El Paso County Judge Escobar Names Gandara’s Replacement

County Judge Veronica Escobar has appointed attorney Tania Chozet as Commissioner of Precinct Three, which was left vacant by Willie Gandara Jr., who resigned last week after he was arrested on federal drug trafficking charges.

Only the county judge has the authoritity to appoint a replacement after an elected commissioner resigns.

Chozet, an El Paso native, until this weekend, was a lawyer working for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Regional Center for Border Rights in New Mexico. She was a policy advocate since May 2011, according to the ACLU’s New Mexico website.

The new commissioner is an Ysleta High School graduate with an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a law degree from San Francisco School of Law, according to the ACLU website. Chozet left the borderland to attend college and the website states “she departed with the intention of returning to someday work on border policy.”

Chozet has also worked with The Border Peace Alliance and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. According to the ACLU website, Chozet, in 2010, traveled to Arizona on a campaign to mobilize Latino voters against SB1070, the controversial immigration bill that requires the state’s law enforcement officers attempt to verify an individual’s immigration status during a ‘lawful stop.’

According to Chozet’s ACLU profile, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) and criminal justice issues are also areas of interest for her.

Some of her articles on the ACLU of New Mexico’s website analyze the impacts of the Obama Administration’s approach to immigration and studies on Border Patrol strategies.

Chozet has also been vocal about mischaracterizations of the border. In an article dated May 25, 2011 on the ACLU of New Mexico’s website, she called on Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West to be “more responsible and honest in his characterization of the border region, so as not to create a charged atmosphere in which residents shoot first and ask questions later.” Chozet wrote the article as a response to an incident in Hudspeth County, where a rancher shot two men, whom he alleged were trespassing. The two men, father and son, said they took a wrong turn, were unaware they were trespassing and were shot at by the rancher without warning.

West, a month before the shooting, had called on residents to ‘arm themselves’ because of spillover violence from Mexico. He’s also told lawmakers he’s concerned terrorists from the Middle East are working with Mexican criminal organizations. “It is impossible not to wonder whether this incident is a consequence of the increasingly charged atmosphere created by exaggerated and irresponsible descriptions of border violence by elected officials at every level,” Chozet wrote about the trespassing shooting.