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Since the fall of 2012, U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel has quietly presided over hundreds of cases from a spacious wood-paneled courtroom on the second floor of the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego, drawing little attention outside the tightknit federal legal community.

Judge Gonzalo Curiel is seen in an official photo. (Credit: U.S. District Court Southern District of California)
Judge Gonzalo Curiel is seen in an official photo. (Credit: U.S. District Court Southern District of California)

It’s a building that Curiel is familiar with, from his 13-year-long tenure as a narcotics prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, eventually rising to chief of the unit.

There, from 1989 to 2002, he built a reputation as a tough, effective lawyer in charge of a special task force charged with dismantling the Arellano-Felix drug cartel — an assignment that earned him round-the-clock protection from the U.S. marshals service for a year while under a death threat from the cartel.

Now, Curiel finds himself facing a different kind of threat.

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