Congressman pays traffic citations from 2002

Congressman Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat representing southern New Mexico and a former Las Cruces City Council member, recently confronted long overdue fees stemming from traffic citations he received in El Paso in 2002.

The matter came to light this week when the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative political journal, reported that “police in El Paso, Texas, executed an arrest warrant against New Mexico Democratic congressman Gabe Vasquez in March.”

Vasquez’s attorney said the congressman was not, in fact, arrested or booked, but did pay a bond to clear warrants issued in 2008.

According to Texas court records available online, and first reported by the Free Beacon, Vasquez was cited in July of 2002 — weeks short of his 18th birthday — for driving without a driver’s license, driving without proof of liability insurance and disregarding an official traffic control device.

The citations were evidently not contested or paid, as on April 8, 2008, Judge Rosalio Muñoz signed warrants for Vasquez’s arrest for each offense, plus failure to appear in court.

The next action recorded in the matter was March 19, 2024, when court records state a warrant was “executed,” which often means the named person was arrested or surrendered. On March 20, the court reported a cash bond was posted. The total of the bonds listed on the 2008 warrants was $895.

El Paso-based attorney Luis Yañez, representing Vasquez, denied that the congressman — who resides in Las Cruces and was born in El Paso — was, in fact, arrested; and suggested Vasquez would not be required to appear in court for a September hearing on the matter.

“The state of Texas routinely fails to notify drivers of traffic infractions and the need to come to court, leading to a high volume of erroneous arrest warrants that are designed to bring attention to missed court dates--whether they knew about the original court date or not,” Yañez wrote in a statement. “Congressman Vasquez was never booked nor arrested and the warrant in question was never executed. As soon as Vasquez found out about his missed court date, he paid the bond and this is now a simple administrative matter that will be handled by counsel.”

Vasquez served a single term on the Las Cruces City Council, from 2017 to 2021, before his successful run for Congress in 2022. He is seeking a second two-year term in the House of Representatives in 2024 in a rematch against Republican Yvette Herrell, the incumbent he ousted in the last House election.