They met 30 years ago, when he was a junior lawyer in the US Justice Department in Washington and she was a George Washington University Law School student with a summer internship in his unit.
Yesterday, Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s first black attorney general, swore in Carmen Milagros Ortiz as the first woman and Hispanic US attorney in Massachusetts. The ceremony was held at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse before hundreds of judges, dignitaries, lawyers, and supporters of Ortiz.
“Have we come a long way, huh?’’ Ortiz said to Holder, drawing loud applause and laughter in the packed courtroom.
Holder praised Ortiz as a well-rounded lawyer and a natural leader and said the appointment of the first Latina US attorney in Massachusetts made it a “great day . . . an historic day.’’
“Latinas have done pretty well over the last few months, and deservedly so,’’ he said, an apparent reference to appointees such as Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court.
Ortiz, who rose from humble roots in New York City’s tough Spanish Harlem neighborhood and raised two daughters alone after her husband died of cancer in 2000, told the audience that “preventing acts of terrorism remains the first priority of this office.’’ But she pledged to do so without violating civil liberties.
Her prosecutors, she said, will continue to target the mainstays of federal criminal cases: financial crimes, public corruption, violent crime, and organized crime. She also wants to go after other criminal activity more vigorously, such as computer and environmental crime. READ FULL STORY
Comments