Mexican Judge Seeks to Censor U.S. Journalist Over Wallace Case

The attempt to censor reporting on the Wallace Case is aimed squarely at suppressing what my investigation reveals about Ricardo Raphael’s role and his ties to Isabel Miranda.

By Guadalupe Lizárraga

LOS ANGELES, California – On November 26, Ricardo Raphael publicly celebrated on his X account a court ruling in Mexico that – according to him – would force this journalist to remove my reporting on his involvement in the Wallace case, in addition to paying damages for alleged moral harm. In his post, he made a telling error: he thanked “Judge Encarnación Lozada Cielos,” even though the person who signed the ruling is José Encarnación Lozada Cielos, a magistrate with an extensive background in civil law.

• Screenshot: Ricardo Raphael highlighting the ruling in his favor on X: “For more than five years I have had to endure the defamation that Ms. @gpelizarraga has carried out against me from her personal news page @losangelespress and her social media accounts. At last, this sickening persecution has come to an end. Judge Encarnación Lozada Cielos protected my rights: she has ordered her to pay for the damage to my reputation and to delete all her publications issued against me.”

That seemingly minor mistake exposes a deeper inconsistency: not only does Ricardo Raphael appear not to have read the ruling he is promoting, but the judgment cannot be enforced in the United States, where digital outlet Los Ángeles Press is based and where the constitutional standard is fundamentally incompatible with such orders. The First Amendment offers absolute protection for editorial freedom against censorship attempts from foreign jurisdictions. The order is not only unenforceable — it would be plainly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court doctrine, including New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, case file 727/2019 — to which I have had access only in digital form due to the absence of the attorney originally handling the case — reveals omissions, conflicts of interest, and a selective reading of facts that could not withstand the scrutiny of an international tribunal or any serious legal scholar.

A conflict of interest, ignored: Attorney Treviño Pérez

One of the clearest irregularities is the role of attorney Ámbar Treviño Pérez, who represented Ricardo Raphael despite maintaining a close personal and professional relationship with me for years — a relationship that directly informed my reporting on the fabricated Wallace case since 2014. Photographs of meetings, interviews, and gatherings — all dated and archived at Los Ángeles Press — document that closeness.

Treviño Pérez appears in my early reporting as a victim of abuse by Isabel Miranda de Wallace, including her illegal imprisonment in 2010 and later exoneration, documented in the court resolution stating: “a release order is issued due to lack of evidence to prosecute Ámbar Treviño Pérez.”

She represented the victims, Brenda Quevedo Cruz and César Freyre Morales. Yet Miranda pressured and intimidated her until she abandoned their defense — and she did. Treviño Pérez also participated in the forum Fabricación de culpables, which I organized in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on November 5–6, 2018. One of the last times I saw her was during a hearing where Isabel Miranda accused me of forging a signature; Treviño appeared unexpectedly, claiming she was “just reviewing another case.”

A criminal law scholar consulted for this report was unequivocal:

“Given her personal relationship with the counter-claim defendant, Treviño Pérez should have recused herself. It is neither ethical nor legally defensible to represent one party when you have verifiable personal ties to the other. It contaminates the entire process.”

Judge Lozada Cielos did not address this issue, despite ethical and procedural rules in Mexican law requiring courts to consider such conflicts on their own initiative.

Judicial bias shaping the ruling

The case file reveals that the judge applied two different standards to comparable situations — what legal experts describe as a double standard. When the complainant uses harsh criticism, the judge treats it as legitimate commentary; when I present criticism supported by official documents and testimony, he characterizes it as a personal attack. This disparity exposes a gendered bias.

The final section of the ruling shows plainly how prejudice operates when the judiciary views a woman journalist through stereotypes rather than the law. It is not only what the judge decides, but how he says it — the wording, the framing, the implicit assumptions — all used to diminish the work of a female investigative reporter while elevating the grievances of a man with substantial symbolic power: not due to journalistic merit, but because he is the nephew of a former president, a man embedded in elite networks and political influence.

Judge José Encarnación Lozada Cielos adopts, without critical distance, Raphael’s language: adjectives about my character, personal judgments, insinuations about my motives, and outright disparagement. He reproduces these claims as if they were factual findings, as if the dossier were merely a mirror of Raphael’s voice.

Meanwhile, my reporting — which documents serious irregularities in the Wallace case and the media complicity of public figures, including Raphael himself — is reframed as driven by “malicious intent,” with no explanation of how such a conclusion was reached. Intent is treated as dogma: if I write it — a woman journalist — it is aggressive; if he writes it, it is a legitimate concern.

This double standard permeates the ruling. The judge never questions Raphael’s derogatory remarks, yet he scrutinizes every word I publish. He ignores the symbolic violence in language used to diminish a female reporter and elevate the man who plagiarized her investigation — a pattern long documented despite Article 1 of the Mexican Constitution, which prohibits gender-based discrimination.

The judge accepts, copies, and integrates these attacks as if it were his role to amplify prejudice rather than examine it.

One example is particularly revealing: the judge claims my articles show an “offensive intent.” He offers no evidence. He identifies no passage, no phrase, no act. He simply asserts it. Meanwhile, he never interrogates Raphael’s language — calling my work “petty,” “resentful,” accusing me of confusion or rivalry, deploying arguments that any gender-sensitive judicial analysis would recognize as symbolic violence. For this court, aggression flows in only one direction: from the woman journalist to the male plaintiff.

The ruling also fails to acknowledge the structural disadvantages women face in journalism. This omission is not minor: international bodies and jurisprudence require courts to judge with gender perspective precisely to prevent the reproduction of inequality. Here, the opposite occurred. The judge places my work under moral suspicion while treating the plaintiff’s reputation as more fragile — and more valuable — than freedom of the press itself.

My reporting on Raphael’s complicity in the Wallace case is treated as a threat to his honor; his attacks in mainstream media and social networks are framed as self-defense. The asymmetry reveals the kind of justice that has surrounded the Wallace case for nearly two decades.

In the closing sections of the ruling, the judge becomes the narrator of Raphael’s version of events, repeating that his dignity and honor were harmed — while ignoring Raphael’s own degrading statements toward the journalist investigating him. It is a ruling that does not examine facts; it examines the woman reporting them.

The bias also appears in the omission of a critical point: statute of limitations. The alleged harm dates back to 2018–2021. The two-year legal period had expired. The judge simply disregarded it.

An attempt by the Mexican State to censor a foreign media outlet

The court order seeks to compel me to remove journalism about Ricardo Raphael — as if a judge could erase from public life material supported by official records, testimonies, and judicial archives.

Raphael is undeniably a public figure, with documented political engagement — from his ties to CISEN, to roles in political parties he helped found, to his presence in national media. In a democracy, public figures are subject to greater scrutiny, not heightened protection from criticism.

International law protects criticism of public officials and public figures precisely to ensure that State power does not suppress journalism. Judge Lozada Cielos’s ruling departs from this standard. Through an expansive reading of “moral damages,” he attempts to convert documented truth into misconduct — as if accuracy becomes punishable when it embarrasses the powerful. Such reasoning has consistently failed in international courts.

• CEDAW – Article 5(a)
  States Parties must take all appropriate measures to “modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women… with a view to eliminating prejudices and customary practices… based on stereotyped roles for men and women.”

The ruling violates precisely this mandate.

In the United States, no judge can order a news outlet to delete truthful reporting about a public figure. The First Amendment requires that public-interest debate remain “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” especially to restrain abuses of power.

This doctrine exists exactly for cases like this: Raphael requesting political favors from Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero in the Wallace case — a conversation widely circulated by Mexico City media — or his payments to Arturo Zaldívar, then Chief Justice, to pull the case of Juana Hilda González Lomelí into the Supreme Court. Added to this is his intimate relationship with Salvador Leyva, a former official of the Federal Public Defender’s Office, who leaked victims’ case files to him without consent.

In any country with genuine press freedom, a foreign censorship attempt is not only unenforceable — it is a democratic regression.

Ricardo Raphael, the political actor: a documented fact

Judicial records, his own statements, and historical archives confirm that Raphael is not merely a media commentator. He is a political actor with direct roles in the Mexican State. Since 2000, he has worked in CISEN, as shown in the CV he submitted in 2016; he has participated in campaigns and political parties, including as a founding member alongside other politicians such as Gilberto Rincón Gallardo, Sergio Aguayo, and Patricia Mercado. In 2012, he publicly supported Isabel Miranda Torres in her PAN-backed campaign for Mexico City.

Given this extensive political presence, it is alarming that a Mexican judge seeks to restrict journalistic scrutiny of a figure directly involved in matters of public interest.

Why is a Mexican judge attempting to regulate journalism in the United States?

The short answer: because Ricardo Raphael requested a ruling that, although impossible to enforce, creates a symbolic mechanism to discredit my work and intimidate future whistleblowers and victims who approach Los Ángeles Press. He did not even know who signed it; hence his reference to “Judge Encarnación.”

But the deeper issue is structural:

The Mexican State cannot infringe upon the editorial freedom of a foreign media outlet nor sanction criticism grounded in verifiable documents.

The ruling Raphael celebrates is legally void, ethically compromised, and procedurally flawed. It cannot be executed in the United States; it should never have been issued in Mexico. It cannot silence documented reporting. And it cannot erase the judicial records, testimonies, interviews, and evidence that for years have exposed the grave irregularities surrounding him and the fabricated Wallace case.

Press freedom is not negotiable in any country that claims to be a democracy — especially when the public’s right to know is at stake.

This report is part of the public archive of the Wallace case. Its publication is not only a legitimate journalistic act — it is an ethical obligation in the face of State-driven censorship attempts.