about the Judge Gonzalez.”
Yesterday, Melissa M. Lopez, executive director for Estrella del Paso, sent us a written statement. In it, Lopez wrote that “for nearly 40 years, Estrella del Paso has provided legal representation and other legal services to immigrants in El Paso.” She added that “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 statement added that “the motion filed includes several detailed examples that our legal team took time and detailed care to compile.” Directing us to the court filing, Lopez wrote that “we will not comment on the motions or our interactions with the court,” because “all our clients are owed a duty of confidentiality, and we will not violate this duty, especially in the case of vulnerable children.”
In addition to the recusals, Gonzalez also faces a whistleblower lawsuit.
Former Gonzalez Bailiff Files Lawsuit
Although KDBC reported in June 2024 that a wrongful termination lawsuit was filed by a former bailiff, court records show that instead of a wrongful termination lawsuit, Roy Davis filed a Whistleblower Act lawsuit.
Texas is an “at-will state” that allow employers to fire employees and employees to quit their jobs at any time and for any reason.
In his lawsuit, Davis alleges that on May 22, 2024, he and another bailiff responded to an alarm in Gonzalez’s courtroom. When they arrived, Davis wrote in the lawsuit, that he asked Gonzalez what was going on. According to Davis, she responded that “nothing was wrong, that she just pressed the panic button to see if it worked.” According to Davis, after telling Gonzalez that he was required to file an incident report, he alleges that Gonzalez “threatened” him that if he filed a report, “she would fire him.” Davis alleges that after he filed his report, Gonzalez fired him on May 31, 2024.
In her response to Davis’ lawsuit in September, Gonzalez wrote that bailiffs are exempt from the County’s grievance and appeal process. Gonzalez adds in her response that she is unable to confirm whether Davis “had a duty to report the incident” as he alleged in his court filing. Gonzalez added in her response Davis may “have been terminated for other reasons not related to” the filing of the report Davis alleges led to his firing. Gonzalez’s response to the Davis lawsuit does not provide other reasons that may have led to his firing.
The case remains open before the court with a hearing scheduled for last Monday. No word yet on the results of Monday’s hearing.
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El Paso Herald Post staff reporter Melody Martinez, contributed to this story.
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