The Iowa Independent has been tracking the nomination of Stephanie Rose for U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa for months, but now national media outlets have jumped into the act.

The New York Times reported Sunday that Rose’s confirmation has been the subject of growing controversy:

Eleventh-hour criticism is arising over President Obama’s nomination for United States attorney in northern Iowa of a prosecutor who had a leading role in the criminal cases against hundreds of illegal immigrants arrested in a May 2008 raid at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.

[...]

Ms. Rose, a senior assistant United States attorney in the office she has been chosen to run, has also garnered support from criminal defense lawyers in Iowa, including at least 11 lawyers who defended immigrants from Postville. In those proceedings, “she exhibited a level of competence and ability that would be hard to overstate,” the lawyers wrote in a letter in April.

But some defense and immigration lawyers have said that felony identity-theft charges against the immigrants were excessively harsh, that immigration lawyers were not given adequate access to their clients, and that improper contact took place between prosecutors and one judge. They contend that possible civil rights and ethical violations by prosecutors should have been investigated.

The Wall Street Journal’s legal blog is also watching the story.

Will these concerns be enough to prevent Rose’s confirmation? Probably not. Though the national attention the story is receiving may be new, the complaints from her critics are not. If they were going to prevent Rose from getting the job for which she’s been nominated, it likely would have happened by now.