Fresno council candidate resigns from CA legal board. Was he on way out over ICE?
Fresno City Council candidate Rob Fuentes said he is a “proud” board member of California Rural Legal Assistance on his campaign website. CRLA said he recently resigned his position.
In a July 6 email to CRLA board members, the nonprofit’s president and CEO Jessica Manriquez Jewell wrote Fuentes resigned June 30 “after previously inquiring about a leave of absence during the pendency of his campaign for Fresno City Council.”
His future on the board of the legal nonprofit — which provides “free civil legal services to low-income residents of California’s rural counties,” according to its website — was already in doubt, Manriquez Jewell added.
Fuentes earlier this week told The Bee he also resigned from his job as federal prosecutor because of public criticism he made about ICE. He says he was already on administrative leave for 10 days. The Department of Justice declined to comment.
His opponent for the District 1 race Naindeep Singh and other groups criticized Fuentes’ legal role, claiming he aided in deporting immigrants. Fuentes called the allegation a “flat-out lie,” saying his role was to defend the government in habeas corpus motions.
CRLA letter
Manriquez Jewell wrote that Fuentes’ board status “was already pending evaluation due to his absences from the last four board meetings and his failure to complete a conflict of interest statement for 2025.”
She said CRLA has processes to identify possible conflicts and “activities that can cause harm to our client communities.”
Fuentes joined the CRLA board — with 27 members as of July 1, with at least one-third attorneys and one-third community members — in 2021. Although the email to the board said he joined when he was in private practice, Fuentes’ LinkedIn bio said he worked as a law clerk for the Eastern District of California federal court from 2019 to 2022. A year later, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Fuentes said he normally worked on civil cases such as fraud and wildfires. He started on immigration detention cases in May.
That caught the attention of CRLA.
“Those activities cause direct harm to our client communities and are in conflict with our organizational advocacy, position, and statements on the issue,” Manriquez Jewell wrote. “We recognize that an individual’s priorities can shift, and we support board members’ efforts to pursue service opportunities that are more aligned with their priorities and their conscience. When those priorities no longer align with CRLA’s advocacy, we respectfully request that directors reconsider their service on our board.”
Manriquez Jewell thanked Fuentes for his service.
Fuentes said he had not seen the letter and had no immediate reaction.
Fuentes, Singh in November election
Singh, a Central Unified trustee and president of civil rights group The Jakara Movement, finished first in a four-person race for the District 1 seat. He finished with 39%; Fuentes received 37%. The two will meet in the Nov. 3 election.
Fuentes is a one-term trustee with the State Center Community College District, first elected in 2022.
Singh reported raising $98,486 from Jan. 1 through May 16, the most recent filing period. Fuentes reported raising $53,096.
District 1 covers west-central Fresno, mostly between Shaw and Shield avenues north to south, and areas west of West Avenue to the city border, on both sides of Highway 99.
