Christina Montes, a Democrat running for judge of County Court at Law No. 2 in El Paso, Texas, is married to a man required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, and the couple has been campaigning together at recent events, Facebook photos show.
Juan Manuel Montes, 44, was charged with indecency with a child by contact and sexual performance by a child over a 2011 incident involving a 12-year-old female. He took a plea deal in 2013, completed seven years of community supervision, and had the charges dropped in 2020. But the lifetime sex offender registration requirement remains. Court records reviewed by the Daily Mail confirmed the registration obligation, which requires him to update his information on the Texas sex offender registry four times a year.
Christina Montes, also 44, is competing in the May 26 Democratic primary runoff. The winner will take office on January 1, 2027, and serve a four-year term presiding over misdemeanor criminal cases, including family violence, DWIs, burglaries, and prostitution.
That a candidate for a criminal court judgeship is married to a lifetime registrant on the sex offender registry raises questions El Paso voters deserve to have answered before they cast their ballots.
The case against Juan Manuel Montes stemmed from a 2011 incident involving a 12-year-old female. El Paso Matters, as cited by the Daily Mail, reported that the victim was a relative of Montes. He faced charges of indecency with a child by contact and sexual performance by a child.
In 2013, Montes took a plea deal. The judge who approved that deal was Bonnie Rangel, then of the 171st District Court. Rangel is retiring this year, and she donated $150 to Christina Montes' campaign.
After completing seven years of community supervision, the charges against Juan Manuel Montes were dropped in 2020. The lifetime sex offender registration, however, was not lifted. He remains on the registry and must report his information quarterly.
The sex offense case was not Juan Manuel Montes' first brush with the law. Court records show his arrest record dates back to 1998, with charges including possession of a prohibited weapon, robbery, and forgery. All of those earlier charges were dismissed.
Then came 2018. That year, Manuel Montes was among a group of individuals working for 9ONE5 Bail Bonds who were arrested after being accused of kidnapping a woman and a child. The group was described as "bounty hunters." Those charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence, El Paso Matters reported.
Court records indicate that Christina Montes herself represented 9ONE5 Bail Bonds in a lawsuit connected to the kidnapping incident. She stated the 2018 arrests occurred "in an effort to get a person on bond to turn themselves in."
So the woman who wants to sit on a criminal court bench was representing the bail bond company her husband worked for when he was arrested on kidnapping accusations. Voters can draw their own conclusions about judgment.
Christina Montes obtained her law degree in 2018 from Whittier College School of Law, which is now defunct. She passed the Texas State Bar in 2019 and operates the Montes Law Firm, which specializes in criminal, family, and immigration law.
Her Facebook page describes her as a mother of six. Pictures posted on the platform show the couple campaigning together at recent events, apparently unbothered by the public record that follows her husband.
The couple married in 2006, according to records, five years before the charges involving the 12-year-old were filed against Juan Manuel Montes.
The Montes family's court history extends further. The couple has been previously charged with contributing to non-attendance after their children accumulated a significant number of unexcused absences at school. Christina Montes also faced a lawsuit from a previous landlord over an alleged breach of contract involving the building that housed her law office.
None of this is disqualifying in a strict legal sense. Texas law does not bar someone married to a registered sex offender from running for a judgeship. But elections are not courtrooms. They are exercises in public trust.
County Court at Law No. 2 handles misdemeanor criminal cases. Family violence cases come before that bench. So do prostitution cases. A judge in that seat makes decisions every day about defendants, victims, sentencing, and public safety.
Christina Montes wants that seat. She wants voters to trust her judgment on criminal matters, while she is married to a man who must check in with the Texas sex offender registry four times a year for the rest of his life over an offense against a 12-year-old relative.
The judge who approved her husband's plea deal donated to her campaign. Her husband's bail bond employer became her client. The couple campaigns side by side.
These are not gotcha questions. They are basic accountability questions that any candidate for a criminal court judgeship should expect and answer clearly. The Daily Mail reported contacting both Christina and Juan Manuel Montes for comment. No response was described in the reporting.
El Paso's Democratic primary runoff voters will decide on May 26 whether any of this matters to them. The facts are in the public record. Whether anyone in the local Democratic establishment thought to surface them before now is its own kind of answer.
When a party asks voters to trust its candidates with the bench, it ought to make sure it checked the records first.
