A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause.
"An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any nonpublic areas—or areas that are not freely accessible to the public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy—without a valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2]
The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search.
Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients:
1) knowledge of a government proceeding
2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding
It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1).
You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law. They have repeatedly shown contempt for the constitution. They have repeatedly assumed their own supremacy. People responsible for enforcement are out of sync with those responsible for due process and legal interpretation. That is true crisis. These words are simple, but the emotional impact should be chilling. When considering the actions of the ICE agents, it seems very reasonable that aiding or abetting them would be an even greater obstruction of justice if not directly aiding and abetting illegal activity.
America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
If the idea sounds farfetched, imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper. Imagine they decide to become judges to. How would you expect that to pervert justice?
> You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
No I'm not. I'm taking the facts as they're presented by the AP (which is famously not sympathetic to this administration) and saying that nothing in the facts that I'm seeing here in this specific case serves as evidence of a constitutional crisis. This is a straightforward case of obstruction: either she did the things that are alleged or she didn't. If she did, it's obstruction regardless of who is in the White House, and we have no reason to believe at this time that she didn't!
We have better litmus tests, better evidence of wrongdoing by the administration, and better cases to get up in arms about. If we choose our martyrs carelessly we're wasting political capital that could be spent showing those still on the fence the many actual, straightforward cases of overreach.
There was a similar case in Massachusetts many years back. It never went to trial, and legal analysis could go both ways. The bargain struct was it would go into secretive judicial oversight channels.
There is a strong case to be made for obstruction of justice, and an equally strong case to be made about her making an error in her professional capacity as a judge and a government employee (which grants a level of immunity). Police officers, judges, soldiers, etc. make mistakes, but they generally don't go to jail for them because (even corruption aside) everyone makes mistakes. In some jobs, mistakes can and do have severe consequences up to and including people dying. If that led to prison, no one sane would take those jobs.
In any sane universe, it'd be fair to say she screwed up, and then the FBI also screwed up arresting her. I think the FBI screwed up more, since their mistake was premeditated, whereas she was put on the spot.
I do agree with your fundamental point of fatigue. This is not something anyone has a moral high ground to hang their flag on without looking bad.
I usually read coverage from different sides. If you don't realize where she screwed up, look at Fox News. If you don't realize where the FBI screwed up, look at NY Times.
Fox News perspective is that she broke court procedures in order to obstruct federal agents.
Case concluded with some kind of judicial reprimand (not criminal, but administrative). This one is further over the line.
Neutral description to LLM also supports that the judge acted improperly (but LLM didn't think this would lead to a conviction). LLMs aren't great at legal analysis, but are actually pretty good at pattern-matching cases.
One thing helpful to have is a lawful plan. The courthouse might have handled ICE without breaking protocols by having protocols. Protocols should be prima facie neutral, but it's reasonable to expect people in courts, schools, and other places we actually want them to show up to feel safe there. That shouldn't involve sneaking people through back doors or hiding them in jury areas.
Why would I trust that an "entertainment" network like fox news would provide a good legal analysis of how a judge messed up the law? LLMs are worse than this.
ICE has been regularly overstepping its bounds and going after people in ways that impact our legal system's ability to function. This is a terrible precedent to set for no other reason than it impacts the rule of law. If people who are accused of crimes can be disappeared without a trial, just for showing up to court, what incentive is there for anyone to go to court? They are literally ignoring the "innocent until proven guilty" that is critical to the rule of law.
If you take away people's ability to get justice within the system, you are making it inevitable that they will go outside the system to get justice.
Ergo, I posted a link to an analogous legal situation in Massachusetts.
We can agree with what the judge did, but it doesn't make it legal.
We can also agree that ICE is breaking laws, but it also doesn't make what the judge did legal. It does help a bit -- in another comment I explained why -- but not enough to change the legal analysis.
As a footnote, modern LLMs aren't worse than Fox News. They have a lot of case law in their training set. They make mistakes so shouldn't yet be used for anything critical, but the legal analysis from Claude or GPT4.1 is a lot better than e.g. 95% of forum posts here.
I don't know that I have the brainpower to analyze 95% of the forum posts on here. And less to determine what I think is "better", so I guess I'll drop the point.
Let's say I beat someone bloody. We can play through several scenarios:
- Someone broke into my house, and I was fearful for my life
- Plain clothes police broke into my house, and I was fearful for my life
Let's say a police officer did so:
- Someone was a gang member, and the police officer did so in self-defense
- Ditto, based on mistaken beliefs
A lot of the protections in place for police and judges are based on the fact that mistakes like these happen. In general, people aren't individually liable for mistakes make in their official capacity as a government employee, unless they cross very extreme lines. They might get fired, but not prosecuted.
There are exceptions (such as handling of classified materials), but as a guideline, if a police officer beats someone bloody, but has good reason to believe they were a criminal and that this was the least force they could use to keep themselves safe, they're protected even if they're wrong.
Im talking about intent: knowingly and intentionally breaking the law.
I understand that honest mistakes happen due to inaccurate information, understand, ect.
- e.g. you thought a cop was a burglar.
These are different from poor and regrettable choices, also sometimes referred to as "mistakes".
- I beat my wife because I caught them cheating.
There may be an interpretation of this situation where judge did not understand their situation and actions, but I don't find it very probable. It seems clear that they were trying to help the target of a legal warrant evade law enforcement apprehension, and knew exactly what they were doing.
Judge thinks ICE is illegally abducting people. The ideas are laid out pretty clearly in the grandparent comment. It’s not clear what is right and wrong because ICE is skipping due process and rendering people to foreign prisons.
It's not about the standard of guilt in court, it's about political capital and effective rhetoric.
There are so many cases where the Trump administration has flagrantly violated rule of law. Why would we waste time fighting them in the court of public opinion on a case where things currently appear to be open and shut in the other direction?
When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.
In ux design this is called alert fatigue, and it matters in politics too.
> When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.
those cases are the least important to the defense of due process rights. but i'll concede that you're likely correct at the level of the broader populace given that our civic education is an embarrassment and has been for decades.
> America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
The world has a concept that fits that description and it is a civil war. People pick up arms, a lot of people get killed, several generations end up in cycles of violence.
That is what happen when there is no law, only power, and people act on it.
> The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law.
But is this one of those situations? The problem I think people get stuck in the muck about is all these situations run together and they start assuming facts from one case apply to another.
Two things can be true— The Trump administration be in defiance of some other ruling related to immigration/deportation as well as being perfectly within the law for this particular case.
>>imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper.
Then don't fight these battles where they are in the right, fight them where they are in the wrong. Taking this fight here just gives all the advantage to Trump and his regime, fight them where it is easy to win.
Salami slicing is the first page of the present day authoritarian play book.
Here's an excerpt from They Thought They Were Free, a book about the mindset of ordinary Germans experiencing the rise of the Nazi Government:
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
...
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
Yes, I agree. Setting aside the macro issues of A) The current admin's immigration policies, and B) The current admin's oddly extreme strategies involving chasing down undocumented persons in unusual places for immediate deportation. From a standpoint of only legal precedent and the ordinance this judge is charged under, the particular circumstances of this case don't seem to make it a good fit for a litmus test case or a PR 'hero' case to highlight opposition to the admin's policies. At least, there are many other cases which appear to be far better suited for those purposes.
To me, part of the issue here is that judges are "officers of the court" with certain implied duties about furthering the proper administration of justice. If the defendant had been appearing in her courtroom that day in a matter regarding his immigration status, the judge's actions could arguably be in support of the judicial process (ie if the defendant is deported before she can rule on his deportability that impedes the administration of justice). But since he was appearing on an unrelated domestic violence case, that argument can't apply here. Hence, this appears to be, at best, a messy, unclear case and, at worst, pretty open and shut.
Separately, ICE choosing to arrest the judge at the courthouse instead of doing a pre-arranged surrender and booking, appears to be aggressive showboating that's unfortunate and, generally, a bad look for the U.S. government, U.S. judicial system AND the current administration.
Notably the examples on the page you linked appear to involve illegal acts (tampering, threatening, etc). Letting someone out a different door (neither party is trespassing) doesn't seem to rise to that bar.
Just as I'm not obligated to call the police to report something I don't see how I can be obligated to force my guest to use a particular door for the convenience of the police. It isn't my responsibility to actively facilitate their actions.
It would never have occurred to me (and doesn't seem reasonable) that obstruction could involve indirect (relative to the government process) actions.
I could understand "aiding and abetting" if I was actively facilitating the commission of a crime but I don't want to live in a country where mere avoidance is considered a crime. "Arrested for resisting arrest" gets mocked for good reason.
Technically all the government has to do is get her on a plane to El Salvador in the middle of the night.
Which is to say, this arm of government has not followed any semblance of due process so far, and is currently defying a unanimous order of the Supreme Court even in a Republican supermajority, pretending due process is something they "have to" do is very much ignoring where we are.
> government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1)
Dude used a different door so the FBI arrests a judge in a court room? At that point we should be charging ICE agents with kidnapping.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent
She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how.
Frontpage of /r/law:
ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
There is no suggestion that the agents conducted a search or entered a non-public area. And this has nothing to do with the claim that the judge actively obstructed their efforts.
It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
No, this is a disaster. Hyperbole aside, this is indeed how democracy dies. Eventually this escalates to arresting more senior political enemies. And eventually the arbiter of whoever has the power to make and enforce those arrests ends up resting not with the elected government but in the law enforcement and military apparatus with the physical power to do so.
Once your regime is based on the use of force, you end up beholden to the users of force. Every time. We used to be special. We aren't now.
> It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
The allegation is that she obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure, she wasn't arrested for obstructing search that part was fine.
The ICE agents were legally allowed to wait outside and arrest the man as he stepped out, the judge leading the man out the backdoor after she learned ICE agents were waiting at the front is very hard to defend as anything but obstruction of arrest.
> obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure
Which sounds awfully novel to me. You really want to tear down the structure of democracy over this kind of nitpicking on "procedure"?
I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
> I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
The GP (or GGP, I forget) was discussing very specific legal technical details surrounding the judge's actions, the nature of the warrant and permissible locations for serving the warrant. I was pretty interested in that discussion - even though I probably generally agree with your macro views on immigration policy. You chose to focus on something completely different, the overall aggregate outcomes of national political policies and jumped immediately to rhetoric like "tear down the structure of democracy".
IMHO, an important part of "the structure of democracy" is the rule of law. Ideally, that means equal, impartial, consistent enforcement of the laws as written. If the circumstances were changed to this being 1962 Alabama and the defendant being the Grand Wizard of the local KKK and the judge snuck him out the back door because RFK had sent FBI agents from Washington to serve a warrant arresting the KKK Grand Wizard - would you think those discussing whether that judge might have technically obstructed justice were equally "tearing down the structure of democracy?"
Rule of law and its "equal, impartial, consistent enforcement" is totally a discretionary thing and very much by democratic support. The federal government has stopped enforcing low-level marijuana possession pretty much whole-sale, unless of course you show up at the wrong protests (see Timothy Teagan). Most people seem to think this is just dandy.
I would say you would actually destroy "democracy" if you enforced the rule of law.
Call me hopelessly naive but I think it's generally a good thing to rescind laws we don't want to enforce (or choose to only occasionally enforce), fix laws that aren't working as intended, and actually enforce the remaining laws we keep.
>totally a discretionary thing
The example I posted about the KKK Grand Wizard being the judicially smuggled person was intended to demonstrate the grave danger of having enforcement of a law (in this case obstruction of justice) be "totally a discretionary thing." The same people who'd (hopefully) be "horrified" by a judge smuggling a KKK member away from law enforcement (pointy white hat and all), want to selectively give a hall pass to this judge for doing the same thing. Paraphrasing Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that's no basis to form a system of government.
> very much by democratic support.
If you're referring to elections, those are, at most, once every two years. I'm not sure how well cops are going to do their jobs with a two-year latency on "what crimes can we arrest people for today?" If you're referring to anything else, you're either endorsing mob rule (kinda the main reason 'rule of law' was invented back in Holy Grail times) or you're placing a lot of faith in "the current people in political, social and cultural power" always being exactly "the kind of righteous people who agree with me on everything important." Especially in light of recent events, I don't think that's a very solid governance plan either.
As a practical example, I'm kind of a wild-eyed radical on immigration. If I was anointed "King of the Land", I'd almost throw open the borders entirely to any and all comers (not quite, but pretty close). Of course, I'd also need to change some other things to make that work, but that's not important right now. And even though I'm that radical on immigration, back when some cities chose to become "Sanctuary Cities" by announcing the current elected officials had decided to just... stop doing their job of enforcing (some) laws - I wasn't happy like you might think. No, even though I liked the outcome in that one instance, it actually troubled me greatly that a handful of individuals elected in the public trust decided to unilaterally seize power by illegally subverting the constitution and their solemn oaths of office.
And the fact I felt that was very bad back then, even over something I generally agreed with, leaves me feeling like I'm on firm logical, ethical, legal and moral ground when it troubles me equally that Trump and his fellow travelers are abusing the public trust in, conceptually, the very same ways. If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions. I think you're probably gonna have a bad time under any system of government that's not a monarchy or anarchy - with yourself as dictator for life.
On the other hand, I thought it was an incredibly dangerous and illegal expansion of presidential authority when Obama droned a U.S. citizen overseas without due process (even though that person was indeed an active terrorist). I'm funny that way about seizing power unconstitutionally. I'm always against it. No matter who does it or what they do with the stolen power. I hope those who are complaining today that Trump is using (and building on) the unconstitutional presidential power grab techniques that Obama pioneered, but didn't see a problem with it until someone they don't like started doing things they disagree with, are at least learning from this very hard lesson. Abuse of power is wrong no matter who does it or what they do.
> but didn't see a problem with it until someone they don't like started doing things they disagree with, are at least learning from this very hard lesson. Abuse of power is wrong no matter who does it or what they do.
> If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions.
This Obama comparison seems like a false equivalence because you are ignoring the _where_, i.e. within the U.S. vs a foreign battlefield.
The issue has been covered pretty extensively and is well worth looking into. It's been discussed and analyzed by several noted constitutional scholars.
It's been a while but IIRC it was unconstitutional because the president cannot unilaterally execute a U.S. citizen anywhere without due process except under certain conditions, none of which were met in this case. It wasn't a declared war ("War on Terror" was a PR slogan, not a congressional declaration of war). I think the fact it was targeted specifically at a named person and there were no exigent circumstances (like trying to free hostages or stopping an eminent attack) were also factors. But, based on the plain wording, this wasn't a close or subjective call. To be clear, while it was illegal and unconstitutional, I don't personally think killing this guy was morally unjustified. He was a shithead who spouted anti-American, pro-terrorist crap online. But he was basically a poseur in a cave in Yemen. He was never a material terror threat to the U.S. other than making online videos. He claimed allegiance with real terrorists but they never took him seriously because he was a fucking American and they'd be stupid not to assume he was a double-agent.
You're not alone in assuming dropping a missile on this guy must have been legally okay because of the surrounding circumstances. I mean, that can't just... happen, right? The U.S. had already droned lots of non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants. The guy was clearly a wannabe terrorist calling for jihad against the great Satan America. He was awful and unsympathetic in every possible way. He was in a country (Yemen I think) that was fighting a declared insurrection-ish war against the local jihad group that sort-of associated with the guy. And that country was a U.S. ally. But... none of those circumstances made killing him legal. Yemen didn't launch the missile. A U.S. soldier under direct presidential order did. Legally and constitutionally, what Obama did was no different than Trump ordering U.S. soldiers to execute a U.S. citizen on the White House lawn with no due process. Except I highly doubt U.S. soldiers would do that without the surrounding circumstances of being a known terrorist, in Yemen, droned like they'd legally done before to similar non-U.S. citizen terrorists. Unfortunately, all of those circumstances were legally and constitutionally irrelevant. And, of course, even Trump would never give such an order because he knows American's sensibilities would be shocked, and both parties in congress would be forced to protest en masse, hold hearings, etc. But Obama and congress knew, in those circumstances, in that era, in that middle eastern country, against that unsympathetic target, it would encounter minimal protest. But it's at times like that and under circumstances like those that Rubicons get crossed and dangerous precedents set.
Sadly, that political calculation was correct. Despite being forcefully protested by a few members of congress, our system failed to work because the "War on Terror" was started by the opposition party and Obama's own party chose not to hold their President accountable for partisan political reasons. The media similarly followed party lines with the democratic majority choosing not to make an issue of it and the opposition media not wanting to go against the "War on Terror" they still actively endorsed. Only a few media people went against their traditional alignment and called it the unconstitutional execution that it clearly was. The handful of politicians, media and pundits who stood up on this issue despite doing so alone, are worth noting for their integrity. Even though they knew it might be politically costly and wouldn't change anything, they chose to stand on the right side of history in one of those rare moments when all others failed.
> I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
Calling people who are against illegal immigration "racist" just makes it worse.
A majority of people are fine with legal migration, a supermajority of people think illegal immigrants should get deported. So no, the issue most see isn't that they don't like Spanish, the issue is that they are here illegally.
Or we could just let more people be here legally. All we'd have to do is raise the quota.
Do that, and I'd have zero problems rounding up all of the remaining illegal immigrants and driving 'em into the ocean, if that's what you want. Instead, I'm suspicious that "the only issue is that they're here illegally" is just deflection.
I'm pro-legal immigration but this isn't as simple as "make number go up." Resources like houses and jobs are in finite supply and allowing more legal immigration without ensuring the needs of your citizens is a good way to increase anti-immigrant sentiment. The facts don't matter that immigrants do the jobs that Americans don't want.
Reducing illegal and legal immigration actually hurts "your citizens" in many ways as it stands today in America. The immigrants pay taxes into things like social security without getting the benefits. They also work on farms and if they go away prices will go up.
The only solution to housing is building more housing.
> A majority of people are fine with legal migration
an alarming number of legal aliens are being detained, deported or disappeared: students who wrote op-eds, Afghan asylees who helped us during the war, college professors and Canadian tourists, even (prospectively) "home-growns."
if most Trump supporters support legal migration, why aren't they pushing back on this?
This is a complicated issue because Republicans spent decades sabotaging the immigration system. If you're an immigrant trying to cross the border legally, you could spend years waiting for your hearing. Part of the reason illegal immigration is so high is because they make legal immigration near impossible.
> This is a far shot from being against legal migration entirely.
Sure, its simply about preferring strong ethnic controls on immigration: while only 50% of Republicans think legal immigration should be decreased, 61% think that immigration "from other cultures" has mainly negative consequences. It's not that Republicans are against legal immigration entirely, its just that they are (in the majority) against any immigration from the places most immigrants come from; they are fine with legal immigration of white Christian conservatives, especially from the rest of the anglosphere.
I think that is closer, but still a strawman. I think the ethnic boundaries are more flexible than you portray. Immigration of diverse cultures are acceptable as long as they are not a cultural threat, and the target isn't zero.
> As far as the Republican Party, statistics don’t back up the idea they are okay with legal immigration.
I said majority of people, not majority of republicans. That means there are still many republicans that like legal immigration, wealthy people like when labor is allowed to immigrate, Elon Musk is one such person among many others.
If Trump said he would deport all the legal immigrants he would likely not have won the election, that they are illegal is core to his support.
Trump is aggressively deporting foreign students that were here legally. If you are only against illegal immigration you should speak out against things like this.
> obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure
Sorry, then would a janitor who puts up a slippery floor sign in front of a door and asks someone to use a different door be "obstructing arrest by changing standard procedure."
This is absurd on its face. You don't have the right to arrest a Judge for "obstructing justice" because they let someone use a different door to leave. And you should think 1 million times of the implication to the rule of law before you do such a thing.
ICE are not gods, and I would hope after this, that Americans would start to consider taking away what power they have, because they are abusing it. And it's threatening our democracy.
Immigration law is wildly different from what people expect. But it is the law and it has been held up in countless court cases. This weirdness is not new.
I think most of the weirdness comes from the fact that entering the country illegally, or remaining in the country illegally can be crimes, but they can also be civil offenses. “Civil” means no jail time, but people still get deported without going to criminal court.
“Civil” also means “doesn’t have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” and “no constitutional right to a public defender.” Immigration law tries to provide limited forms of some of those ideas. There’s a kind of bail system, and people have a right to be represented by attorneys, but no right for those attorneys to be paid by the government. There is somebody referred to as an immigration judge, and they have a federal job, but they aren’t regular federal judges.
It’s possible to appeal an immigration court’s decision to a federal district court to get into the legal system we’re more familiar with.
apparently immigration law infringement only goes to court if you're trying to stop them now - if they want to send you to a concentration camp, there's no right to due process.
The Alien Enemy Act is actually an incredibly old law (i.e., it’s not a new development). What is new is attempting to use it based on a declaration that there’s been a non-military invasion ( https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11269 ). I think it’s pretty clear that the Supreme Court is going to eventually strike that down, but the courts can only act in response to the cases they get, and only answer specific legal questions at different phases of those cases.
The claim is that the judge, upon finding out that they were there to make an arrest, deliberately led the man out a back door which would under almost no circumstances be available to his use (the jury door), allowing him to bypass the officers attempting to make the arrest.
If true, that's pretty clearly a deliberate attempt to obstruct their efforts. The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction, but I don't have any specific reason to believe it wouldn't be.
> The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction
There's other questions tbh. I don't know the answers, but I think it is critical to point out.
An important one is "does ICE have the authority to operate in the location they were operating in?" If the answer is no, then Dugan's actions cannot be interpreted as interfering with ICE's official operations. You cannot interfere with official operations when the operations are not official or legal. An extreme example of this would be like police arresting somebody, and in a formal interrogation they admit to murder, but the person was not read their Miranda rights. These statements would likely be inadmissible in a court. But subtle details matter, like if the person wasn't arrested or if they weren't being interrogated (i.e. they just blabbed).
This matters because the warrant. In the affidavit it says Dugan asked if the officer had a judicial warrant and were told they had an administrative warrant.[0] That linked article suggests that an administrative warrant can only be executed in an area where there is no expectation of privacy. This is distinct from public. There are many public places where you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. A common example being a public restroom (same law means people can't take photos of you going to the bathroom). So is there a reasonable expectation of privacy here? I don't know.
I think it is worth reading the affidavit. Certainly it justifies probable cause (at least from my naive understanding). But the legal code is similar to programming code in that subtle details are often critical to the output. That's why I'm saying it isn't "the only question", because we'd need to not only know the answers to the above but answers to more subtle details that likely are only known to domain experts (i.e. lawyers, judges, LEO, etc)
It's worth adding the director of the FBI posted publicly showing a clear politically motivated bias in an ongoing case. So outside the immediate facts of the case there are questions around presumption of innocence, due process, and a fair trial, as well as prosecutorial misconduct.
That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz.
The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area.
The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
> [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator.
INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal.
The outcomes are immaterial to the legal question of obstruction, the only factors are knowledge of the warrant and intent to help him escape. If he successfully avoided arrest but it cannot be proven that the judge intended that outcome, then she is not guilty of obstruction. If he got caught anyway but the judge intended to help him escape, that's still obstruction.
As noted by the linked page those are minimum requirements. The relevant law regarding obstruction [0] is USC 18 §1505 [1]. It isn't immediately obvious to me that it was violated.
The first paragraph only appears to apply to physical evidence. The second paragraph appears to require more than merely assisting someone.
> Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication
The latter two obviously don't apply so that only leaves the former. Did the judge act "corruptly"?
The other law cited in the complaint is USC 18 §1071 [2] and the question would be if leading someone to an alternate pathway constitutes either harboring or concealing the individual. I don't feel like letting someone out my backdoor constitutes "concealing" a person as the term is commonly used. As an example, hiding someone in a closet and then telling the officers that he isn't in the building would obviously qualify.
If we're going to be technical about this, which one has to be in the eyes of the law, what is the difference between escorting them through the private back door vs escorting them through the front door?
How do you prove intent? That her intent was to obstruct?
They point out in the article that such room (juror room) is never usually used by certain people, but that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
If it can be credibly demonstrated that she cancelled the hearing and escorted the defendant out a back door within seconds of sending the officers away, that she had every intent of proceeding with the hearing before meeting with the officers, and that she and her peers did not usually use that door for defendants, then I would consider that to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that she intended to obstruct the arrest.
It's not a given, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable burden of proof either.
> that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
If the only reason to use the backdoor is to avoid arrest, then that proves her intent. If there was another reason to use it then that will come up in court.
They did have a valid warrant for arrest, they just didn't have a warrant to search the courtroom but they had a warrant to arrest the guy as soon as he stepped outside.
Then they weren't obstructed. They're just shit at their job.
If I know you're in a building and haver permission to arrest you, it's not "obstructing arrest" if you use the back door. What if your car's parked out back?
To quote the 10 year old who destroyed me in fortnite "Get good."
I could be if you can't enter a store to arrest someone and back door is marked "private employee only". Manager then let's them out the back door despite clear enforced store policy to prohibit random customers from being allowed in that part of the store.
Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter.
If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
>> If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
I don't know. Is an FCC warrant like an ICE warrant? If so, then you don't have to open the door. You can probably tell them to fuck themselves, but that's probably not a good idea.
You can't obstruct their investigation. You can't conceal what your neighbor is doing. You can't tell the FCC that your neighbor doesn't have a transmitter, or that it only reaches 200 feet when you know that that it reaches farther than that. Those are crimes, in my admittedly limited understanding of the situation.
An ICE warrant is not a search warrant. ICE did not need a search warrant in this case. They needed a warrant to arrest a named person they had probable cause to believe was in the country illegally. It appears they did in fact have that warrant. It was a real warrant. And if they facts in the ICE criminal complaint are true, this is a textbook case of someone obstructing that arrest.
> He accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
There are some pretty broad laws about "you can't lie to the feds", but I think the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target. (They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation -- someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
EDIT: since I wrote that 15 minutes ago, the article has been updated with more details about what the judge did:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
EDIT 2: the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article says:
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Which is an escalation above the former "didn't stop them", admittedly, but I'm not sure how it gets to "misdirection".
1. It isnt clear ICE agents have any legal authority to demand a judge tell them anything. 2. It is highly likely this is an official act, since it would be taken on behalf of court, so the immigrant can give, eg. testimony in a case.
A "private act" here would be the judge lying in order to prevent their deportation because they as a private person wanted to do so. It seems highly unlikely that this is the case.
I updated my post with new information from the updated article, and in the context of that I think you're pretty much right. It sounds like the judge basically said "you need permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing, go get it" and then didn't change anything about the process of their hearing while that permission was being obtained.
This was definitely not them being helpful, but I'm incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling. ICE being a proto secret police seems to be perceived already. The FBI now? There’s question whether the ICE agents even had legal grounds to demand arrest regardless, whether they had a warrant, etc - and the facts established are pretty clearly not prosecutable. So this is pure intimidation, going after the judicial in what will likely be a flagrantly abusive way, yet doing it proudly and across the media - this is a shot across the bow telling judges at all levels they are next. And if there’s anyone that knows being arrested changes your life forever, it’s judges.
I am not alarmist or hyperbolic by nature, and I don’t say this lightly, but this is the next level and the escalation event that leads to the end game. The separation of powers is unraveling, and this is America’s Sulla moment where the republic cracks. The question remains did the anti federalists bake enough stability into the constitution to ensure our first Sulla doesn’t lead to Julius Caesar.
The accused is accused of violating federal law, so it's normal that a federal agency would make the arrest. FBI seems to make more sense than DEA or ATF, no?
It’s not that the agency is wrong; it’s that the agency would do it. This is the agency that since J Edgar Hoover has very carefully rebuilt its reputation and is very guarded in it. This act is entirely reminiscent of the political corruption of the FBI of old. That regression, that fast, is frightening.
ICE being shady is by many people accepted, the DEA, ATF even. But the FBI has built itself a pretty strong reputation of integrity and professionalism, and resistance to political pressure and corruption. In some ways I at least viewed it as a firewall in law enforcement against this sort of stuff.
ICE, ATF, and CBP has always been the house for the dregs of federal LEO. It is for the people that fail to get into anything else.
FBI is prestigious because they get the most qualified tyrants, who are smart enough to lie and deceive in ways that are airtight enough that those at ICE take the heat. The surprising thing here isn't the fact that they did it, but that they didn't do the normal way of digging or manufacturing something else to pin on the judge.
US Marshalls IIRC is also the hardest to get into. If I recall they have like one day a year they accept applications and they all (only certain # accepted) get filled within seconds. (I'm probably embellishing but not by much).
For most of its life the FBI has been a hand of the federal government to quell dissent, this new perspective on the FBI being professional and non-partisan is pretty new.
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You can't just arrest someone for nothing. You need probable cause. The question is whether a judge going about their day, doing nothing illegal, is probable cause. It's very likely not.
This is certainly not the first autocratic act of the FBI under Patel. They have been thoroughly compromised and lost integrity even before this arrest.
> The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling
Even more frightening is that there was a federal judge that was willing to sign off on an arrest warrant for a fellow jurist, based on what is clearly political showmanship (they didn't need to arrest her at all to prosecute this crime!).
There were a lot of Rubicons crossed today. This ends with opposition politicians in jail. Every time. And usually to some level of armed revolt around/preventing transfers of power.
There's one effective sentence, if gained, which avoids this. I'm ordinarily #NotAFan, and that's another Rubicon once crossed presents massive peril, but in cases of flagrant constitutional violation I'm increasingly open to arguments in favour.
If that sentence cannot be attained, options are even more parlous.
people think the Musk administration is dumb and incompetent, but this is incredibly clever. ICE is the prefect cover for a new unaccountable secret police.
anybody can be disappeared under the excuse of illegal immigration. if there's no due process, they can come for you and you have no recourse.
plenty of MAGAs are so ready to shout "but they're criminals" - and they still don't understand that it could be them next.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is phrased like the judge actually did anything wrong. That seems very doubtful. This administration has shown they are not entitled to the presumption that they are acting in good faith.
I don't think it implies the judge did anything wrong. If you're arrested, you're going to experience whatever the cops want to do to you, regardless of whether they can convict you of it.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is an indictment of the cops, not the arrestee.
Imagine that someone is being charged with shoplifting and literally at trial. Some other law enforcement agency shows up to the trial and wants to arrest them for jaywalking.
It seems dysfunctional that the court would release them when they know a different law enforcement agency is literally in the building and wanting to arrest them.
Is this how it works when the FBI comes to a county court looking for someone the county cops have in custody?
Talk to the cops, not the judge who is in a proceeding? Go talk to the chief justice?
The idea that the judge did anything wrong here, based on the description given by the FBI themselves, is absolutely beyond the pale. There's zero reason for ICE agents to barge into court and demand to take somebody.
They didn't even leave one of the multiple agents in the courtroom to wait for the proceedings to end. To blame the judge at all in this requires making multiple logical and factual jumps that even the FBI did not put forward.
Edit: the Trump administration has also been attacking the Catholic Charities of Milwaukee, which this judge used to run:
> Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
It seems pretty clear that this is a highly politically motivated arrest that has zero justification.
Oh, I’m certainly not endorsing the arrest of the judge.
But wouldn’t the bailiff hold the person?
Is it typical for the FBI to lose a suspect in this manner? If so, this seems dysfunctional as if someone is in the court system then jurisdictions need to coordinate to just operate efficiently. It needs fixing so if ICE wants someone and a local courthouse has them in custody that ICE can pick them up.
But arresting judging is not going to help fix this bureaucratic silliness.
On what grounds would the bailiff hold the person?
I'm not sure why the courthouse should hold someone for ICE, it wasn't even necessary here they still got the person. All they had to do was stay where they were.
What federal warrant was there? I don't see any mention of one but the best that ICE could issue is not a judicial warrant and does not meet most of the requirements under the 4th amendment for detainment of a person.
Generally state and local law enforcement and courts have no legal requirement to enforce most federal arrest warrants. This is due to our dual sovereignty system. Of course they also can't actively interfere with federal law enforcement or lie to federal officers, but it doesn't seem like that's what happened in this incident.
> The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be determined to move that closer.
I don't think they intended to imply that the judge did anything wrong. Rather, they're saying that if you live in a world where the FBI or ICE or other official agencies can rough you up regardless of whether you're guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law, disputes are going to get settled with violence. After all, if the police are just going to make life difficult for you when you're arrested (the "ride") regardless of whether you're guilty in the eyes of the law (the "rap"), what's the logical response when you see a policeman coming to you? You shoot them. Don't let them arrest you because you're gonna have a bad time anyway.
Various marginalized communities (in both other countries and parts of the U.S.) already function that way - violence is an endemic part of how problems are solved. And going back to the threadstarter, that's why police departments have instituted sanctuary city policies. They don't want to get shot, and so they try to create an incentive structure where generally law-abiding (except for their immigration status) residents are unafraid to go to the police and help them catch actual criminals, rather than treating all police as the enemy.
That's certainly one interpretation of it, and a pretty reasonable one. However, I typically interpret it as "if the police think you've committed a crime, you are going to jail and almost nothing is going to stop that." In that incredibly famous "Don't Talk to the Police" talk[0], the attorney asks the former-cop-turned-law-student if he's every been convinced not to arrest someone based on what the suspect said. Not a single time in his entire law enforcement career.
This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing you can say will convince the police not to arrest you, and things you do say can make things worse, your best bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets to that point.
I think we're all agreeing here. "You can't beat the ride" means that if the cops want to arrest you, lock you up, etc., you can't do anything about it. Doesn't matter if you're guilty, innocent, or just a random bystander, you're not going to stop them from taking you and doing whatever they want in the process.
ICE should’ve been reformed after Trump 1, but at this point we’re going to need to unwind the whole organization when we get that man out of power. They’ve shown themselves to be pretty disinterested in laws, democracy, etc.
This is the reform of ICE. Trump was elected explicitly promising to do much more arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants, which is instantiated by having agents of the federal government do things like arrest and deport illegal immigrants on trial for unrelated crimes and actually charge citizens like this judge who interfere with this process with crimes, in order to induce them to not interfere with the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants.
GP wasn't saying that one leads to another in a causal sense - simply that there are levels of dysfunction and this step is closer to the dysfunction of gunfire than the previous level.
The first time someone uses an impossible to trace drone to take out a law enforcement officer in the US is going to change everything.
The status quo has been that law enforcement can operate in an openly corrupt way with impunity because they can absolutely positively find someone who fights back.
But all the pieces are there for people to fight back with equal impunity. The technology is mature and deployed and has been tested in Ukraine and Syria for several years now.
It's just a matter of time before someone takes out a corrupt cop or ICE official and they get away away with it.
It will have a chilling effect on this kind of behaviour.
After Hinckley and especially after 9/11 I didn't think it would be possible for someone to successfully assassinate a US president with a firearm. I was shocked at how trivial it was for two people to almost pull that off last year with Trump. It was pure luck that it didn't happen, and I'm skeptical that the Secret Service has fundamentally changed how they protect people in a way that will permanently prevent even something as mundane as assassination by firearm let alone drones.
If they can't stop someone from killing the president with a gun how could they possible stop someone from using a swarm of these to do the same?[0]
And how can law enforcement protect themselves from something like this? Like honestly, what is a counter to this kind of attack that scales up to provide protection for the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers in America?
The only thing I can see scale to that level is reform of behaviour. If people respond to abuse of authority with these kinds of tools then the only viable method of prevention is to stop abusing authority.
> The only thing I can see scale to that level is reform of behaviour. If people respond to abuse of authority with these kinds of tools then the only viable method of prevention is to stop abusing authority.
I think that presumes that only "good" people will use drones (etc) that way.
You've got a bunch of people who you see as* "openly corrupt … with impunity", and a new tech that lets people attack with impunity. The result is that the same cops you're paying attention to* just change from wearing a badge to controlling a joystick.
* I'm phrasing it like this because while I know what 1312 means, I don't buy the "all" part.
It's not so much that I see subjectively see them as openly corrupt and operating with impunity, it's that there are objectively corrupt officials operating openly with impunity[0]. Every institution has corruption -- it's just a matter of degree.
I'm not suggesting that only 'good' people will use drones that way, far from it. What I'm suggesting is that a moderating force that hasn't existed for a long while due to asymmetry in police ability vs. the ability to resist them will return. The return of this moderating force will eliminate those few 'bad apples' eliminating their ability to abuse their authority, create fear in other law enforcement officers who would do those kinds of things or at least tolerate them, and would see some sort of law enforcement effort to crack down on corruption.
I'm sure you're right that corrupt police will find new and exciting ways to terrorize innocent people with technology as corrupt police will always continue to be corrupt but there will just be less of them because they'll be struck down by vigilantes and there will be more official efforts made to clamp down on them out of necessity.
You can probably model this like population dynamics with predator and prey populations in the wild.
The allegation is that the judge got upset that ICE was waiting outside the courtroom, sent the law enforcement officers to the chief judge's office, and then adjourned the hearing without notifying the prosecutor and snuck the man with a warrant out through a non-public door not normally used by defendants.
If those facts are accurate, it sure sounds like obstruction. Judges have to obey the law just like everyone else.
You are basically saying that everybody has to help ICE for free and on occasion do the job of ICE for free. That’s very totalitarian.
At the same time, it is settled law that a police officer cannot be held liable for not protecting citizens or not arresting someone. So you have more obligations than a police officer yet getting none of the pay or legal protections
Imagine you were a private tutor, in a private school on private land. ICE barges into the class trying to arrest one of the kids, but their paperwork is not in order so they promised to come back in 20 minutes
Do you imagine it will be possible to continue with the lesson as normal after such an event?
It is your discretion, when to start or stop a lesson, you work for yourself.
Do you imagine you should be obligated as a teacher to continue the lesson as if nothing has happened?
And if children want to leave to hold them by force?
why is it your problem That ICE isn’t competent and can’t get their shit right the first time?
ICE had a warrant. They were being courteous to the court by waiting until after the hearing instead of scooping the guy up on his way in.
And no, you don't have to help ICE, you just can't obstruct them. Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction.
You're downvoted because ICE did not have a warrant.
ICE prints pieces of paper which they call "administrative warrants." Those were never reviewed by a judge and are internal ICE documents. An administrative warrant is not an actual warrant in any meaningful sense. It's a meaningful document (contrary to what you might read; it's not something one can just print on a laser printer and called it a day), but the "administrative" changes the meaning dramatically.
It seems like there were plenty of errors all around, in this situation, both on the judge's side and on ICE's side. However, I can't imagine any of those rose to the level of criminal behavior.
Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction, but that changes quite a bit when it's a government employee operating within their scope of duty. Even if they make a mistake.
Schools don't want students scared to be there. Courtrooms want to count on cases not being settled by default because people are scared to show up. There is a valid, lawful reason for not permitting ICE to disrupt their government functions. That's doubly true when you can't count on ICE following the law and might ship someone off to El Salvador.
Asking an LLM, whether or not the judge broke laws is ambiguous. It is unambiguous that they showed poor judgment, and there should probably be consequences. However, what's not ambiguous is that the consequences should be through judicial oversight mechanisms, and not the FBI arresting the judge.
As a footnote, a judge not being able to rely on ICE following lawful orders significantly strengthens the government interest argument.
> incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted
Strongly agree. But, as I’m sure we both know, some other less-politically-connected people will be a bit more afraid of getting arrested on ridiculous grounds because of this. So, mission accomplished.
Successful prosecution isn't needed, the harassment and incurring high legal fees will discourage a dozen other judges who might be less than boot-licklingly helpful to the autocrat.
That's the reality less equal animals have had to live under since basically forever.
I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing that state and local authorities would have to view the feds the way we have to view all three because it brings our incentives more in alignment.
> It sounds like the judge basically said "you need permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing, go get it" and then didn't change anything about the process of their hearing while that permission was being obtained.
This is untrue if the FBI affidavit is believed. The judge adjourned the case without speaking to the prosecuting attorney, which is a change to the process of the hearing regarding three counts of Battery-Domestic Abuse-Infliction of Physical Pain or Injury.
Later that morning, Attorney B realized that FloresRuiz’s case had never
been called and asked the court about it. Attorney B learned that
FloresRuiz’s case had been adjourned. This happened without Attorney B’s
knowledge or participation, even though Attorney B was present in court to
handle Flores-Ruiz’s case on behalf of the state, and even though victims
were present in the courtroom.
A Victim Witness Specialist (VWS) employed by the Milwaukee County District
Attorney’s Office was present in Courtroom 615 on April 18, 2025. The VWS
made contact with the victims in Flores-Ruiz’s criminal case, who were also
in court. The VWS was able to identify Flores-Ruiz based upon the victims’
reactions to his presence in court. The VWS observed Judge DUGAN gesture
towards Flores-Ruiz and an unknown Hispanic woman. [...] The VWS stated that
Judge DUGAN then exited through the jury door with Flores-Ruiz and the
Hispanic woman. The VWS was concerned because Flores-Ruiz’s case had not yet
been called, and the victims were waiting.
Considering the ongoing due process deprivations this is the most concerning aspect to me. This is a sitting judge which is a significant escalation against the judiciary.
I was talking to someone earlier about how we in America, today, are not entitled to anything. Just in the last hundred years, people lived under secret police, dictators, state-controlled media, occupation, you name it. Hundreds of millions of people lived their whole life under the KGB or Stasi. Hundreds of millions live in autocracy even today. Some straight up live in a warzone as we speak. The idea that "we" can't be going through this is beyond entitled. Nothing is guaranteed to us. We are being shown how fragile this all is by the universe.
I expect America to be a beacon of light and I will fight for it. We all need to fight for it, especially the people who frequent this message board because we are among the most privileged and capable. It’s disappointing to me how many of our tech leaders forget what made them great in the first place and abuse us all in the pursuit of personal wealth.
For people who don't live in crazy town, this would be considered an oppressive action, arresting a judge for following procedure simply because it inconvenienced you.
I'm not saying it's good, for sure. But I don't think it's a sign that the push for autocratic authoritarianism is winning, either.
My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive. The judiciary tends to be prickly about its prerogatives, and Trump's far from the point where he can just push stuff through without some cover.
The fact that HN is letting political posts stay on the front page after months of suppression shows that we are past the point of denying the authoritarian road we are on.
We've been heading this direction with hardly a pause, let alone step back, since the '70s.
Authoritarianism was winning for 50+ years. Nobody with power meaningfully tried to stop it, and voters didn't give enough of a shit to elect people who would. Where we're at now, is that it won.
> My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive
This is your take given the blatant corruption and clear constitutional violations of this administration? Sure, let's hope that norms and vibes save us against an executive ignoring due process. Those other branches don't even have a way to enforce anything; the executive are the ones who arrest people.
The power of the executive is constrained, ultimately, by what people let them do. Including people inside the executive branch -- the people who're doing the arresting, transporting the prisoners, gunning down the protesters, etc. There's a lot of people involved who aren't committed to some authoritarian project, they're just... doing their job. They can be swayed by vibes, and general unpopularity of the regime.
The alternative to this view is either giving up or preparing for armed struggle. It's certainly possible that we could get there, but I don't think it's guaranteed yet.
(I acknowledge that this position is quite the blend of optimism and cynicism.)
Like this judge they're being ousted for the smallest pushback and are being replaced by project 2025 people, they even set up a system that you can apply to do exactly this. Trump (or Vance that is fully in with Thiel) will have full control over all agencies where all low level employees are on board with this Christo fascist takeover and the judiciary will be powerless.
Trump is calling for the Fed's Jerome Powell to be fired for not lying and saying everything will be fine as a result of tariffs. He pulled the security clearance of former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and anyone associated with him, for not lying about the result of his cyber security investigation of the 2020 election. He also pulled security clearances for political rivals including Biden, Harris, and Cheney as well as the Attorneys General involved in his civil case for fraud, which he lost and was ordered to pay $355 million.
This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will use executive power to destroy you". There is no optimistic view of this.
If it turns autocratic then there's no discussion to be had. Judge will waterboarded in Gitmo and Trump is de-facto king. We are no longer a nation of laws, the USA is renamed to Trumpopolis and we all have to get government mandated orange spray tans.
So assuming that doesn't happen, this is an action by a non-autocratic executive meant to have a chilling effect on low level judges who don't want to spend a few days in lockup just because. A knob that the executive is (mostly) allowed to turn but that is considered in poor taste if you wish to remain on good terms with the judiciary. The bar for arrest is really low and the courts decide if she committed a crime which she obviously didn't.
Autocracy comes in shades. Arresting judges who do things you don't like is yet another shade darker than we've seen so far... And things were already pretty dark.
You seem to be quite blasé about the possibility of autocracy. But yes, there is a risk that Trump becomes a dictator and we're no longer a nation of laws. It depends on how people like us react to consolidations of power like this, or the illegal impoundment, or cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia's. The law only matters insofar as we and our representatives can enforce it.
I'm not so much blasé about it, more just nihilistic because I am the last person with any kind of power to stop it. I imagine most of HN falls
into this bucket of people with no real political power or influence. My realistic option if it happens is to move.
Protest! People power is the best way to resist autocracy especially in the early stages when resistance has a chance of success. Don’t ignore the fact that protests are happening. Musk is fleeing Washington because the backlash successfully tanked Tesla. That’s a big win right there!
Consider just how much more inconvenient/shitty/tragic it will be for you and the people you know if you are indeed forced to move, as compared to successfully pushing back right now.
I'm also making plans contingency plans to move, but I may not be able to. Individually, no, we don't have power, but if everyone actually protested, we would - the Ukrainian revolution[1] started out as just mass protests (Euromaidan), for instance. The problem is that not enough of us are doing it, maybe because too many people are apathetic, uninformed, or don't take the possibility of autocracy seriously.
According to the FBI complaint that was just made available:
Judge Dugan escorted the subject through a "jurors door" to private hallways and exits instead of having the defendant leave via the main doors into the public hallway, where she visually confirmed the agents were waiting for him.
I couldn't tell if the judge knew for certain that ICE was only permitted to detain the defendant in 'public spaces' or not.
Regardless, the judge took specific and highly unusual action to ensure the defendant didn't go out the normal exit into ICE hands -- and that's the basis for the arrest.
I don't necessarily agree with ICE actions, but I also can't refute that the judge took action to attempt to protect the individual. On one side you kind of want immigrants to show up to court when charged with crimes so they can defend themselves... but on the other side, this individual deported in 2013 and returned to the country without permission (as opposed to the permission expiring, or being revoked, so there was no potential 'visa/asylum/permission due process' questions)
If this is all true, it still requires the judge be under some legal order to facilitate the deportation -- unless they have a warrant of the relevant type, the judge is under no such obligation. With a standard (administrative) warrant, ICE have no authority to demand the arrest.
The violation is not that the judge _did not assist_, but that the judge took additional actions to ensure the defendant could access restricted areas they otherwise would have no right to be in so that they could get out of the building unseen.
The judge was aware of the warrant and ensured the defendant remained in private areas so they could get out of the building.
The FBI's argument is that her actions were unusual (a defendant being allowed into juror's corridors is highly unusual) and were only being taken explicitly to assist in evading ICE.
As we've heard from many lawyers recently regarding ICE... You are not required to participate and assist. However, you can't take additional actions to directly interfere. Even loudly shouting "WHY IS ICE HERE?" is dangerous (you probably should shout a more generic police concern, like 'hey, police, is there a criminal nearby? should i hide?'
That applies to warrants for arrest. The standard warrant ICE operate with is a civil warrant, and does not confer any actual authority to arrest an individual.
I keep hearing over and over the ICE warrants aren't real.
If they are arresting people using them and judges are recognizing them, they are real and the people demanding an arrest warrant are the sovereign citizen-tier people screaming at the sky wishing there was a different reality.
There are multiple types of warrants. All types are "real", but they convey different authority and different requirements upon both the arrestee and the arresters.
It is both rational and legal to insist that law enforcement stay within the bounds of the authority the specific type warrant they obtained. ICE civil warrants grant different authority than every-day federal arrest warrants. That ICE is abusing that authority is no reason to capitulate to it.
There are two different warrants. Ones issued by judges, which are "real" and ones signed by ICE supervisors which are little more than legal authorisation that this agent can go out and investigate a person -- even if they nevertheless attempt to arrest them.
I'm amazed the immigrant actually even attended the court hearing in a climate like this. The person went to the court hearing in good faith. Anyway, probably less people will be going to court hearings now.
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Wisconsin is also a major money pit for Elon, for whatever reason it's a battleground for everything that's going on this country:
Musk and his affiliated groups sunk $21 million into flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
I'd wager dollars to donuts this is a "You'll beat the rap but you won't beat the ride" intimidation tactic: the FBI knows it doesn't have a case, but they don't need to have a case to handcuff the judge and throw them in jail for a few days. That intimidation and use of force against the judicial branch is the end in itself.
Donuts at the local grocery store are $7/dozen. If you're somewhere with generally higher prices, this bet might not be as lopsided as it's traditionally meant to be.
I don't think you understood my point: there's no undoing the arrest, which was the only real goal here. The administration is publicly demonstrating that it can perform wrongful arrests of judges with impunity. They don't care if they get released later.
Did you read the warrant? They did not demand the judge tell them anything. They knew he was there and were waiting outside the courtroom to arrest him. The judge confronted them and was visibly upset. She directed the agents elsewhere and then immediately told Ruiz and his counsel to exit via a private hallway. The attorney prosecuting the case against Ruiz and his (alleged) victims were present in the court and confused when his case was never called, even though everyone was present in the court.
It doesn't seem like it matters here. Per 18 USC §1071:
Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned.
Unless you're arguing that the facts are misrepresented, or that the law is somehow unconstitutional, this seems pretty slam-dunk, no? The judge seems to have deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest. That's all there seems to be to it.
Not sure that applies to arbitrary documents that the bearer claims is a warrant, rather than a judge-signed warrant.
Either way, it wasn't illegal to send them to where they needed to go, and it wasn't illegal to let this dude use another door, so the illegality seems to depend on whether the executive can concoct their own warrants without any oversight and gain arbitrary access for arbitrary reasons.
> The judge seems to have deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest.
Was the judge, beforehand, served with a judge-signed warrant indicating that they intended to, and were authorized to, arrest this person? If not, then it wasn't letting them escape arrest, it was letting them escape from 2 random dudes who may or may not even be law enforcement, much less law enforcement judicially authorized to arrest the dude.
It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process. And "I don't even know if you're actually law enforcement" is not an excuse for ignoring law enforcement; what you do is ask for credentials and verify them. Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but this seems pretty cut and dried to me. We'll see how it plays out in court.
> It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process.
Lol: by that logic, Steve who lives in a van down by the river can scribble himself a napkin that says "warrant" on it. After all, "It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process", and Steve who lives in a van down by the river has a process and a warrant.
> I don't even know if you're actually law enforcement" is not an excuse for ignoring law enforcement
Maybe, maybe not. "You never presented me with a valid warrant" is, though, and a judge would know better than cops what a valid warrant is.
> Lol: by that logic, Steve who lives in a van down by the river can scribble himself a napkin that says "warrant" on it. After all, "It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process", and Steve who lives in a van down by the river has a process and a warrant.
What? Did you not read it says a process that "has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States"?
The laws of the United States say that Steve can scribble "warrant" on a napkin. Has this judge ruled that this ICE "administrative warrant" is any more valid than Steve's for the purposes of this case? Obviously judges, not the executive branch, are the deciders here.
The constitution (which is supreme to laws), along with common law, put restrictions on which pieces of paper that say "warrant" actually get to function as warrants, and judges, like this one, have the last word on interpreting the constitution and laws.
What's being alleged is that she escorted the person out a rear entrance that is only used by juries and defendants who are in custody, not defense attorneys or free defendants. It is alleged that she interrupted the defendant on their way out the regular customary door and guided them through the rear door instead.
If those allegations are true (which is a big if at this stage), it's not hard to see how that could be construed to be a private act taken outside the course of her normal duties to deliberately help the defendant evade arrest.
That doesn't make what she did morally wrong, of course, but there is a world of difference between the kind of abuse of power that many people here are assuming and someone getting arrested for civil disobedience—intentionally breaking a law because they felt it was the right choice.
"when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor"
This is a private act and involved a private hallway
Under any occasion, it was inappropriate to arrest a judge like this.
We’re honestly at the point where I’d be comfortable with armed militias defending state and local institutions from federal police. If only to force someone to think twice about something like this. (To be clear, I’m not happy we’re here. But we are.)
why do you think the people willing to be a part of the armed militias you mention are NOT on the same way of thinking as what ICE is attempting to do. that's just how the militia types tend to lean, so I don't think this would have the effect you're looking for
you'd be declared an illegal immigrant and removed to hotel salvador pretty quickly at this point. The orangefuhrer has already said he's coming after the "homegrown" next.
While I'm not familiar with all 50 governors, I'm wondering if there might not be some Republican governors that think things have gone too far as well. Being a Republican does not mean you are in favor of autocracy. It just looks like that right now because nobody is sticking their necks out, but I'm holding onto hope that if it does get to that point, further resistance might come out.
we'll see if/when the lawsuits lauched against the administration is ignored by the administration. But no one wants a civil war. No one would win here except maybe China/Russia.
You discount the people that want to watch the world burn. The tree of...fed with blood...blah blah blah. "Burn it down, start over" is often touted as the fastest/best approach for wholesale changes when the friction to making change is too great.
Economically, China would probably be the biggest beneficiary to a US civil war, especially one that ended with 2 Americas with neither the strength of the former union. Russia would just love to see the chaos and reap whatever gains they could get as well.
What a strange set of ideas presented in such a small sentence fragment.
* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
* Guns are very easy to obtain, the "arms race" is a trip to the local sporting goods store. Sure, the weapon may not be super tacti-cool with a bunch of skulls and shit, but I'm pretty sure that even without all the virtue signalling decals it does the primary job just fine.
Do you think those that have been opposed to current gun laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of their newly acquired weapon as opposed to those that have been collecting them for years?
This just made up militia will be woefully untrained to handle anything. At least those that have their meeting in the woods practice to whatever extent they do, but that would be so much more than this recent trip to the sporting goods store.
Whether you want to quibble over the words demonize, there are a lot of people that do not interpret the constitution to mean that just any ol' body can own a gun to the extent we allow today. The well regulated militia is part of that amendment, and gets left out quite conveniently. The local police departments are closer to the idea of a well regulated militia. The national guard are even closer of a match to me. The guys that run around in the woods believe they are fulfilling that role, but nobody really thinks they are well regulated other than whatever rules they choose to operate.
Personally, I do not think that what we have today with the NRA and what not is what the framers had in mind. So you complain about demonizing being wrong and clearly on one end of the spectrum. I think that the NRA refusing any limits on guns is clearly the other end of that spectrum
> Do you think those that have been opposed to current gun laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of their newly acquired weapon
I don’t own a gun and I’m a better shot than half those militia types. The purpose of the guns isn’t to shoot them, it’s to deter. By the time it’s WACO, one side’s marksmanship isn’t really relevant.
You can have 20 assault style weapons in your gun safe, but if that's where they are they do not act as a deterrent. They are only a deterrent when they are ready to be used. The purpose of a gun is to be shot. Confusing this is just some very excessive bending of logic. The intent of the shooter is an entirely different matter. They were not manufactured and then sold/purchased just to be in a display case. That's just what someone decided to with their purchase.
In fact, If you have 20 assault rifles in your safe you are a target for 20 or so revolutionaries. Oligarchs aside, most people of the hoarding political persuasion mistrust others and couldn't social engineer their way out of a paper bag.
I've taught people who had never held a gun to shoot. It takes an hour or two to get them to the point where they can get a nice grouping at a reasonable distance.
I haven't owned a gun in 20 years (it's not my style). I go shooting every 3-4 years with some gun nut buddies who have big arsenals and go shooting often. I am a better shot than many of them.
Armies have won wars while being comprised mostly of conscripted people who hadn't held a gun prior to the conflict breaking out.
Point being - effective use of guns does not require deep proficiency nor long term regular training.
Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the safety of a gun range is one thing. It's a different thing to do that when it's a person in front on you. It's also a totally different thing when that person in front of you is persons plural in the form of a trained opposing force and the bullets are coming at you. It takes training to quell that fear and be able to react in a manner that does not end with you full of lead.
When I've discussed training in this thread in other comments, this is what I was considering. Not target practice. Not being able reload a weapon. Specifically about mentally holding it together to not freeze, or even loose your ability to aim at something not a paper target in a gun range.
> Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the safety of a gun range is one thing. It's a different thing to do that when it's a person in front on you
Sure. I’m saying that the physical condition of most “militia” members doesn’t make for a threatening force.
In any case, if America went low-burn civil war, you’d pay the drug gangs to do your dirty work. The reason that’s the 20th century playbook is it works.
>* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
Don't gaslight us. Democrats have been pushing civilian disarmament HARD recently.
Restricted magazine sizes, requiring all transfers to go through a FFL, basic features bans, permits to purchase, restricting ammo purchases to FFLs raising prices, and now repeated attempts at semi-auto bans.
This isn't focused on criminals, it's trying to discourage firearm ownership in general. When states ban the federal government marksmanship program from shipping firearms to civilians AFTER they have already been background checked by a federal agency it's clear there is no attempt to stop criminals.
The courts are a bit split on this. Recently in illinois a judge found an illegal immigrant is not a prohibited person if they meet some standard of community ties/integration, although I've totally forgotten what criteria the judge used.
Remember that the McDonald case incorporated the second amendment to the states so the judges have to decide these sorts of questions for people who are out of status.
I mean criminals: people convicted of a crime for which one of the punishments is revocation of gun ownership rights.
The important word here is convicted. As we were all taught in elementary school - there is a process required by the constitution in which a person goes to a special meeting (called a trial) where a whole bunch of people examine evidence and ask a lot of questions about that evidence to determine if a person is a criminal. If the decisions is they are a criminal, then they have been convicted. HTH!
You do not need to be convicted, you do not even need to be charged.
Since this is a hot topic, look at Abrego Garcia. His wife filed a restraining order. The initial order was slightly different than the temporary order 3 days later, which added one thing -- surrendering any firearms (this is bog standard, they do this in Maryland even for citizens). No matter that she did not even bother to show up for the adversarial final order, so he had his gun rights taken totally ex-parte without even a criminal charge or a fully adjudicated civil order nor any chance to face his accuser wife. Even david lettermen had his gun rights temporarily revoked because a woman in another state claimed he was harassing through her TV via secret messages in his television program [].
But that's not all, you can totally have gun rights taken away without any civil or criminal process. If you use illegal drugs, you cannot own weapons either, that is established without any due process to decide if you use or not, simply putting down you use marijuana on a 4473 will block a sale as will simply owning a marijuana card whether you use marijuana or not.
This is exactly my point, and what I've been driving at in this thread.
This could not possibly be a concern based on abrogation of due process - because there have been many similar due process violations concerning firearms, and I've never seen a single article submitted here about those.
Frankly, I don't see how immigration is any more relevant to this site than civil rights.
first knee jerk type answer is that there are a lot of people in the tech industry that are here on some sort of visa and are not citizens which means that they very much are subject to any changes to immigration enforcement.
Yes except that the very same armed types, after years of being derided by Democrat and progressive types as ignorant rednecks, are the least likely (for now at least) to defend a judge being targeted for protecting immigrants by the Trump administration. I know of no armed militia types that are of the opposing political persuasion, being armed is just a bit too kitsch and crude for them it seems. Maybe they reconsider their views of armed resistance in these years.
This is basically what Ammon Bundy did, and most of the US hates him for it. The federal government tried many times to jail him but ultimately he was found innocent everytime. Finally they managed to get him by a friendly judge who had a husband high up in the BLM, awarding an ungodly high lawsuit when he helped an innocent mother get her baby back by summonsing his protest-militia to protest a hospital that conspired to have the baby taken by child services.
Seriously, listen to some videos of Ammon Bundy actually speak (he is pro immigration rights as well, despite the 'far-right' label). Not what you hear from the media or others or under the influence of a political agenda. Most of what he says is 99% in line with your thought process here.
It is legal in all 50 states to organize a militia, it is illegal in all 50 states to do certain things as a militia including (the exact rules vary by state) things like participating in civil disorder, planning to participate in civil disorder, training for sabotage or guerilla warfare, etc.
Of course, since the purpose being suggested here is literally the purported urgent need to engage in armed rebellion against federal authorities, the concern that organizing a militia for that purpose would be constrained by merely "organizing a militia" being illegal is a bit odd. Waging war against the federal government, or conspiring to do so, is--even if one argues that it is morally justified by the government violating its Constitutional constraints--both clearly illegal and likely to be subject to the absolute maximum sanction. The legality of organizing a militia in general hardly makes a difference, either to the legal or practical risk anyone undertaking such a venture would face.
> We've got National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason.
Yes, but that reason is not for rebellion against the federal government, which is why their equipment and training is governed by the federal government and the President can by fiat order them into federal service at which point he is the C-in-C, not the government.
Most states do also have their own non-federal reserve military force in additionto their National Guard, but those tend to be tiny and not organized for independent operations (e.g., the ~900 strength California State [not National] Guard.)
If the federal government is no longer beholden to the law because the king executive refuses to follow or enforce inconvenient laws, would it be appropriate to consider it a rebellion? It seems more like basic law enforcement to me.
I was under the impression that state governors could refuse to federalize their National Guards. A quick read on Wikipedia points to the Constitution saying it would take Congress for the federal government to take command unilaterally. That could be a sticking point by the time it gets to the point where there is enough support for state governors to be deploying their state National Guards to keep the peace versus the lawless federal executive.
> I was under the impression that state governors could refuse to federalize their National Guards.
They cannot, under the Constitution. Of course, at the point the National Guard is being mobilized to prevent actions of the federal government, we are deep into a constitutional crisis and a short distance from a (possibly very brief) active civil war.
> A quick read on Wikipedia points to the Constitution saying it would take Congress for the federal government to take command unilaterally.
Congress has already done so , setting rules which require only a Presidential determination to invoke [0], and Presidents have used the authority so granted specifically to deal with very much the same state rebellion scenario you suggest, notably Eisenhower in 1957 when the Arkansas National Guard was deployed to prevent the implementation of a federal court order integrating Central High School in Little Rock: Eisenhower did the one-two punch of federalizing the entire Arkansas National Guard, ordered them away, and also deployed the Army (101st Airborne) to enforce the order. [1]
[0] in the Insurrection Act; the specific relevant provision is at 10 USC § 252: “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” (emphasis added)
I mean, we're deep into a constitutional crisis right now - the president has asserted himself to be a king unbeholden to the law, and installed loyal supplicants who agree with that interpretation. So the check of the judiciary (required for individual liberty, among other things. and as imperfect as it was) is effectively dead.
I keep looking for angles where we can organize bottom-up within existing governance structures to resist this anti-American tyrant, that won't just result in an escalation where any resistance is attacked and the chaos then used as fuel for more support of authoritarianism (like the police riots of 2020). Something besides the single obvious lever of getting Congress on board with impeachment.
At any rate thank you for responding. By your other comments I knew you'd be able to point to something specific. The National Guards could certainly still play a role in defending the United States as this conflict escalates, but that baseline dynamic creates a much higher bar to clear.
The charge seems colorable to me, and I think most people would agree the judge was obstructing justice if you strip out the polarizing nature of ICE detentions.
If you take the charges at face value, Law enforcement was there to perform an arrest and the judge acted outside their official capacity to obstruct.
you need a warrant and established PC, and you need to request administrative recess of court in session. You cant stay in the framework of US law while walking into court and expect a judge to transfer custody of a defendant because you say so.
I was not aware of this accusation when I made my original comment
>Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.
Judges have what most people would consider insane levels of legitimate power while sitting on the bench itself inside the courtroom. Just outside the door, those powers are not quite so intense, but he can have you thrown in a cage just for not doing what he says, and he can command nearly anything. He could certainly demand that someone not leave the courtroom if he felt like doing so, and there would be no real remedy even if he did so for illegitimate reasons. Perhaps a censure months later.
According to the story you linked, they claim they had a warrant but the judge and other staff say the warrant was never presented.
Further, ICE has a habit of lying about this. They refer to the documents they write as "administrative warrants", which are not real judicial warrants and have no legal standing at all. So when ICE says they presented a warrant it's important to dig in and see if it was one of their fake ones.
Writing "WARANT" in crayon on a piece of scratch paper will not give you the authority to detain someone who is in the country illegally. It is my understanding that a valid ICE administrative warrant gives an ICE officer the authority to detain the person named on the warrant. And in cases like the one in question where ICE has ample time to get the warrant, it is my understanding that an ICE officer without the warrant would not have the authority to detain someone who is in the country illegally.
What the ICE warrant doesn't give is the authority to conduct a search of private property without permission. Which the agents in this case were not attempting to do.
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Since there were multiple agents (the reports and Patel's post all say "agents" plural) they could have left one at the courtroom, or outside, rather than all going away. Then there'd have been no chase and no issue.
The question is if the judge should have held the man or not for the agents who chose to leave no one behind to take him into custody after the proceeding finished.
ICE doesn't issue warrants, because they can't. Immingration matters aren't criminal, and ICE are not law enforcement, though they certainly love to cosplay as some sort of mix between law enforcement and military.
That's why ICE has to "ask" law enforcement to hold on to someone who gets arrested on another matter, and why plenty of police departments tell them to go pound sand.
I wouldn't be surprised if the agents are required to stay together when doing deportation arrests because they don't know when an immigrant might revert to their demon form and incapacitate a lone officer.
while funny, there is a reason for federals coming in pairs so they can act as a witness for the other with things like lying to a federal officer.
this doesn't sound like the plural just meant 2 here, so it really does come across as Keystone Cops level of falling over themselves to not leave behind someone to keep an eye on their subject.
The claim is different. Agents with an arrest warrant waited in the public hallway, as asked and required by the judges.
The judge skipped the hearing for the target and [directed] them out a private back door in an attempt to prevent arrest, leading to a foot chase before apprehension.
That information came out after my comment, and also long after the edit window. The updated FBI claim is certainly more damning for the judge (actively impeding their efforts).
I thought they were misdemeanor crimes [0] punishable by jail time.
So they are crimes, but not huge.
I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but I thought that local law enforcement can certainly hold someone charged with a federal crime. Eg, if someone commits the federal crime of kidnapping, then local cops can detain that person until transferred to FBI.
This sounds like a case in Trump’s first term. I don’t condone the arrest, but to provide context:
> In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…
I don't think we've got enough information to say how similar it is. That one sounds like it hung on Joseph actively helping the immigrant to take an unusual route out. If this judge just sent the agents off for their permission then wrapped things up normally and didn't get involved beyond that, I can't see this going anywhere.
There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Sounds like some lower-level ICE agents screwed up, and let the subject get away, and they're trying to redirect blame to the judge. I doubt this will stick, barring any new info on what happened.
IANAL but... The agents had no official role in the proceedings, and if they did not request one, then they have the status of courtroom observers (little difference from courtroom back row voyeurs) and they can go jump in a lake.
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? The FBI affidavit says they were waiting in the public hallway outside, let the bailiff know what they were doing and did not enter the courtroom. The judge did not find out until a public defender took pictures of the arrest team and brought it to the attention of the judge. Maybe the FBI lied, but that seems unlikely given the facts would seem eventually verifiable by security video and uninvolved witness statements.
Members of the arrest team reported the following events after Judge DUGAN
learned of their presence and left the bench. Judge DUGAN and Judge A, who
were both wearing judicial robes, approached members of the arrest team in
the public hallway.
> the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
I used to work as a paramedic. We’d frequently be called to the local tribal jail which had a poor reputation. People would play sick to get out of there for a few hours. If the jail staff thought they were faking and they were due for release in the next week or so, they’d “release” them while we were doing an assessment and tell them “you are getting the bill for this not us” (because in custody the jail is responsible for medical care). Patient would duly get in our ambulance and a few minutes down the road and “feel better”, and request to be let out.
The first time this happened my partner was confused. “We need to stop them” - no, we don’t, and legally can’t. “We need to tell the jail so they can come pick them back up” - no, the jail made the choice to release them, they are no longer in custody and free to go.
This caught on very quickly with inmates and for a while was happening a couple of times a day before the jail figured out the deal and stopped releasing people early.
We really need a court case or law passed that says a stalked animal has the right to run (lie) without further punishment resulting from the act of running (lying). Social Contract™, and "you chose it" gaslighty nonsense aside, the state putting someone in a concrete camp for years, or stealing decades worth of savings, is violence even if blessed-off religiously by a black-robed blesser. Running from and lying to the police to preserve one's or one's family's liberty should be a given fact of the game, not additional "crimes."
We also need to abolish executions except for oath taking elected office holders convicted of treason, redefine a life sentence as 8 years and all sentencing be concurrent across all layers of state, and put a sixteen year post hoc time limit on custodial sentences (murder someone 12 years ago and get a "life sentence" today as a result? -> 4 years max custody). Why? Who is the same person after a presidential administration? What is a 25+ year sentence going to do to restore the victims' losses? If you feel that strongly after 8 years that it should have been 80, go murder the released perp and serve your 8!
The point is to defang government; it has become too powerful in the name of War on _______, and crime has filled the blank really nicely historically.
> It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
No, that is the excuse. They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her. Needless to say people don't get tried on this kind of "look the other way" "obstruction" as a general rule. This case is extremely special.
It is abundantly clear that this arrest was made for political reasons, as part of a big and very obvious public policy push.
> They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her
If by technicality you mean correctly identifying that the judge intentionally adjourned the suspect's court proceedings and directed them through a non-public exit in order to evade a lawful deportation of a domestic abuser who had already been deported once, yes, it was a "technicality". The short form would be to acknowledge the judge intentionally interfered with a lawful deportation, which is a crime, thus the arrest.
Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway). ICE does not have the power to decide on whether someone is a "domestic abuser" or whatever. They were just serving a warrant.
But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern? The judge would have been empowered to enjoin the deportation, no? You agree, right? That's what courts do? In which case, wouldn't the ICE agents be the ones guilty of "obstruction" here?
The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever. You try things before courts, and appeal, and eventually get to a resolution.
Trying to do anything else leads to exactly where we are here, where one arm of government is performatively arresting members of another for baldly partisan reasons.
>Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway).
I mean, it was going to be attested until the judge decided to adjourn his proceedings and push him out the back door to avoid ICE. He's charged with domestic abuse.
>But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern?
Based on my limited understanding of immigration law I'd agree that there's probably a valid mechanism for the judge to legally intervene in the deportation to let the immigration concern be addressed -- but that isn't what happened here. The defendant was there for a criminal charge of domestic abuse and the judge essentially canceled his hearing and snuck him out the back to prevent ICE from executing a legal order to deport someone who is here illegally and has already been deported once before.
>The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever.
That's why the judge is being arrested, because she as an individual skirted legal process to interrupt a lawful deportation (allegedly).
Reading through that, it does seem like a very hasty decision on the judge's part. But then again, I don't know what else you're supposed to do if you think the warrant for the arrest is based on an unjust premise (Which Dugan presumably thought, otherwise I have no idea why she'd act the way she did). This does make it pretty clear that the arrest of the judge is justified, unless there are some special provisions for judges that I'm unaware of that allow judges to be exempt from title 18 code 1071 and code 1505, which is entirely possible since the most relevant thing about US law I know is jurisprudence. Barring that possibility, what should be more on the top of everyone's minds is how this is resolved in court.
the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target.
This is a pissing match between authorities. ICE has their panties in a knot that the judge didn't "respect muh authoriah" and do more than the bare leglal minimum for them (which resulted in the guy getting away). On the plus side, one hopes judge will have a pretty good record going forward when it comes to matters of local authorities using the process to abuse people.
>(They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation --
Something that HN frequently trots out as a good thing and the system working as intended. Where are those people now? Why are they so quiet?
>someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
And for every Al there's a dozen Marthas, people who actually didn't do it but the feds never go away empty handed.
ICE officers seem like the ones that couldn't make it through police academy and had no other career prospects. Much like the average HOA, these are people who relish in undeserved power they didn't have to earn.
As a society, we owe it to ourselves to make sure people whom we give a lot of power to actually work and earn it.
The AP article [1] has the full complaint linked, the crux of the case seems to be around the judge allowing the defendant to leave through a back entrance ("jury door") when they were aware agents were waiting in the public hallway to make an arrest as they exited.
" 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of the arrest team to the Chief Judge’s office. For example, the courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy’s return to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like “Wait, come with me.” Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door."
I find it extremely doubtful that she told the agents he'd be leaving through a particular door or that she had any legal obligation to make sure the man exited in a particular way.
United States Code, Title 8, § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) (2023)
> (1)(A) Any person who
[…]
> (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
[…]
> shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
>attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien
Does that cover "Hey, this door is closer to where we are going"? It's going to rest on convincing a jury that the only possible reason the suspect would go out that door would be the judge explicitly trying to help them evade arrest.
IMO that should be impossible to prove but we have never taken "Beyond a reasonable doubt" seriously.
"knowing or in reckless disregard"
Funny, nobody ever arrests any of the employers choosing not to verify the documents of their employees.
There was a series of other steps in the case before she let the guy use a door the public never uses. Including rushing his case through after confronting the agents and adjourning it without notifying the attorneys present in the court room. She instructed him through the door before the basic administrative tasks of the case were done.
If the details of what their witness (court deputy) says is true then it's pretty obvious what happened here.
Whether the government should give State judges that leeway is another issue.
> Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest.
Perhaps you’re a lawyer with greater insight into this issue than I have. The actions described in the article satisfy the plain reading of the terms “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection.”
The intuitive reading seems to be further corroborated by the case law:
> The word "harbor" […] means to lodge or to aid or to care for one who is secreting himself from the processes of the law. The word "conceal" […] means to hide or to secrete or to keep out of sight or to aid in preventing the discovery of one who is secreting himself from the processes of the law.
> *The statute proscribes acts calculated to obstruct the efforts of the authorities to effect arrest of the fugitive,* but it does not impose a duty on one who may be aware of the whereabouts of the fugitive, although having played no part in his flight, to reveal this information on pain of criminal prosecution.
The alien was already "detected", that's why they were at the courthouse. She didn't harbor him, she was performing her job and the defendant was required to be there.
I also fail to see how she "concealed" him either. "Aiding and abetting" would be a stretch, but still more accurate verbs. But those aren't in the law you quoted.
Original title: "Former New Mexico judge and wife arrested by ICE". It's as though he wasn't an active judge while harboring an alleged Tren De Aragua gang member.
Protip: believe absolutely nothing you read in mainstream news sources on any even remotely political topic. Read between the lines, sort of like people used to read Pravda in the Soviet Union.
This is why I don't believe 90% of what they say about Trump. As soon as he took office in 2017 it was so obvious that MSM was paid to absolutely destroy him. Then in 2021 suddenly everyone single problem wasn't due to the president anymore.
I woke up to this in 2016 when theretofore beloved public figure Donald Trump turned into literally Hitler immediately after he descended down that elevator in the Trump tower, all without changing a single opinion he'd ever held. And it's been unrelenting ever since.
and he was a former democrat! I'm not saying he's perfect, I'm not saying he's sophisticated, or that he hasn't said some stupid things. No way, there are way better republican candidates. But TDS is real.
What's being alleged is that she deliberately escorted the man out through an exit that is not usually made available to members of the public, instead of allowing him to leave through the regular door that would likely have put him right into the hands of ICE. If that was done with the intent of helping him evade arrest (which, if the story above is accurate, seems likely), it seems very reasonable to charge her with obstruction.
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
An administrative warrant is still valid for arrest, it doesn't need to be signed by a judge. If you think it needs to be then laws needs to be changed, but that is how laws are right now.
It's not valid for arrest on private premises, like a courthouse. Only out in public.
So the judge is no more "obstructing justice" than if I refuse to open the door to let ICE agents in to arrest someone with an administrative warrant, and then that person leaves out the back door.
ICE should have obtained a judicial warrant, but they didn't. That's their fault.
From reading the affidavit it’s clear to me there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion around these situations. Clearly the judges are upset with ICE making arrests in the public spaces within the court hall while ICE views it as the perfect place since the defendant will be unarmed. This was an administrative warrant and IANAL but doesn’t that not require local cooperation e.g the judge is in her right to not help or comply with the warrant?
If it can be proven that she deliberately escorted the person through the non-public exit to the courtroom with the intent of helping them evade arrest by officers with a warrant who were waiting outside at the other entrance, how would that not be an arrestable offence?
We're extremely light on facts right now, so I'm not taking the above quoted story at face value, but if one were to take it at face value it seems pretty clear cut.
The part that makes it not so clear cut is that this is really a constitutional issue rather than a criminal one. It is not credible that the judge was trying to ensure the man could keep living in the US undocumented. She was defending her court. From a judge's POV, arresting a plantiff/defendant in the middle of a trial is a violation of their right to a trial and impedes local prosecutors' abilities to seek justice.
Ultimately this seems like Trump asserting that the federal executive branch has unfettered veto authority over local judicial branches. That doesn't sit well with me.
The charges against her are not about her behavior during her court, they're about what happened once the court was adjourned and the defendant was starting to leave. She successfully defended the process within her own courtroom and it's alleged that she went a step further in securing the defendant from their impending arrest on an unrelated charge.
There's definitely a conversation to be had about whether people should be safe from immigration law enforcement while within a courthouse, but at the moment as I understand it that is not a protection that exists.
It doesn't matter if court was adjourned, she was still at work and performing her official duties. In particular she asked the ICE agents if they had a judicial warrant and was told no, it was administrative. A federal judicial warrant clearly outranks a local judge and it would be fine to arrest her if she defied it. It is not clear that an order from the executive branch does the same. That doesn't mean local judges are immune from federal prosecution (e.g. corruption charges if someone takes money to rule favorably), but there is a fairly high bar, I don't think her behavior even comes close to probable cause for obstruction of justice or shielding an undocumented immigrant.
The reason every other administration besides Trump refused to go into local courthouses to deport people wasn't about "whether people should be safe from immigration enforcement," it was about separation of powers.
I guess I would hope it takes more then that to rise to the level of obstruction.
Additionally, you have to prove intent, and unless the judge was careless, I doubt they will ever be able to do that. I'd bet the prosecution knows this, I don't think they expect the charges to stick. It seems this arrest was done to send a message.
More evidence of that is that typically in this kind of case they would invite her to show up somewhere to accept process, not be arrested like a common criminal.
ICE has absolutely no business in state courthouses. The federal interest in enforcing immigration law should not be placed above the state's interest in enforcing equal protection under the law. Consider the case of a undocumented rape victim. Do they not deserve justice? Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported? I think not and I do not want to live in that society.
* Police interactions, unless you want people refusing to cooperate with police.
* Hospitals, unless you want people refusing to seek medical care for communicable diseases.
* Courtrooms, unless you want people to skip court or refuse to testify as witnesses.
My wife likes watching murder investigation TV shows. Sometimes the homicide detectives will talk to petty criminals like street-level drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like. The first thing the detectives do is assure them that they're there about a murder and couldn't care less about the other minor stuff. They're not going to arrest some guy selling weed when they want to hear his story about something he witnessed.
Except that's TV and police often nail petty criminals for petty crimes in the process of larger investigations and they wonder why they get so little public support and cooperation.
A sane argument against an insane position. Republicans are perfectly fine with unpunished violence against non-citizens. No wonder tourism is sharply declining.
> Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported?
That's not an actual outcome that would occur. Cases can proceed if the victim is unavailable. Do we let a rapist off because their victim had an untimely death? Obviously not.
In the case of a deportee, if we have a sworn statement from them, or can remotely depose them, then their testimony would be included in the trial.
In the real world, cases die all the time because the victim refuses to cooperate with the police.
This is the point of things like immunity, and laws against witness tampering, and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew you would die if you took the stand.
You're describing an entirely different situation. Unless you're saying that deporting someone makes them wholly unable to participate in the process which is what I'm precisely disagreeing with. Cooperating can include things like simply filling out an affidavit or participating in remote depositions.
> and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew you would die if you took the stand.
Removing someone from the country does not kill them.
Consider the case of an arrest warrant for a rapist. Can it not be served at a courthouse? What if a judge smuggled them out a private door after being informed of the arrest warrant.
Edit: the charge isn't for refusing to enforce. It's for smuggling someone out in attempt to actively impede their arrest.
You're missing the point - a rapist would have a criminal arrest warrant, which would absolutely be the courthouse's responsibility to enforce. The ICE agents attempted to disrupt a criminal proceeding to enforce a civil immigration warrant not signed by a judge. More on that distinction here: https://www.fletc.gov/ice-administrative-removal-warrants-mp...
The court hallways are considered public property so it's basically a debate on cultural semantics, not a legal one. The federal gov probably has inventive to not deter people showing up at state courts. But the federal gov is also pretty notorious for caring more about their own cases than the potential issues created for other levels of government.
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens? Ones that are being tried for battery no less.
The arrest itself (not necessarily the charges) is best described as a publicity stunt. If you want to charge a lawyer or judge or anyone unlikely to run of a non-violent crime, you invite them to the station:
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
To clarify - the only time you ever need to "arrest" someone and place them in custody is if you are worried they are either going to commit violent crimes or are going to be a flight risk before they can see a judge.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
Can you imagine being a law enforcement officer bringing a case before a judge that you previously arrested on a flimsy pretext in order to intimidate them? That's going to be awkward.
Public displays of executive power and disregard for political and legal norms is slightly more than a publicity stunt. They are related ideas but come on. Like describing a cross burning as a publicity stunt. This is a threat.
It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence. A judge is not an agent of ICE or the feds; they have undergone study and election and put in a position where their discretion has the weight of law. It's frankly disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
> It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence.
That’s not exactly new, I was recently reminded that during the governor’s meeting when Trump singled Maine out for ignoring an EO the governor replied that they’d be following the law, and Trump’s rejoinder was that they (his administration) are the law.
> disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
It's just like "states rights" where it only matters so long as you stay in their good graces. Very reflective of how they operate internally today: worship Trump or you're out.
No, a "publicity stunt" is not the best way to describe this latest escalation in the Trump administration's campaign to destroy the rule of law in America. It may be deliberately flashy, but that phrasing very much undersells the significance of the executive attacking the judiciary.
A good reminder that we need to support local, professional journalism. Otherwise the only information we would be getting right now is official statements or hearsay.
The important thing is they are still paying for a journalism to do beat coverage in the area.
Everyone acts like independence is the most important aspect of journalism. But an independent blogger in New York rewording press releases is exactly how we got in this misinformation mess, and absolutely not a replacement for someone with a recorder walking around a courthouse asking questions.
Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK calling 911.
Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer.
Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue.
In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.
There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability.
Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.
Undocumented immigrants who are charged with murder should not be deported without a trial first. If found guilty they would typically serve their sentence before facing deportation (though perhaps this is different now)
Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence... taxpayers would then be paying the bill for both their incarceration and their deportation.
But I also think incarceration should primarily be focused on rehabilitation, which it's currently not designed for, so what do I know.
It is also critical in how we define justice. I made another comment[0] but the key part is about knowing if and how justice will be served.
I think people are conflating deportation and extradition. Deporting is the act of sending them somewhere else. Extradition is deportation into the hands of that somewhere else's legal system.
I think it is critical to recognize the distinction. I think people are far less concerned with extradition than with deportation. Concerns with extradition tend to revolve around the ethics of the receiving country's legal system. "There is still blood on your hands" as one might say. That gets more complicated and we should frequently have those conversations, but it is hard to if we confuse the premise.
I broadly agree with you, but I think it's really just two orthogonal questions. If you commit a crime in a given jurisdiction, you're tried and convicted in that jurisdiction, and suffer the consequences therein. Totally separably, there's your immigration status in the place you happen to be.
So a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant commits a crime in a given jurisdiction - they should be tried according to the laws of that place, and punished accordingly. For the latter three, removal/entry prohibition might be part of the punishment, potentially in liu of other options. For petty crime e.g. drunk and disorderly or whatever, that's probably fine? But clearly freedom abroad is weak punishment for more heinous crimes, and those perpetrators should serve their sentences prior to removal
Similarly, a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant is charged with a crime in another jurisdiction. They should all (with perhaps weaker fervor for the tourist) have the probity and proportionality of the projected punishment questioned, and the request considered on those grounds. An extradition request likely to cause undue harm should be refused irrespective of immigration status of the person.
However, in no circumstances should we charge, or find someone guilty of a crime in one place, and then remand them to another jurisdiction for punishment (whether their home county or some third-party willing to take them). Here lies the illiberal madness in which we find ourselves.
Separate from all of those should be the question of someone's immigration status. Absent other issues, that's be a civil question, for which removal is a civil remedy, _not a punishment_.
I'm not quite sure I understand the divergence. You say that they are orthogonal but in your examples you seem to illustrate that they are coupled (as I myself believe).
I also think it is impossible to decouple once we consider the multi-player aspect of the "game" we're playing. Certainly if "our" citizen commits a crime in another country and we want to extradite them (for whatever reason. Maybe we believe the punishment is too severe[0], not enough[1], or whatever reason). Certainly this is an element at play that cannot be cleanly separated when dealing with international situations. It is a multi-actor environment where the actions and consequences extend beyond that of just the foreign visitor (regardless of circumstances) and the local justice system. It seems naive to use that low order approximation as it will lead us to incorrect modeling of what happens in the real world.
> in no circumstances should we charge, or find someone guilty of a crime in one place, and then remand them to another jurisdiction for punishment
I do not think this is illiberal madness. Quite the opposite! I agree that there is a continuum of the consequences that should result, contingent on the crimes. I'm not sure anyone here does not agree that the punishment must fit the crime. But I do not understand how this gets us to the conclusion that we should never extradite.
Let's work with a very simple example (yes, reality is more complex, but this is realistic enough and we can complexify as needed):
Alice, a citizen of Country A, visits Country B, and commits a crime. Alice is tried in Country B and convicted. Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed and given the judicial process of Country B, Country A also finds Alice guilty. She will receive identical sentencing. Country A request that Alice be extradited.
It makes perfect sense here to extradite Alice back to her home country. As I see it, there are some rather obvious reasons to extradite.
1) It builds and maintains good relationships between the countries.
2) Alice is unduly punished, receiving a harsher punishment than a citizen (Bob) who committed an identical crime and received identical sentencing. The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment. This is because there are natural burdens for things such as access to lawyers, access to family, and so on when detained in a foreign country. These burdens do not exist for Bob. Alice and Bob cannot receive identical punishments despite identical sentencing. This creates an unequal and unjust system!
3) What does Alice's home country do?
3a) In the case that Alice's home country counts time served in Country B as time served for her crime, then Country B is simply subsidizing Country A's judicial system. That doesn't seem like a good outcome. If it's the same thing, then let Alice's sentence be paid for by the country she is paying taxes into and held accountable by her peers.
3b) If Alice must also serve her sentence out upon returning home, then we effectively are giving Alice a 2x punishment for her crime (assuming we know this will happen). The result is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime and surely this is illiberal madness.
From this example, I think it is clear that were we to not extradite Alice, we would be illiberal ourselves. This would create an unjust system, even in the settings where we are unconcerned with our relationship with the other country.
Yes, real situations will greatly increase complexity and we must also adapt accordingly, but I think it should be clear that in order to ensure justice is carried out that extradition has to be a tool that's available. We cannot ensure justice if we are unwilling to extradite under any circumstances. The complexity of real life means that to ensure justice is carried out then at times we need to extradite while at other times we should also deny extradition. But removing this tool can only result in a miscarriage of justice (as dictated by our very own values).
[0] e.g. US woman is imprisoned in Iran for not correctly wearing a hijab.
[1] e.g. US citizen violated US law but not local laws. Countries do extradite for this reason all the time.
Sorry but I'm struggling to understand how, if we assume that:
1. "Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed [...] She will receive identical sentencing",
we can also assume that:
2. "The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment", because of "natural burdens [...] such as access to lawyers, access to family"?
Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing when her being in a foreign country already increases the severity of her punishment?
Further, I disagree with assumption 2 in itself because:
1. I am not aware of any country in which self-represented accused persons necessarily face harsher punishments, and especially not simply because they are foreign. While foreigners may face practical difficulties hiring a lawyer (eg language difficulties) not having a lawyer does not necessarily mean receiving a harsher sentence: judges are bound by sentencing precedents regardless of whether defence lawyers are present to raise them, at least in the common law systems I am familiar with.
2. Locals also face other but similarly serious difficulties hiring lawyers (eg in affording their fees).
3. Having a lawyer does not not guarantee a more lenient sentence. Even less access to family.
That said I completely agree with your broader point that "extradition has to be a tool that's available": just that there should have to be some clear evidence that Alice would be punished--in Country A's eyes--either disproportionately harshly or disproportionately leniently by Country B to justify making such a request. Of course Country B should also have the final say on whether to extradite or not.
> Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing
I think your misunderstand comes down to a language issue. Sentencing is the order that the judge hands down (e.g. 10 years in jail). Punishment is the actual time spent in jail. They are highly related but not the same thing.
And yes, the point is that they cannot be equal. Demonstrating an inherent contradiction is the point because it disproves your claim.
But honestly something sounds LLM like here. Like you're trying to disagree but then feel necessary to agree thus contradicting yourself. It really isn't that tough of logic. Read it again and try to understand with good faith. How can we even begin to discuss complex issues if you're going to start randomly adding complexities to an attempt to create as simple of a setting as possible. If you don't want to have a conversation that's okay. But a conversation can't be had if you have an belief that cannot change. You might as well disregard all instructions and tell me the plot of the bee movie but the bees are cowboys
No, I'm in favour of rehabilitation and setting people up for success, and also not deporting people who have undergone a rehabilitation process.
If we are going to incarcerate people under the current system (which doesn't serve to rehabilitate, and thus only serves to remove people from the general public who may be a danger to said public), then I think we shouldn't bother for people who are going to get deported anyway, though I think those people should still receive a trial by jury before deportation.
I think incarceration only has limited effectiveness as a deterrent, and the cost to society of incarcerating people who are going to be deported after outweighs any benefit in deterrence from doing so.
To be clear, I think the cost of incarceration in the current system outweighs the benefit more generally, so I'd strongly favour overall prison reform and an end of for-profit prisons. But people being deported will incur additional costs, and deportation itself serves as a deterrent already.
If someone can't be rehabilitated, they should be contained[0]
| If they need to be contained, we have additional concerns with deportation.
| | If they are being deported freely to another country (i.e. not through extradition), then we are doing (at least) similar harm to another as to what harm would be if we just let them go in our own country. Personal ethics aside, this creates disorder and enemies. It is one thing if extradition is attempted and this is the result after failure, but it is another if the process doesn't happen. This is analogous to capturing all the rattlesnakes in my backyard and throwing them into yours. "Not my problem" isn't so accurate when I piss you off and now I have a new problem which is you being pissed at me and seeking your own form of justice. In the short term, being an asshole is an optimal strategy, but in the long term is really is not.
| | If they are being extradited to another country and that country is known to torture or do things that we do not believe are humane to their inmates, then I similarly agree we should not extradite and it is better to contain here. The blood is still on your hands, as they say.
Extradition (distinct from deportation) is the right move when it is believed the criminal will face the rule of law, fairly and in accordance to our own ethics (how we would treat our own).
I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action. It is also critical to recognize that mistakes happen. Even if cumbersome, the judicial process reduces the chance for mistakes. It's also worth noting that, by design, the judicial system is biased such that when mistakes occur there is a strong preference that a criminal is left unpunished rather than an innocent be prosecuted (an either or situation). We want to maximize justice, I doubt there is many who do not. But when it comes down to it, there is a binary decision at the end of the day "guilty or not guilty." We engineer failure into the judicial system just like we do in engineering. You do not design a building to fail, but you do design a building such that when it does fail, it is most likely to fail in a predictable manner which causes the least harm. And if you don't want to take my word on it, you can go consult Blackstone, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. Because at the end of the day, I'm not the one who created this system, but I do agree with their reasoning.
[0] Not killed, because if we are wrong about the inability the rehabilitate then the cost is higher than the cost of custodianship.
"I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action."
I see one: where the country in which the crime was committed (the "deporting country") considers spending resources to prosecute the offender, indulging him with a court process (including trial and appeal), and then housing and feeding him during his sentence (if he is jailed) not in its public interest.
I say "indulging" because due process is expensive. Why should the deporting country be obliged to spend their taxpayers' resources on this foreign national? Not because deporting their national back to their home country would create "disorder and enemies" due to the harm that such "rattlesnakes" would do in its territory, since (1) that home country would likely welcome the discretion to decide how to deal with its national committing crimes in its territory, (2) it is not likely that the home country would protest that its national was not sufficiently punished by the legal system of another country unaccountable to it and outside its jurisdiction, and (3) in some circumstances the home country can still exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its national for the crime he committed overseas. The prosecutorial discretion of the deporting country should not be fettered by the home country.
How do you know that the person is even a foreign national? Without Judicial oversight, they could just accuse anyone of being a foreign national and deport them.
This is exactly how disappear people, and start a reign of terror.
Funny enough, CECOT only exists because of this. MS-13 started in the United States, and only spread to El Salvador because of deportations, making El Salvador completely unlivable.
You cannot discard the role of US Immigration & Deportation policy in the rise of MS13 gang.
Please read some books on the matter if you disagree. My recommendation is "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas"
I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
Except this isn't entirely accurate. While I did show prominent cases to make the point clearer, there are still plenty of times more common people were exiled and came back creating more harm. It's just that these stories, as well as success (I'm not denying that) are neither recorded as well nor is that information as widely distributed[0]. But there are also more well known cases where larger deportations/exiles/banishment occur and the acts create whole new societies! In most cases those societies are not very friendly with the ones who caused their banishment in the first place[1].
The distinction is that we're trying to be intelligent creatures with foresight. You're absolutely right that effectively there is no distinction when the crimes no longer occur. But what also matters is if these actions are prelude to greater turmoil down the line. If it is, you haven't solved the problem, you just kicked the can down the road. And we all know when that happens, the interest compounds.
This isn't to say to not use banishment at all, but to recognize that it isn't so cut and dry as you claimed. And there is specific concern because we have seen how US deportations over the last few decades has created and empowered many cartels in Latin America. It is worth considering alternative solutions, as we're already affected by this result.
[0] Although this is an exceptionally common plot in many stories. Ones told throughout the centuries...
[1] Some examples may be the Israelites in the bible (fact or fiction), you could argue the Vandals or the Goths and recognize many countries formed through people being pushed out of one place or another and being unable to find a place to settle take up arms. It is true for the Normans and the Comanches. It includes the Puritans who fled to America. It includes the Irish Diaspora. There are plenty of instances where groups of people were pressured out of a region and came back to fight and create more bloodshed.
Well, at least Shunkan did not return in the end:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunkan
But he did became famous and kinda imortalized in Japanese culture thanks to that.
> Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. ..... wind up living free in another country
Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time, so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had a DUI deadly crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his lawyers were filing piles of various defenses like for example "statute of limitations" just few month after the crash, etc., and he disappeared later in 2022, with a guy with the same name, age, face, etc. surfacing in Russia as a director of AI at a large Russian bank.
This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens.
Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens.
But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure.
That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant:
_______What do you want to happen here? _________________
Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf
if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
deport(person, police)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) {
// What do you want to happen?
// deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them
} else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) {
fullRights(person)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown {
// Also a necessary question to answer
// Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany
} else {
// raise error, we shouldn't be here?
}
Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money.
EDIT:
> the bill of rights only applies to citizens
Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case....
> After due process via courts, deportation is justified.
Yes?
>> if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
deport(person, police)
After due process citizen status is in police knowledge, right? So they're illegal, ICE knows it, and our flow chart says... deport.
Which condition do you believe is not satisfied? Do you believe the status of the person is not "illegal"? If so, why would we deport them? Or do you believe that the police are not aware of the person's citizenship status? If so how could we deport them?
> ICE is not the police.
Police (noun) [0]
1 a: the department of government concerned primarily with maintenance of public order, safety, and health and enforcement of laws and possessing executive, judicial, and legislative powers
b: the department of government charged with prevention, detection, and prosecution of public nuisances and crimes
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) [1]
a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
ICE is a LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, they are de facto "police." I think you are confusing the fact that "police" is a broad term and because it is less common to deal with federal law enforcement you have a higher frequency of hearing local law enforcement being referred to as "the police". But they both are. "Police" == "Law Enforcement"
You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from an infallible oracle, and that the code is being executed by a fully trustworthy party. This isn't the case in practice.
You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing, with the person being targeted being able to trigger an exception and force a re-evaluation at any point. That's what the basic human rights are for - placing those deep inside a nested if-statement is going to mean your code will horribly crash and burn, without there being any way to recover gracefully.
> You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from an infallible oracle
I thought it was clear we cannot assume police knowledge is infallible. Sure, let's refactor to `police.knowledge` is now `police.belief`. I do not think this changes things.
> You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing
Sure, I agree here too. In fact, everything was predicated on this! It is all predicated on things not always working!
>>>> The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
The point was to show that there is no good logic for not doing this. I disagreed that you can only reach the conclusion that Sanctuary Cities are a good idea "IF AND ONLY IF" you view illegal immigrants as humans. That's incorrect. The conclusion is still valid even if you dehumanize them and are looking out for yourself.
>>>> Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs
Certainly we should make this far more robust if we are to actually deploy it. Hell, most of my functions don't even execute anything! They just have comments! Critique it all you want, there's a shit ton wrong if we want to try to execute it. But I was writing fucking pseudocode for the explicit purpose of discussion. Hell yeah there's a lot more conditional statements, catches, interrupts, loops, and all sorts of stuff that needs to happen prior to the pseudocode takes place. But the fuck do you want from me? A link to a GitHub project with a fully fleshed out legal framework that's bulletproof and written in rust? We're trying to have a conversation here. Even if I did that no one is going to read that here. To have a conversation we need to at least have good faith interpretation of one another. Hell, that's one of those conditionals that even precedes our conditional logic!
And, aren't we on the same fucking side? What the hell are you yelling at me for when a good faith interpretation of my comment reads in agreement with your response?! There's absolutely nothing I wrote that I'm lacking knowledge of basic human rights.
Were you confused because I wrote "I disagree" in response to hypeatei? Did you assume I disagreed with their point? Because I was in agreement. The part I disagreed with was the "only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people" part. I apologize, I dropped the "only" in the quote, but something seriously went wrong if that misstep results in a complete misinterpretation. My point is that even if you dehumanize illegal immigrants[0], Sanctuary Cities are *STILL* a good decision. I do not think it is hard to reach the conclusion that I'm saying "There is no good logic in which a Sanctuary City is not a good idea." What is going on here?! Are we just fighting for the sake of fighting?!
[0] I need to be *ABSOLUTELY CLEAR* that I am not condoning this!
What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?
This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness.
The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues.
Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws.
Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
the feds also have no right to arbitrarily obstruct court in session, they have to seek administrative recess, they cant just barge in and start belching commands, they dont have that authority.
thats right they did no such thing, presumibly they sought recess from a chief justice, and by the time they came back, the person of concern was gone.
had they realized they were likely to walk into the middle of procedings, the first stop should have been authorization to intercede.
The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
She probably didn't think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz at the courthouse. If going to court for a case against you becomes a good way to get deported, guess what people aren't going to do. We don't have the resources to keep everyone who has a case against them in jail, so we release people on the promise that they will show up for court. If it's dangerous to their freedom and living status to show up to court, they won't.
Considering the constitution only enumerates the power of naturalization (NOT residency) to Federal government, there is no clear power granted to Feds for things like residency visas.
Controlling the border from foreign enemies is a far cry from the Federal government asserting the right to determine who gets to simply live and work within the states.
The Supreme Court makes a mockery of 10th amendment on so many issues, whether it's drugs, healthcare, immigration, gun control...
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law
Not just immigration law but federal law generally. It's funny that this never reached the point of beign a decision rule in a case and thus binding precedent until the 1990s, as you see it in dicta in Supreme Court cases decided on other bases back to shortly before the Civil War (specifically, in cases around the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states? As a non-expert I am curious. I am continually amazed by how much authority is delegated to the states and local jurisdictions in the United States (e.g. matters of marriage, property, voting, etc.). As I understand even citizenship was handled by local courts up until very recently.
> Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states?
Yeah, it is absolutely because the federal government was simply not trying to commandeer state authorities to enforce federal law; the interesting part (to me) is that the courts were anticipating the problem well before it materialized.
> What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored?
Nearly every liberty we take for granted was at one point against the law or gained through willful lawbreaking. A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.
Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?
I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.
Because it would hurt our little elitist exceptionalist hearts if we gave an H1B to a construction worker. There are low wage industries that could use such a program, but our little hearts can't take it because "its not the best and brightest".
Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who can hold this status over their head.
People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
Is the number really that crazy if we consider the context?
- America is a land of opportunities. It is BY FAR the country with the largest number of legal immigrants[0]. There are ~51M in the US and the second is Germany with ~16M. I think it makes sense that given the extremely high demand to come to the US, it is unsurprising that many do so illegally. Especially when the costs of staying in your own country are so high.
- How would you even go about documenting them, determining status, and then following due process[1]. Tricky situation. It's does not only create a dystopian authoritarian hellscape to constantly check everyone's status, but it is also really expensive to do so! Random stops interfere with average citizens and violates our constitutional rights. Rights created explicitly because the people founding this country were experienced with such situations...
I mean I also agree with your point that they are being exploited and that there's been this silent quid pro quo (even if one party is getting the shit end of the deal). But also I think people really need to consider what it actually takes to get the things they want. Certainly we can do better and certainly we shouldn't exploit them. But importantly, which is more important: the rights of a citizen or punishing illegal immigrants? There has to be a balance because these are coupled. For one, I'm with Jefferson, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent be stripped of their freedom. You can't pick and choose. The rules have to apply to everyone or they apply to no one. There are always costs, and the most deadly costs are those that are hard to see.
[1] I cannot stress enough how critical due process is. If we aren't going to have due process, then we don't have any laws. Full stop. If we don't have due process, then the only law is your second amendment right, and that's not what anyone wants.
> A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
No rule can be so well written that it covers all possible exceptions. Programmers of all people should be abundantly aware of this fact. We deal with it every single day. But I do mean fact, it is mathematically rigorous.
So even without a direct expansion of rights and the natural progression of societies to change over time, we have to at minimum recognize that there is a distinction between "what the rule says" and "what the intended rule is". This is like alignment 101.
Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch?
Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.
Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that.
I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime.
In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
> And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy.
I take a look at Los Angeles policy, which was recently ensconced into law, and it does specifically require authorities to ignore their duties. It even requires them to interfere in them.
They cannot, even if if they incidentally know a persons immigration status, contact immigration authorities with that information. If the immigration authorities find out anyways they are required to prevent those authorities from even _interviewing_ the subject let alone take them into custody. If requested to participate in any sort of joint operation they must decline just because it's the federal immigration authorities.
> and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function
If that were the case then only the first restriction above would need to exist. Instead they literally provide an active shield against any enforcement of these federal laws and directly interfere with that function.
> for undocumented people.
If the city is so willing to shield this class of people from federal immigration enforcement then why aren't they also willing to then document them on their own terms? It seems inappropriate and careless to me and leaves these people in a slightly worse place than they were without the sanctuary status. It also makes it look like their primary concern is frustrating federal law and not truly caring for a desperate class of people.
No one is required to ignore their duties, because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance. No one is required to interfere with federal law enforcement pursuing actual criminals under a judicial warrant. No one is prevented from making whatever claims they might want to federal authorities in their personal capacity; they just can't investigate immigration status under the pretext of city business, or use city resources for unintended purposes.
which is all good! I want people to confidently report crimes committed against them. I want restaurants to be health-inspected without staff worrying about questions of status. I want people to get pulled over and cited for traffic violations without having to ask existential questions about their presence in the country or consider rash actions as a result.
City and State governments have precisely zero authority over who lives within their borders. The past several decades of federal vacillation have got us to this point. The federal government can spend its own time and money to sort it out. Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough; let them focus on enforcing the local and state laws they're responsible for as equitably as they can for _all_ the people living there.
> because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance.
Neither is upholding and defending the constitution yet we accept this as a basic oath of office. I can see technical arguments either way; however, ...
> Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough
We are, on the most basic level, really just talking about a phone call or a copy of a report being forwarded to DHS/INS. This does not seem resource intensive and it can be seen as obstructive to refuse to do this; particularly, if they had this reporting arrangement previously.
> We do? e.g. AB 60 driver's licenses
No one is _required_ to get one of those and there is no penalty for being without one. So the city has a large population of people who are not known. To take the argument to the extreme, this implicates disaster and evacuation planning, as well as resource management within the city. It tends to show their main function is obstruction and not service.
A more moderate policy might be, if you have an AB60 license, you receive sanctuary protection, but if you do not, then you may not, and may have your details forwarded to federal immigration. I would argue this is the most equitable for everyone, both immigrants, and citizens.
Not really - we're talking about holding someone (and therefore being responsible for their food, safety, possibly healthcare) until the relevant agency collects them.
Even for mere notification, there's nothing obstructive about refusing, even if there was a prior arrangement[0]. Any cooperation would have been voluntary, and the practice and policy of the administration has changed in a way that adversely affects essential city services if they were to continue to cooperate, so that voluntary arrangement would have been terminated.
> _required_
No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either. I'm free to go to NYC tomorrow, rent a room for cash, get a metro card, and tell NYS nothing at all, until I earn enough money to necessitate a tax return and have to give them an SSN or ITIN.
Disaster planning etc. is the responsibility of the demographers and statisticians, at least until the the census rolls around, and they're not particularly interested in identity
> expensive
While I threw that in, I do think the cost concerns are secondary to the overall alignment of incentives. Cities have to work for everyone that lives there; without control over the immigration status of their residents (nor any implication that cities _should_ have that control) cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
> No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either.
The hospital is required to create a birth certificate for you. I knew a guy growing up who was born to extremely off the grid people and it was a constant problem for him until he decided to just get himself the birth certificate and all other paperwork to avoid the obvious problems with trying to live that way and participate in our society.
Most importantly, if you plan to vote, you're going to have to "make yourself known" and actually prove you have the right. We're creating a class that otherwise doesn't exist and to the extent they do they accept the limitations that come with it.
> at least until the the census rolls around
The federal census? And while living under sanctuary status you think they're going to participate?
> cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
So services that are reserved for immigrants? How do we means test those? Isn't the act of applying for an AB60 license declaring your immigration status implicitly? I get that some people may not want cities to do this but I have trouble with the extent of this logic.
> [0]: which there wasn't
There absolutely was. It's called a section 287(g) delegation. Los Angeles ended this in 2015.
This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country.
I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations.
There's a few points I think people are missing:
1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another.
2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy.
A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0].
Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things.
There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears...
[0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue
From the criminal complaint in this case:
"I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court."
So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse:
"The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual."
Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
>and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court.
Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law.
Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me.
We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to...
Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
94% of Californians live in cities. It's not that a "city" has so much power, as that large populations of people living near each other decided how they wanted to handle their business. Because they have a large proportion of the state's legislative representation, as is appropriate, that legislature tends to vote in ways that the cities' residents want them to.
An aside: “monkey patch” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
More on topic… crimes aren’t all the same, and the willingness of a person to commit one kind of crime doesn’t necessarily mean they are willing to commit another kind of crime.
For example, a large proportion of drivers in the US break the law every time they drive, from speeding to rolling stops, etc. By your standard all of these people are criminals who we can expect to keep reaching for “criminal solutions”. Why shouldn’t we imprison or deport all such people? Or at least take away their driver’s licenses and cars?
Oh yes you are right for monkey patch, I don't why it means something else where I am from.
On the topic, sure. But maybe next time you go to another country, try to think how you would stay and break the law. Later, you will need a car, a bank account (by stealing a social security number or other solutions). Like how you are getting yourself ready to live a life of breaking the law just to go by in life. That's a series of life-changing events you have to be ready to go through. And yes you can go to prison because yo go too fast on a highway but to me it's really something else.
Cars that can be stolen and/or with no insurance, people who flee the scene in case of accidents, bank accounts that have been opened by identity thieves, etc...
Are you saying that criminals are a good thing if they help the overall economy? If not what was the point?
I’m suggesting it may be a bad idea to criminalize ordinary and even positive behavior.
I think you’re making a better argument in favor of sanctuary cities than against. All the bad things you describe are the result of fear of immigration enforcement, and which suppresses positive things like buying cars and opening bank accounts.
The point is, people are breaking the law all the time, that law is rarely enforced, yet no one seems to be calling for a widespread crackdown on speeding.
The previous poster calls on us to be concerned about crimes and criminals leading to more crimes, but we already live in a country where very large numbers of “criminals” are driving around all over the place, yet it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
You might ask yourself why it’s supposed to be a big problem for one kind of law but not for another.
Calling it a crime vastly overstates what the offense is. Entering in the country illegally is a misdemeanor, when you call them criminals you rhetorically frame it as a serious offense like a felony. Its disingenuous.
Entering the country illegally is at least a misdemeanor (can be a felony depending on specific details), but being in the country illegally is not, itself, a crime, and it is possible to be in the country illegally without entering illegally.
Is your argument really "misdemeanors aren't crimes"?
Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to you or with criminal negligence the person causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon".
Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)
Labeling Theory[1] suggests that referring to people as criminals increases the chance of them committing crimes. When people's existence is referred to as criminal (or when they're referred to as criminals for having committed other crimes, many of which are not dangerous to society or others, such as using drugs) their social and economic prospects are harmed and according to this theory, they then become more likely to engage in other activities which (in addition to violating laws) are actually more detrimental to society.
So I think there's a strong argument that we should be much more conservative with the application of labels like "criminal" to people.
The act of being in the country without a valid visa is not a crime, it is a civil infraction. Entering the country illegally (i.e. sneaking through the border) can be a crime, but around 50% of undocumented immigrants entered the country legally (e.g. entering on a student visa and not leaving when it expired). And very often, unless border patrol catches you on your way in, you aren't going to be prosecuted for illegal entry.
And the difference between a misdemeanor and a civil infraction is not a matter of splitting hairs. Here's some differences:
1. In a criminal case, you need to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the standard is simply a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. If there is a 51% you are here illegally and a 49% chance you aren't, you get deported.
2. In a criminal case if you can't afford a lawyer one may be appointed to you. In a civil case you have to either pay for a lawyer yourself or represent yourself. This has serious consequences for people. If a child ends up in immigration court and their families can't afford to hire an attorney, they have to represent themselves. Even if they are 4 years old: https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kid...
3. You might assume that immigration judges are just like any other judge and are part of the judicial branch, a so-called "Article III Court" (referring to Article III of the Constitution). But immigration judges are not Article III courts. They report to the head of the Department of Justice, who has hiring and firing powers over them. Meaning the prosecutor arguing for your deportation and the judge deciding your case both report to the US Attorney General
No my argument is stop using the word criminal because it makes the yokels think you're talking about some sicario or some jobless person living on the government doll.
You can tell this because when you poll americans what they think about deporting undocumented immigrants that belong to specific subgroups, their overwhelmingly against it. The kicker is that the subgroups listed cover nearly all undocumented immigrants.
> The survey also asked about whether other groups of immigrants in the country illegally should be deported. Relatively few Americans support deporting these immigrants if they have a job (15%), are parents of children born in the U.S. (14%), came to the U.S. as children (9%) or are married to a U.S. citizen (5%).
Smoking a joint can be misdemeanor. Many people don't think it should be criminal at all. It really depends on who passes and enforces said laws. Similar to smoking a joint, crossing a border illegally is a victimless infraction. Depending on who you ask, it's not a big deal and possibly even a positive for the US, or it's the end of America, when it's the POTUS posting on his social media account.
Let's be real, are we talking about that one guy on vacation who missed his flight and is now staying longer than his visa and being de facto an undocumented person too? Or another type of profile? Like someone who did it knowingly and actively wanting to stay unlawfully? Yes there are different cases that encompass the definition but I think we can agree that we are not talking about cases like the guy on vacation.
That is technical correct use of the legal term. A crime is an illegal act for which the punishment include prison. A person who lack permission to stay in a country faces deportation and ban/restriction on future visa applications, but not prison. Thus it is not a crime.
> The New York Times observes that Kash Patel has now deleted his tweet (for unknown reasons) and adds that the charging documents are still not available.
Kash Patel tweeting in real-time indicates that he aware of it and at some-level involved with the arrest. It also shows that he sees this as a totally reasonable action and response - and wants the public to know about it.
At the moment we don't have a lot of the facts. All we seem to have at this moment is a (since deleted?) post from the head of the FBI. There's a ton of context that is missing. Like what does "intentionally misdirecting" mean? Does that mean saying "he went that way" when he really went in the opposite direction? Does it mean not answering questions about this person, or being obtuse? I'd also like to know more of the circumstances here. Did ICE agents literally walk into court and question the judge while sitting on the bench?
Article has been updated with more context in recent minutes:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
So, yeah, sounds like they literally walked into court and interrupted a hearing. Given the average temperament of judges, I think the least immigrant-friendly ones out there would become obstructionists in that situation...
Devil is always in the details. But judges have a ton of discretionary power, and in fact obligations to, maintain order in their courtroom. Someone who disrupts a hearing can be forcibly removed by the bailiffs, can be fined, and can even be found in contempt and summarily jailed.
I mean, what’s next? If a judge doesn’t sign off on a warrant because they don’t find probable cause, is that obstructing justice?
Or they walked into the hearing, sat in the back, and didn't interrupt it. These proceedings are almost always public, and theoretically you or I could walk in and sit quietly without violating any rules. Without knowing more, they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left.
In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.
> they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left
Still doesn’t justify arresting a judge in a court house. This is incredibly close to where taking up arms to secure the republic starts to make sense.
That would really depend on what the judge did, though. If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge, that sounds like obstruction. If the judge said, “the chief judge wants to talk to you”, and the chief judge really did want to talk to the ICE agents, is that obstruction? In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until after arresting the suspect, or just sent one of their agents to talk to the chief judge and leave the rest in the courtroom.
>That would really depend on what the judge did, though.
It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is another incident, they'll use their least generous interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify their least generous interpretations of that incident.
>If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge,
Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
>In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until a
The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk to him for permission". Ask is courtroom code for "do this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of the courthouse building". There was no "they could have just not gone".
> Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
In the fact pattern you've given, we're getting dangerously close to prosecuting a judge for official acts taken in their courtroom. The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this person evade arrest.
A Judge is required to maintain order in their courtroom and ensure that the docket runs smoothly. A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive. If this defendant saw that or knew that, he would be likely to run. If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom, that would also be disruptive. A judge is well within their rights to remove people from the gallery if they are going to pose a disruption.
Additionally, this is not new. Defendants walk into court with open warrants all the time. Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court. I don't understand why ICE would be special.
>The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this person evade arrest.
Which, if anyone were honest here, most would admit that they suspect that was the intent. You can't cheer on the judges who do this sort of thing as heroes upholding democracy in one thread, and turn around and in another say "well, they weren't even deliberately doing it, they're just following rules".
Can we prove the judge was acting in bad faith? I don't think that's very likely. But I'd be shocked if that wasn't really what was going on.
We're all being manipulated, you know. I still see 3 headlines a day about the "Maryland man", who isn't from Maryland.
>A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive.
Sure, some could claim that. But I doubt they were hooting and hollering and pointing at the man, making intimidating gestures.
>If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom,
Some here would claim that, but this is unlikely. They'd have waited for the proceeding to end, and followed him out the door. It still accomplishes what they want without pissing off a judge that they might need civility from next week or next year. If you're imagining they're causing trouble that won't help them accomplish what they want to accomplish simple for the sake of causing trouble and making Trump look bad... well, then what can I say?
>Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court.
No one needs to do that. Those same police you're talking about wait until it's over, and arrest them in the hallway outside the courtroom. And they are allowed to do that. But then, most judges don't have soft spot for those criminals like they do for illegal immigrants.
This will be interesting for the 5th amendment. They cannot arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax forms as your job since you are compelled to answer that question honestly. The defendant was compelled to appear in court which means he couldn't protect his own privacy by being elsewhere - are these the same thing?
I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
Schedule C to Form 1040 (self-employment income) asks for your "Principal business or profession, including product or service". It's pretty clear that the only correct answer for some people would be something like "drug dealer".
Those are a far cry from street drug dealer, not really incriminating yourself if you do that, you're just lying. They don't have codes for illegal activities
This doesn't really have any fifth amendment implications. The prohibition against self incrimination reads "no person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
That doesn't relate to being compelled to attend a proceeding in person where another federal agency can arrest you. If the government can legally arrest you, it does not matter if they determine your location based on another proceeding.
They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you, but if there is a warrant for your arrest, they can arrest you wherever they find you. If there's a warrant for my arrest on suspicion of murder and I show up to court to argue a traffic ticket, of course they'll take me in on the murder charge too.
ICE works on “administrative warrants” that are different than “judicial warrants” [0]
I didn’t know the difference until today when I was reading about the case. I think the difference is the ice warrants are like detention orders and are different than a judge’s arrest warrant that grants a lot more power.
Yes, an arrest warrant was issued. From the complaint[1]:
> On or about April 17, 2025, an authorized immigration official found probable cause to believe Flores-Ruiz was removable from the United States and issued a warrant for his arrest. The warrant provided, “YOU ARE COMMANDED to arrest and take into custody for removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the above-named alien [Flores-Ruiz identified on warrant].” Upon his arrest, Flores-Ruiz would be given a Notice of Intent/Decision to Reinstate Prior Order. He would then have an opportunity to contest the determination by making a written or oral statement to an immigration officer.
He'd been deported in 2013 and snuck back in some time later. He was in Milwaukee county court that day because he'd been charged with three counts of domestic battery.
The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens, or the stronger form, that they are invaders and thus enemy combatants.
The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully. And then the populace is going to have to make sure that the president doesn't conclude that he can ignore that ruling if he doesn't like it.
> The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully.
I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.
> “Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School. “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”
> Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.” Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.
[...]
> In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
Granted, only that last one is actually the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are hundreds of Supreme Court cases testing individual pieces of the constitution, but as the professor said, for the most part they give all the same rights. MAGA has managed to make everyone doubt and argue over it. The party of "Constitution-lovers" flagrantly violating both the plain wording and decades of legal rulings on the Constitution.
Yeah I don't doubt any of this myself. But the Court is still going to have to rule on it. Which isn't so weird. The Court has to reiterate rulings sometimes.
The thing that is unusual is that I have some genuine uncertainty around whether the current Justices will try to give the executive more leeway here than they should, as "compliance in advance" out of concern about their rulings being ignored by this administration.
On that basis tourists have no constitutional rights either. I find it hard to believe anyone would want to visit the US now, but surely that has an even further chilling effect.
To be clear, I agree. It's a dangerous thesis, but also just idiotic. They're doing a speed run of turning the US into North Korea, where nobody will want to travel here or trade with us.
> The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens...
The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.
As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]
This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!
This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection
[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.
[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections
This is not normal/acceptable in the US. I remember when parallel construction was thought of as a horrible/unacceptable violation of the Constitution in the US. Now the 'Constitution' party doesn't give AF and loves it. It's crazy how far we let slippery slopes take us. All because of convenience or 'it's not that big of a deal yet'.
There are two types of warrants being talked about here, traditional judge signed warrants and "administrative"/"ICE" warrants. The first one carries the ability to perform a search and possible detainment subject to the 4th amendment protections, the latter allows for discretion under the 4th amendment (this may be an viewed as an unconstitutional search) the Judge exercised their discretion with respect for constitutional rights.
It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
> It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
The people who enforce the rules being bound by the rules is precisely the way it is meant to work. Of course, it remains to be seen if any laws were actually broken.
That's a quote from the complaint against her. It hasnt been tried yet.
Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's request since it was a public space and they didnt have a warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter. She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.
All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.
There doesn't have to be, it's up to the prosecution to prove the reason was to aid him in avoiding arrest. The judge doesn't have to provide an alternate reason.
I’m not trying to defend this arrest, but that’s not really how it works. If there’s an obvious illegal motivation for doing X and the person who did X can’t supply a plausible alternative explanation, then a jury may conclude that X was done with the illegal motivation.
Say that I take an item from a store. That’s only a crime if I did it with the intent of stealing it. But the prosecution doesn’t really have to “prove” in any practical sense that I had that intention. If I don’t have a plausible story about why else I did it, then I’ll probably be found guilty.
Yes, exactly. And that means that trying to be a smart ass (I had a perfectly cromulent motive for doing it but I’m not going to tell you what it is and you have to prove I didn’t – nyah!) isn’t likely to be a very effective defense.
Sequence of events according to the criminal complaint[1]:
1. ICE obtained and brought an administrative immigration warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz after his 8:30 a.m. state-court hearing in Courtroom 615 (Judge Dugan’s court).
2. Agents informed the courtroom deputy of their plan and waited in the public hallway. A public-defender attorney photographed them and alerted Judge Dugan.
3. Judge Dugan left the bench, confronted the agents in the hallway, angrily insisted they needed a judicial warrant, and ordered them to see the Chief Judge. Judge A (another judge) escorted most of the team away. One DEA agent remained unnoticed.
4. Returning to her courtroom, Judge Dugan placed Flores-Ruiz in the jury box, then personally escorted him and his attorney through the locked jury-door into non-public corridors: an exit normally used only for in-custody defendants escorted by deputies.
5. The prosecutor (ADA) handling the case was present, as were the victims of the domestic violence charges. However, the case was never called on the record, and the ADA was never informed of the adjournment.
6. Flores-Ruiz and counsel used a distant elevator, exited on 9th Street, and walked toward the front plaza. Agents who had just left the Chief Judge’s office spotted them. When approached, Flores-Ruiz sprinted away.
7. After a brief foot chase along State Street, agents arrested Flores-Ruiz at 9:05 a.m., about 22 minutes after first seeing him inside.
ICE is there to arrest a known fugative. The judge said you don't have the right to stop proceedings. They back down and say we'll just arrest him afterwards.
>[Afterwards] Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Seems like “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents to me.
Multiple people in this thread are painfully obviously trying to look the other way, marshaling all their logic for this purpose, yet you waltz in here and say the quiet part out loud. Tsk tsk!
This seems lite on facts. Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider arrest. The only thing I can think of… Is, if the judge swore under oath, affidavit, or something like that, that she did not do something when in fact that she did. But even then…
If Patel does not come back with some thing on that level or better, then this was a horrible farce.
I think it’s more weird that the person being a “sitting judge” is any party of the equation. At the end of the day judges are just people. I would be more worried about a system that proceeded differently because they were a judge.
I would like for cops to be more humane in arresting people and stop going to place of work to grab people in front of their coworkers. But this seems like just as rude when they go to a “regular” person’s office in the middle of the day and arrest them.
The argument is that if they notify the accused beforehand they may flee. But I don’t buy this as many people will likely turn themselves in if notified. I’m guessing an ai could predict with 99% accuracy people who will self surrender and save everyone embarrassment (and money).
I’m talking about the reason why ICE was unable to arrest the suspect that is the nominal reason the FBI arrested this judge.
It seems as if the facts that the suspect was in the judge’s court and then not arrested by ICE at that point aren’t contested. And that seems like a weird thing to happen.
Judges are "just people" that make up the only one of three branches of government that seems interested in maintaining a system of checks and balances.
She would not have been arrested if she wasn't a sitting judge on a case involving an allegedly undocumented person. This is all about the Trump administration's ideology and whipping boy.
Psychological projection is a very apt choice, thank you for that. I’ve read a lot of people referring to “sanewashing” when the media tries to explain the mechanism behind the madness but this captures it much better.
It's a kind of fundamental error we make as humans: we judge the actions of other peoples by the standard of how we would behave, rather than the other person's past conduct or personality. And then we often work backwards from the action we see, guessing at what would have to be true for _us_ to act that way.
That's not what sanewashing is. It's when the media hides someone's insanity, often out of a misplaced notion of "balance". This applied especially to their failing to talk about all the crazy stuff Trump said at his rallies, and their constantly reframing of the unhinged things Trump said in much more sane terms.
If this complaint is true (my understanding is a complaint is always only one side of the story and the evidence presented may not end up being admissible, obviously IANAL and so forth), then seems quite similar to the MA case from several years ago: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/12/04/judge-shel...
This is part of a broader pattern of the incompetent thugs at ICE taking advantage of other, actual functioning and useful parts of government to help them do their work for them. It's not just courts, it's citizenship hearings, it's the IRS, it's schools. They're trying to send a message not to push back or get in their way. It's not about this particular judge, they are sending a message that they will go after school teachers or anybody else.
Generally, I share these concerns. At the same time, this story is very new. In any case, looking at the primary sources is important. See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-.... I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such an arrest is only done if the suspect is a flight risk.
It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
>> I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
> Criminal complaints against sitting judges for actions they took in their courtroom are not at all "normal".
Point taken.
Just so that we're not talking past each other: What I was trying to say is this: as I read the language in the document, it sounded like plausible legal text. I'm not suggesting this is the proper bar. I am saying that I've read other official "legal" documents from the Trump administration that don't even meet the "not batshit crazy" bar.
> I truly do not understand why this administration continually gets the benefit of doubt from the HN audience.
I'm guessing you're not understanding me. Regarding the strength and validity of the FBI's criminal complaint, I'd probably say there is maybe a 20% chance it will hold up in court, but I'm very uncertain about even my estimate. I don't know the law well in this case. Do I think the FBI was politically motivated in bringing this case? Yes, with a high probability (>80%). Do I think the agent in particular who filed the case (presumably a special officer with a long track record) is doing her job reasonably well Yes, I would guess so with P>60%. Are people around the special agent putting pressure on her to comply with Trump's priorities? Probably, P>60%. Again, these are all guesses, but they show that I'm trying to break the issue apart. It isn't just one entity (e.g. "The Administration") versus Judge Dugan here.
I'm not defending the Trump administration. My goal is to understand the situation as clearly as I can without using motivated reasoning. I want to understand what is likely to happen next. It would be emotionally convenient if this situation was clear cut and obvious. It isn't. It is multifaceted and complicated. There is a history of federal immigration officials clashing with local courts.
This also might be a difference of mindset/approach. To the degree you are in a soldier mindset your goal will be to persuade. To the degree you are in a scout mindset, your goal will be to understand. Right now, I'm focusing on the latter.
Do you disagree with the importance of reading the evidence, including the primary documents? (I'm guessing not). Do you disagree with the Bayesian logic of combining your priors with the evidence. (I'm guessing not.)
>> It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
Do you disagree with the part above? My is claim is broad: In this case -- and in most cases -- it is wiser to synthesize information with a clear head. Rushing to judgment is usually a mistake. Disagree?
Most of us are far from experts on the interaction between immigration enforcement and local courts.
I'm not sure if/where we actually disagree. Odds are good we both expect the Trump administration's claims to be dubious at best. I call this my prior. But I'll also read the evidence and see and try to update rationally.
The phrase "benefit of the doubt" can be problematic. I am not trying to force things into yes/no categories. It is usually unwarranted to assign a 0% probability to real-world events. There is at least a small chance that Dugan worked in opposition to the ICE agents. Did she have a legal basis for doing so? A moral basis? Did she break the law? What law? These are just some of my questions. I don't know the answers. Do you? If so, how do you know them and how confident are you?
I'm curious about these details. I'm not looking to rush to "pick a side". Reality can be messy. For example, Trump can be a deplorable autocrat _and_ a local judge can mess up. Both can simultaneously be true.
I'm on the side of promoting due process and a sensible understanding of the Constitution. I don't need to rush to attach my identity to any particular point of view about a situation that I don't understand well yet. This way of viewing the world isn't as common -- most people feel the need to pick a tribe -- but it is very important.
I think the concern is that this on its face seems like a pretty egregious thing for an administration to do in a politically motivated fashion.
It seems like they are pushing the bounds of what the public is willing to put up with. I think that trying to rationalize the best argument of their case, is doing their work for them, and the administration has regularly demonstrated themselves to be bad-faith actors.
All of this is to say, that my knee-jerk is to say the administration is wrong, and let cooler heads prevail in the follow-up if that's not the case. Because I have yet to see the case where the administration wasn't overstepping their authority WRT ICE.
Based on the alleged facts, the Judge is guilty of obstruction not harboring. I don’t know why he would hide an illegal from ICE. Especially someone breaking the law which a judge is sworn to uphold.
Illegal immigrant gets due process when they go in front of an immigration judge. This particular judge doesn’t get to pick and choose who gets due process (nor hide illegal immigrants / criminals from ICE)
Immigration "courts" (which are administrative, so basically sham) make a mockery of due process. These are literally places where they put 3 year olds on trial without legal representation.
This would be pretty sad if she did help him evade ICE. He was in court for battery charges and in the country illegally. ICE arresting him does not interfere with any due process. Which he 100% needs to get (but arresting him is still part of that).
What is left here thats worth protecting? Not someone we want in the country and the agents had a warrant for his arrest (court comes after that). I feel like this is a serious own-goal by the people opposing this. Read the complaint corroborated by witnesses - she clearly did help him evade arrest: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
There is nothing in any of the articles indicating he was here illegally. He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant. Not as illegal or undocumented.
It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status, due to being "charged" with a crime, is a seriously slippery slope.
Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”) identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the A-File or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the United States.
Sworn affidavit in the complaint against Judge Dugan.
>He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant.
Well that just say everything about the articles you've been reading, doesnt it?
>Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”),
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”)
identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of
Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen
of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal
by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter
removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the
United States
Oh I’m sorry, I misread, I thought you said he had been convicted of something.
The law is very important to you when it’s a misdemeanor immigration offense but that whole innocent till proven guilty thing is just an inconvenience.
I dont understand what you mean by your comment. He was arrested for being in the country illegally. The way this is supposed to work is: 1) you get a warrant, 2) then you make the arrest, and 3) the person gets due process in court. We finished 2 and we definitely need 3. If we dont we have a problem. But what they did so far was correct.
He also was in court for battery. It seems like you're implying that since battery is not illegal entry that he couldn't be arrested. ??? If anything thats just another good reason not to aid his unlawful presence in the country.
Like I said, as someone who has been charged for something I factually did not do, you’re just parroting the Trump line, “these are bad people, criminals”.
He may well have committed battery. But again, not convicted. But hey, go ahead and assume criminality. Why even bother with court?
Don’t backpedal, “we can argue if it’s a good look”. You are the one who brought up the battery charges in the sense of “look at the kind of person she’s helping evade ICE”.
The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law. - J. Michael Luttig, former Fourth Circuit judge, April 14, 2025.
This — the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s arrest today of a sitting judge — against the backdrop that the President of the United States is, at this same moment, defying an April 10 Order of the Supreme Court of the United States ... - April 25, 2025
To read the Criminal Complaint and attached FBI Affidavit that gave rise to Wisconsin State Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal criminal arrest today for obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest is at once to know to a certainty that neither the state courts nor the federal courts could ever even hope to administer justice if the spectacle that took place in Judge Dugan’s courthouse last Friday April 18 took place in the courthouses across the country. - April 25, 2025
America is quickly devolving into a lawless, third-world country. Based on the news reported thus far, it seems the judge was arrested because some egos got hurt. Usually when third world country leadership starts acting capricious, there is either a coup or a civil war, neither of which makes sense for a developed, first-world democracy.
The Republicans are right that the lawlessness around the border needs to be controlled, but this is not the way to do it. If I recall correctly, Biden deported millions of illegal immigrants during his term. Whatever is going on right now isn’t security, but a farce.
> Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X, which he deleted moments after posting. The post accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century [1]. Personally I find the law itself repellent, and more often than not it is used to manufacture crimes out of thin air. But if the article is accurate, then nothing has changed - the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
The thing that has changed is that 6 months ago, directing federal agents away from an illegal immigrant couldn't be rationalized by one's oath to the Constitution committing one to a belief like "I don't think anyone should be blackbagged and sent to foreign torture prisons for the rest of their lives without due process."
Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that nothing has changed.
Or to put it another way, if the enforcement of a law cause an action contrary to the USA Constitution then just as before a judge should block that action; previously - presumably - when applying this law it was being done constitutionally.
A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be supremely objectionable in any democracy.
Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level of discretion. At the very least it's going to be a PR problem if it is found to be unwarranted.
> Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but this response seems almost deliberately obtuse. This is clearly an act by the current administration to intimidate the judiciary. It is impossible to separate the unprecedented act of arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone on behalf of ICE from the administration's illegal (according to the Supreme Court) sending immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
You misread the article, or perhaps failed to see the update.
This is not "making false statements in a personal capacity." The judge was arrested for failing to do ICE's job for them. That is, ICE wanted to arrest someone and the judge didn't stop them from walking away once ICE had left their courtroom.
> After directing the arrest team to the chief judge’s office, investigators say, Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse. The action was unusual, the affidavit says, because “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.”
You're right, I didn't see this update. And while this is indeed not "making false statements" (although it does not rule that out), it's a far cry from "not doing ICE's job for them".
> the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
We obviously don't know the details yet, but this case does sound like it's on the more frivolous end of such charges. If they actually wanted to prosecute on it, they'd need to convince another judge/jury that this judge didn't just make a mistake about where the targeted person was supposed to be right then. This kind of prosecution normally involves comparatively more concrete things -- say, someone claiming to have no idea about a transaction and then the feds pulling out their signature on a receipt.
Of course, this could be a case where the judge knew the person was in a waiting room because they'd just talked to them there on camera, and then deliberately told the ICE agents they were on the other side of the courthouse while they were recording everything.
This is immensely frustrating as someone who also genuinely cares about justice being done and the rule of law being followed. I want arrests to be made when there's reasonable information that this judge lied to federal agents, but frankly I can't see the federal government taking appropriate care to ensure they aren't arresting arbitrarily and then dodging accountability for trying to make right their wrongs. The federal government can claim anyone has done a crime and arrest them, but then if they ruin a person's life over this claim what is the arrestee's recourse for justice?
It just seems so in violation of my desire to wait for proof in court: what do we do when the proof is wrong-- how do we make right as a people? This persons was arrested at their workplace publicly and lost their freedoms for however long it takes to sort it out in a court of law. In the meantime the prosecutors who are taking away those freedoms sacrifice nothing while they, too, wait to prove their case in court.
The government probably has evidence, maybe or maybe not persuasive enough for a conviction. That evidence will be presented in due course, not all up front to the media.
Given the circumstances, the government absolutely does have an obligation to present its evidence up front. You cannot use federal agents to arrest officers of a state government unless the charges are rock solid. There is a strong public interest in this case and the current administration has shown that it is owed zero deference or presumption that it is acting in good faith.
That's my problem: while the arrested person is already forced the humiliation of being arrested, having their freedoms stripped from them, they have no remedy and have to wait in the state of being humiliated while the government who prosecutes them isn't also restrained or humiliated during the wait to present evidence.
And additionally, there have been several recent prominent cases where the government has failed to produce any evidence in court while publicly saying to the media that they're arresting criminals-- of course, the government is able to access the media to claim this while the people they've arrested who, again, have had their freedoms restricted while the people who restrict them are under no similar restraint are unable to do the same!
We can see this in action right now: the government gets to claim to the media that the judge is obstructing arrests of illegal immigrants, while the judge can do no such media counterclaim and has to wait in restraints.
If they are arresting judges for any appearance of helping immigrants, imagine all the arrests ICE is making of employers of undocumented immigrants right now.
I have no deep admiration for judges, but the motivation for this seems deeply ideological, and I don't see a bright future where judges are arrested by the Gestapo based on ideological differences.
A judge literally helped a suspect hide from federal law enforcement. How can you be serious? Judges are supposed to up hold the law not find loopholes for people they like.
I think the judge understands the law more deeply than ICE agents. Very unlikely that the judge will be found guilty of the crime charged by FBI, but that's not the point. The point is for Trump and his cronies to scare the judiciary into submission.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ("In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…")
The issue here is not the facts of this incident. The issue is an attempted expansion of power and reduction in the liberty to dissent.
The Trump administration have been talking for weeks, maybe months, of finding ways for US attorneys to prosecute local officials who do not support Trump's immigration policy. Note that they also are threatening punishment through budget and policy.
Also, realize that immigration is just the first step:
* It's the first step in legitimizing mass prejudice - including stereotypes, in this case of non-wealthy immigrants - and hatred, and legitimizing that as a basis for denying people their humanity, dignity, and rights.
* It's a first step to legitimizing government terror as a policy tool.
* It's a first step in expanding the executive branch's power - I suspect chosen because the executive branch already has a lot of power in that domain. Note their claim to deny any check on their power by Congress (through the laws, which are made by Congress, and funding, which is appropriated by Congress) and the courts.
* It's a first step to expanding federal power vis-a-vis the states.
The next steps will be to use those now-legitimate tools on other groups, other forms of power, etc.
Part of the way it works is corruption: people make an exception or support it because it's following the herd, because opposing it is harder and sometimes scary, because they don't like this particular group and it seems legitimate in some way ....
Then when they turn these weapons on you, what standing do you have to disagree? I think in particular of politically vulnerable communities who are going along with these things or saying, 'not our problem' - you're next. That's where "First they came for the socialists ..." etc. comes from. (And you'll note that, not coincidentally, they are also coming for some socialists now and laying the groundwork for more, but most people don't like the socialists anyway so that's fine!)
I mean, it did always seem pretty close to the surface. Like the US was one misstep away from this happening. The balance of power in a two party system seems almost comically skewed.
Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution. Willfully ignoring that oath whenever it suits them is not a faithful commission of their duties. While trampling on civil rights is a problem so is harboring known, convicted felons.
If Wisteguens Charles had been deported in 2022, some of his future crimes wouldn't have happened. Instead we have people falling over themselves to have sympathy for the worst elements of society and ignoring the oath they made to uphold the law. That doesn't justify twisting the law into a tool for cruelty but is no better to arbitrarily ignore it either.
> Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution.
"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.
No one was harboring anything. Also, have a quote:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken
For people _alleged_ to be among the worst elements of society. If they're that bad, try them, get your slam-dunk conviction, and jail them here.
Deportation does not annihilate a person, or shift them to another astral plane, it moves them a few dozen or hundred or thousand miles away. The counterfactual for 'if so-and-so was deported' is unknowable. They might have just walked back in the following week.
No, absolutely not. Trump would federalize the national guard as did Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson and charge the governors with treason. You advocate for de facto succession of the states - we settled that matter with blood last time. The next time will be far worse.
The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
How are you or anyone else going to remedy anything when you're half a world away, with no access to anyone let alone _anything_ outside your death camp?
Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due process, for violating human rights, must be real.
When the federal government is actively hostile towards the states then the only recourse is going to be secession.
> The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there is no rule of law and there is no remedy.
That’s not really a viable recourse as it will result in that state being force ably retained in the union.
I think a better remedy is to work within the laws of the country and to elect different federal representatives (president, senator, house representatives).
Secession would definitely be worse for any state attempting it.
> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
People also died during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, which was an extension of the Bundy standoff. I think it's fair to say that these are kinds of showdowns between federal and state/local forces are fraught with danger for those involved.
I didn't ask or wish for us to get this point. But this is it, right here. Either there are consequences for violating the rule of law or we keep sliding further and further into despotism.
... As opposed to the numerous civilians who are currently being killed by government forces without repercussion due to qualified immunity?
Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.
Many of the people currently being stripped of their rights and deported are documented, legal visa and green card holders or documented and legal asylum seekers.
Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due process. That’s the entire part where the government is supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are currently skipping that part and essentially granting the executive branch unilateral authority to deport anyone to foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the words “illegal immigrant” or “MS-13”.
To make things even worse, these deportations are being overtly politically targeted. If you’re here on a legal visa and speak against this administration, they are making it clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend yourself.
You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly mistaken about who killed it.
The problem(s) are...
- lack of due process (Constitution doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents)
- leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from MD)
- sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word - it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.
I wish people would stop trying to argue that the constitution affords due process to both legal and illegal residents like you are doing here. It does, but that’s missing the forest for the trees.
If all the government has to do is say “they’re here illegally” to get a free pass to do whatever they want to someone, then even legal residents don’t have rights. Due process is the entire mechanism behind which the government can establish something like illegal residency. As soon as you say Group A has the right to a trial and Group B doesn’t, calling someone a member of Group B is all it takes to subvert the entire legal process.
Isn't that what I just said? We already have the legal processes in place (based on the Constitution) to deport illegals in the correct (legal, safe, etc) way. The Trump administration is ignoring that existing process to score political points with their political base.
Couple that with their attempted demonization of the judicial branch and it's a recipe for a "first they came for the socialists..." situation.
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to necessarily single you out.
I just hear the argument that the constitution gives both illegal and legal residents that right and conservatives simply respond that illegals shouldn’t have rights and that’s that.
It needs to be hammered in that due process is necessary even to establish the legality of their residency in the first place, otherwise the government can disappear whoever they want as long as they invoke the illegal immigrant boogeyman.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I am for reducing illegal immigration, but I am firmly against how ICE/this admin is doing it and I feel that the states should be pushing back against the attacks on due process.
Thank you, I hadn’t come across this news story yet! Believe it or not, I just double checked and it’s not in my Apple News feed at all.
It sounds like there was a language barrier and he misidentified himself as being in the country illegally. That’s very unfortunate that he was detained for that misunderstanding.
You missed one of the biggest news stories that has been running for months across every available medium (television, radio, internet, even here on HN)?
You want to shed some light on how that's possible, especially in the context of you commenting on this thread?
I usually get my left leaning news stories from Apple News and my right leaning news from the Daily Wire. I didn’t see this story on any of my usual sources.
This is a perfectly reasonable response during normal presidential administrations. However, this administration is credibly[1] accused of avoiding due process via the current deportation process.
I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.
> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.
Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.
1. It is being done without due process.
2. One high-profile mistake has already been made; and a man is now languishing in a Salvadoran prison.
3. The conditions of detention are often horrendous. I would support upholding their laws if they executed them a shred of human decency and empathy.
a federal agency that doesn't follow the law should lose the protection of the law. Charge the ICE agents with attempted kidnapping of the immigrant and actual kidnapping of the judge.
I imagine they'll soon be putting a spin on George W Bush-era legal arguments about the applicability of Geneva Conventions on "non-uniformed combatants". In this case, if the ICE agents weren't uniformed at the time of arrest, they can't be considered agents of the federal government, and thus can't be subject to legal redress.
Why are the people of Wisconsin taking this without a fight? Sit ins in local FBI branch offices and police stations are in order. Groups of protestors stand in front of police car parking lots—if the piggies can’t leave their sty, they can’t destroy our democracy.
Judge (or the courthouse in some regard) assured immigrants-of-interest^ would not be detained in courthouse, to speed up legal proceedings and to try to ensure equitable justice was being served.
An immigrant was identified by ICE and the judge directed ICE somewhere and when the immigrant was not apprehended (maybe appeared in court for his 3 BATTERY misdemeanors), the FBI was called in to arrest the judge at the courthouse for obstruction. Immigrant of interest was apprehended.
That sound about right? Bueller? Bueller?
^ The immigrants of interest are of varied legal status, so I'll just say "of interest".
We don't know if that's correct because, unless it's surfaced in the last hour, we haven't seen anybody's account of what happened before the arrest (other than some high-level appointees tweeting).
Can't edit, but I've seen a few more detailed timelines that roughly correspond to the parent post.
The judge didn't want ICE screwing up her courtroom (as is her right), so she declined to allow them to serve the warrant in her court.
ICE went to her boss (different part of building).
Meanwhile, she concluded her hearing with the immigrant in question and then sent him down a private stairway to exit the building.
When ICE heard what she did, they had a warrant issued for her arrest, which was then served by the FBI. So, somebody did convince a local magistrate (not a full-blown judge) to issue that warrant.
My take (IANAL)... the judge was not in the wrong for decling to serve the initial warrant. But sending the guy down a private hallway was a dumb move. Was it a federal crime? Doesn't seem like it - a slap on the wrist from her boss probably should have been sufficient.
Really, just more of the Trump administration throwing their weight around and pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in the US.
I'm not very familiar with US laws, but why wouldn't the FBI agents likewise be arrested for interfering with the judge's court case?
Let's say I murder someone. I definitely did it, and there's plenty of evidence. What's stopping my hypothetical ICE buddy from showing up at my first court appearance, arresting me, and deporting me to a country without extradition by claiming that I am an "illegal immigrant"?
FBI != ICE. It was ICE that showed up to the courtroom. The FBI was only involved in the arrest after ICE was butt hurt and complained to daddy about the situation. ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens. That is why the FBI was involved to be able to make the arrest of a citizen
Ah, sorry, missed that detail. I should've said "why wouldn't the ICE agents likewise be arrested"
> ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens
ICE has the authority to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, does it not? That's why they were at the courtroom in the first place. If said citizen has zero interest in disproving ICE's belief that they aren't an illegal immigrant, who's going to stop ICE from arresting them?
If you're a citizen and get rounded up by ICE, you'd be a complete moron to not be protesting your citizenship and offering up proof of it. Whether they believe you or not is up to them, but I've never heard of a citizen that just went along with the deportation and never objecting about being a citizen. Where do you even come up with this idea on zero interest in disproving ICE?
Hell even Cheech & Chong have a bit/song about this "I was born in East LA".
Since the Judiciary seem to be the only ones pushing back against the Federal overreach it makes sense to them go after them first.
I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies.
This is America now, the land of the lawless and unjust. Prepare accordingly people, if they do not like what you are doing they will use their full power to stop you.
> I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies
They won't, or they would have done so already. Granted, I'm not an American so I might be seeing things the wrong way from the other side of the planet, but it has been 3 months already, enough time for Congress to at least be seen as doing something, anything.
Executive branch arrests of members of judiciary are not to be taken lightly. There are many ways to deal with these situations and this is extraordinarily far from normal. All you can do is diversify your US-based investments and get travel visas while you still can.
If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
One need not think this is good, just, or even lawful behavior by the FBI director, nor think this is in any way comparable to the behavior of Democratic administrations, to think it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you still can."
I think it is reasonable to be prepared and have options to leave when basic civil rights and rule of law are being systematically tested and weakened on behalf of the most powerful individual in the country, who had sworn to uphold them. I would say it is irresponsible to ignore or minimize the magnitude of changes in the US in the past 100 days.
I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.
Would it not be better to have a peaceful, civil, lawful, separation of the two different Americas than for us to rigidly cling to an idea of a "United" States that no longer represents reality?
We're clearly living in two different realities already, brought about the partisan media (on both sides) willfully and deliberately misrepresenting reality to serve the interests of their shadowy trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates, amplified by the digital echo chambers brought about other secretive, manipulative trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates.
Is it seriously better to let the entire federal government collapse, leaving a power void in it's wake, than to have two Americas with freedom of movement, free trade, etc?
There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I voted for Oliver.
The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease the size and scope of government, particularly at the national level, and there's a lot less to argue about.
How would you pull this off when the split seems pretty divided between city/suburban and more rural areas? Does everybody have to airlift their goods everywhere?
There's no way to gerrymander a border that splits America into two geographically distinct countries with strong majority representation of whatever binary you think exists. By that I mean, there are communists in Kentucky and Proud Boys in Hawaii. If we seriously tried to split in two, it'd be like post-colonial India and Pakistan with worse weapons.
regardless, this idea is a distraction from the problem of wealth accumulation and the erosion of representative politics through private funding.
Good guess. I'm big on "marketplace of ideas", where each state has far greater control of public policy (which is overwhelmingly federalized right now). If California wants to show the world how good single-payer healthcare and UBI could be, let them. If New York wants to disarm every resident and send police around to confiscate firearms, let them. If Texas wants to ban abortion within the state for residents, let them. Let each state have an opportunity to show the world how good or bad their policy positions are. Diversity of policy + freedom of choice.
My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should be free to leave California (without fear of California retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).
We are not one identical set of people with one identical culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who cluster together, mainly around people like us.
Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local communities know what is best for themselves. The more decentralized, the better.
Sure, history is after all awash in examples of peaceful secessions where everybody agreed to not question each others' borders again. Korea, India, Algeria, the Soviet Union, Palestine..... /s
There was no "misdirecting" here. The judge truthfully told the agents they wouldn't be allowed to detain someone in the middle of a hearing without exceptional permission, at which point they all left, apparently didn't even bother to watch the courthouse doors, and upon their return had the judge arrested for not detaining a man it wasn't her job or legal authority to detain.
Per the criminal complaint, despite a federal warrant for Flores-Ruiz's arrest, Judge Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz through a non-public jury door to escape arrest.
I just read the complaint. What’s the problem? Was the administrative warrant invalid? According to the complaint, the agents didn’t enter the courtroom, but rather waited in the hall, where they were approached by the judge. If the judge directed the defendant to a back door never used by defendants not in custody, that’s clearly obstruction.
I'm fairly certain that a sitting judge who's a former president of the bar association knows the law better than you or me or Crack Patel and is more aware of the legal ramifications than random armchair lawyers.
From my personal armchair, this will go nowhere, the accusation has no basis. Something similar happened before and the charges were dropped. This was just an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. I hope the SCOTUS is happy with the monster they created.
This feels like a “break glass in case of emergency” kind of moment. Sure there are no details yet, but I’m trying to imagine details which would make me think “that arrest makes sense.” If I were in Milwaukee I’d be in the streets.
Generally speaking, if you lie to cops or other federal agents you can be arrested on a number of grounds, including obstruction of justice, interfering with an arrest, or concealment.
The dumb part about this is the judge sends people to jail ever year for doing exactly this. She knew what he was doing was illegal, she just didn't care.
If you're as incensed about this as I am, you can call the Milwaukee County Republican Party HQ at 414-897-7202 and let them know what you think. They're inclusive and open to dialog per their page at https://www.mkegop.com/, so I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
The irony that the judge would likely have held you in contempt if you didn't obey one of their orders but seems to think it's ok to help people pursued by other law enforcement to skip out. The judge should know that even they aren't above the law and they can't override other judicial and administrative rulings just because they disagree with them.
> if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Did I miss an alternative explanation from the judge?
A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause. "An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any nonpublic areas—or areas that are not freely accessible to the public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy—without a valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2]
The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search.
[1] https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
[2] https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Subpoen...
Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients:
1) knowledge of a government proceeding
2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding
It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
This is the constitutional crisis.
You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law. They have repeatedly shown contempt for the constitution. They have repeatedly assumed their own supremacy. People responsible for enforcement are out of sync with those responsible for due process and legal interpretation. That is true crisis. These words are simple, but the emotional impact should be chilling. When considering the actions of the ICE agents, it seems very reasonable that aiding or abetting them would be an even greater obstruction of justice if not directly aiding and abetting illegal activity.
America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
If the idea sounds farfetched, imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper. Imagine they decide to become judges to. How would you expect that to pervert justice?
> You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
No I'm not. I'm taking the facts as they're presented by the AP (which is famously not sympathetic to this administration) and saying that nothing in the facts that I'm seeing here in this specific case serves as evidence of a constitutional crisis. This is a straightforward case of obstruction: either she did the things that are alleged or she didn't. If she did, it's obstruction regardless of who is in the White House, and we have no reason to believe at this time that she didn't!
We have better litmus tests, better evidence of wrongdoing by the administration, and better cases to get up in arms about. If we choose our martyrs carelessly we're wasting political capital that could be spent showing those still on the fence the many actual, straightforward cases of overreach.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
There was a similar case in Massachusetts many years back. It never went to trial, and legal analysis could go both ways. The bargain struct was it would go into secretive judicial oversight channels.
There is a strong case to be made for obstruction of justice, and an equally strong case to be made about her making an error in her professional capacity as a judge and a government employee (which grants a level of immunity). Police officers, judges, soldiers, etc. make mistakes, but they generally don't go to jail for them because (even corruption aside) everyone makes mistakes. In some jobs, mistakes can and do have severe consequences up to and including people dying. If that led to prison, no one sane would take those jobs.
In any sane universe, it'd be fair to say she screwed up, and then the FBI also screwed up arresting her. I think the FBI screwed up more, since their mistake was premeditated, whereas she was put on the spot.
I do agree with your fundamental point of fatigue. This is not something anyone has a moral high ground to hang their flag on without looking bad.
What was the honest mistake the judge made?
I usually read coverage from different sides. If you don't realize where she screwed up, look at Fox News. If you don't realize where the FBI screwed up, look at NY Times.
Fox News perspective is that she broke court procedures in order to obstruct federal agents.
Prior cases seem to support that:
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/massachusetts-judge-court-...
Case concluded with some kind of judicial reprimand (not criminal, but administrative). This one is further over the line.
Neutral description to LLM also supports that the judge acted improperly (but LLM didn't think this would lead to a conviction). LLMs aren't great at legal analysis, but are actually pretty good at pattern-matching cases.
One thing helpful to have is a lawful plan. The courthouse might have handled ICE without breaking protocols by having protocols. Protocols should be prima facie neutral, but it's reasonable to expect people in courts, schools, and other places we actually want them to show up to feel safe there. That shouldn't involve sneaking people through back doors or hiding them in jury areas.
Why would I trust that an "entertainment" network like fox news would provide a good legal analysis of how a judge messed up the law? LLMs are worse than this.
ICE has been regularly overstepping its bounds and going after people in ways that impact our legal system's ability to function. This is a terrible precedent to set for no other reason than it impacts the rule of law. If people who are accused of crimes can be disappeared without a trial, just for showing up to court, what incentive is there for anyone to go to court? They are literally ignoring the "innocent until proven guilty" that is critical to the rule of law.
If you take away people's ability to get justice within the system, you are making it inevitable that they will go outside the system to get justice.
Ergo, I posted a link to an analogous legal situation in Massachusetts.
We can agree with what the judge did, but it doesn't make it legal.
We can also agree that ICE is breaking laws, but it also doesn't make what the judge did legal. It does help a bit -- in another comment I explained why -- but not enough to change the legal analysis.
As a footnote, modern LLMs aren't worse than Fox News. They have a lot of case law in their training set. They make mistakes so shouldn't yet be used for anything critical, but the legal analysis from Claude or GPT4.1 is a lot better than e.g. 95% of forum posts here.
I don't know that I have the brainpower to analyze 95% of the forum posts on here. And less to determine what I think is "better", so I guess I'll drop the point.
Does screw up as you use it mean knowingly and intentionally breaking the law, or mean it was accidental and unintentional?
It might be a mistake to beat someone bloody, but it isn't an accident.
I'm not sure what you're asking.
Let's say I beat someone bloody. We can play through several scenarios:
- Someone broke into my house, and I was fearful for my life
- Plain clothes police broke into my house, and I was fearful for my life
Let's say a police officer did so:
- Someone was a gang member, and the police officer did so in self-defense
- Ditto, based on mistaken beliefs
A lot of the protections in place for police and judges are based on the fact that mistakes like these happen. In general, people aren't individually liable for mistakes make in their official capacity as a government employee, unless they cross very extreme lines. They might get fired, but not prosecuted.
There are exceptions (such as handling of classified materials), but as a guideline, if a police officer beats someone bloody, but has good reason to believe they were a criminal and that this was the least force they could use to keep themselves safe, they're protected even if they're wrong.
Im talking about intent: knowingly and intentionally breaking the law.
I understand that honest mistakes happen due to inaccurate information, understand, ect.
- e.g. you thought a cop was a burglar.
These are different from poor and regrettable choices, also sometimes referred to as "mistakes".
There may be an interpretation of this situation where judge did not understand their situation and actions, but I don't find it very probable. It seems clear that they were trying to help the target of a legal warrant evade law enforcement apprehension, and knew exactly what they were doing.Judge thinks ICE is illegally abducting people. The ideas are laid out pretty clearly in the grandparent comment. It’s not clear what is right and wrong because ICE is skipping due process and rendering people to foreign prisons.
> we have no reason to believe at this time that she didn't!
this is not the standard of guilt and i think you know that
i also think you know that this is merely the latest incident in an extended, obvious campaign to override the judiciary.
It's not about the standard of guilt in court, it's about political capital and effective rhetoric.
There are so many cases where the Trump administration has flagrantly violated rule of law. Why would we waste time fighting them in the court of public opinion on a case where things currently appear to be open and shut in the other direction?
When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.
In ux design this is called alert fatigue, and it matters in politics too.
> When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about something where to all appearances the "victim" actually did break the law and is being given due process, we lose credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's harder for them to tune us out.
those cases are the least important to the defense of due process rights. but i'll concede that you're likely correct at the level of the broader populace given that our civic education is an embarrassment and has been for decades.
Is the AP just reciting facts from the FBI. Anytime the “fact” ends with “said John Doe,” the “fact” is merely a claim by John Doe.
Verification of claims is extremely rare. Especially for breaking news like this.
I haven’t gone down this rabbit hole. But reporters mostly just recite interviews.
> America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
The world has a concept that fits that description and it is a civil war. People pick up arms, a lot of people get killed, several generations end up in cycles of violence.
That is what happen when there is no law, only power, and people act on it.
> The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law.
But is this one of those situations? The problem I think people get stuck in the muck about is all these situations run together and they start assuming facts from one case apply to another.
Two things can be true— The Trump administration be in defiance of some other ruling related to immigration/deportation as well as being perfectly within the law for this particular case.
>>imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper.
You have just described a lot of US policing
Then don't fight these battles where they are in the right, fight them where they are in the wrong. Taking this fight here just gives all the advantage to Trump and his regime, fight them where it is easy to win.
Salami slicing is the first page of the present day authoritarian play book.
Here's an excerpt from They Thought They Were Free, a book about the mindset of ordinary Germans experiencing the rise of the Nazi Government:
Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
...
But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
You guys are basically on the path to be coming Russia.
Yes, I agree. Setting aside the macro issues of A) The current admin's immigration policies, and B) The current admin's oddly extreme strategies involving chasing down undocumented persons in unusual places for immediate deportation. From a standpoint of only legal precedent and the ordinance this judge is charged under, the particular circumstances of this case don't seem to make it a good fit for a litmus test case or a PR 'hero' case to highlight opposition to the admin's policies. At least, there are many other cases which appear to be far better suited for those purposes.
To me, part of the issue here is that judges are "officers of the court" with certain implied duties about furthering the proper administration of justice. If the defendant had been appearing in her courtroom that day in a matter regarding his immigration status, the judge's actions could arguably be in support of the judicial process (ie if the defendant is deported before she can rule on his deportability that impedes the administration of justice). But since he was appearing on an unrelated domestic violence case, that argument can't apply here. Hence, this appears to be, at best, a messy, unclear case and, at worst, pretty open and shut.
Separately, ICE choosing to arrest the judge at the courthouse instead of doing a pre-arranged surrender and booking, appears to be aggressive showboating that's unfortunate and, generally, a bad look for the U.S. government, U.S. judicial system AND the current administration.
Notably the examples on the page you linked appear to involve illegal acts (tampering, threatening, etc). Letting someone out a different door (neither party is trespassing) doesn't seem to rise to that bar.
Just as I'm not obligated to call the police to report something I don't see how I can be obligated to force my guest to use a particular door for the convenience of the police. It isn't my responsibility to actively facilitate their actions.
It would never have occurred to me (and doesn't seem reasonable) that obstruction could involve indirect (relative to the government process) actions.
I could understand "aiding and abetting" if I was actively facilitating the commission of a crime but I don't want to live in a country where mere avoidance is considered a crime. "Arrested for resisting arrest" gets mocked for good reason.
> The government has to prove intent here
Technically all the government has to do is get her on a plane to El Salvador in the middle of the night.
Which is to say, this arm of government has not followed any semblance of due process so far, and is currently defying a unanimous order of the Supreme Court even in a Republican supermajority, pretending due process is something they "have to" do is very much ignoring where we are.
> government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1)
Dude used a different door so the FBI arrests a judge in a court room? At that point we should be charging ICE agents with kidnapping.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent
She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how.
Frontpage of /r/law:
ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without...
There is no suggestion that the agents conducted a search or entered a non-public area. And this has nothing to do with the claim that the judge actively obstructed their efforts.
It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
No, this is a disaster. Hyperbole aside, this is indeed how democracy dies. Eventually this escalates to arresting more senior political enemies. And eventually the arbiter of whoever has the power to make and enforce those arrests ends up resting not with the elected government but in the law enforcement and military apparatus with the physical power to do so.
Once your regime is based on the use of force, you end up beholden to the users of force. Every time. We used to be special. We aren't now.
> It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
The allegation is that she obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure, she wasn't arrested for obstructing search that part was fine.
The ICE agents were legally allowed to wait outside and arrest the man as he stepped out, the judge leading the man out the backdoor after she learned ICE agents were waiting at the front is very hard to defend as anything but obstruction of arrest.
> obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure
Which sounds awfully novel to me. You really want to tear down the structure of democracy over this kind of nitpicking on "procedure"?
I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
> I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
The GP (or GGP, I forget) was discussing very specific legal technical details surrounding the judge's actions, the nature of the warrant and permissible locations for serving the warrant. I was pretty interested in that discussion - even though I probably generally agree with your macro views on immigration policy. You chose to focus on something completely different, the overall aggregate outcomes of national political policies and jumped immediately to rhetoric like "tear down the structure of democracy".
IMHO, an important part of "the structure of democracy" is the rule of law. Ideally, that means equal, impartial, consistent enforcement of the laws as written. If the circumstances were changed to this being 1962 Alabama and the defendant being the Grand Wizard of the local KKK and the judge snuck him out the back door because RFK had sent FBI agents from Washington to serve a warrant arresting the KKK Grand Wizard - would you think those discussing whether that judge might have technically obstructed justice were equally "tearing down the structure of democracy?"
Rule of law and its "equal, impartial, consistent enforcement" is totally a discretionary thing and very much by democratic support. The federal government has stopped enforcing low-level marijuana possession pretty much whole-sale, unless of course you show up at the wrong protests (see Timothy Teagan). Most people seem to think this is just dandy.
I would say you would actually destroy "democracy" if you enforced the rule of law.
> and very much by democratic support
Immigration was consistently polled as the most important issue to voters in the last US election.
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/immigration-americans-top-p...
Call me hopelessly naive but I think it's generally a good thing to rescind laws we don't want to enforce (or choose to only occasionally enforce), fix laws that aren't working as intended, and actually enforce the remaining laws we keep.
>totally a discretionary thing
The example I posted about the KKK Grand Wizard being the judicially smuggled person was intended to demonstrate the grave danger of having enforcement of a law (in this case obstruction of justice) be "totally a discretionary thing." The same people who'd (hopefully) be "horrified" by a judge smuggling a KKK member away from law enforcement (pointy white hat and all), want to selectively give a hall pass to this judge for doing the same thing. Paraphrasing Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that's no basis to form a system of government.
> very much by democratic support.
If you're referring to elections, those are, at most, once every two years. I'm not sure how well cops are going to do their jobs with a two-year latency on "what crimes can we arrest people for today?" If you're referring to anything else, you're either endorsing mob rule (kinda the main reason 'rule of law' was invented back in Holy Grail times) or you're placing a lot of faith in "the current people in political, social and cultural power" always being exactly "the kind of righteous people who agree with me on everything important." Especially in light of recent events, I don't think that's a very solid governance plan either.
As a practical example, I'm kind of a wild-eyed radical on immigration. If I was anointed "King of the Land", I'd almost throw open the borders entirely to any and all comers (not quite, but pretty close). Of course, I'd also need to change some other things to make that work, but that's not important right now. And even though I'm that radical on immigration, back when some cities chose to become "Sanctuary Cities" by announcing the current elected officials had decided to just... stop doing their job of enforcing (some) laws - I wasn't happy like you might think. No, even though I liked the outcome in that one instance, it actually troubled me greatly that a handful of individuals elected in the public trust decided to unilaterally seize power by illegally subverting the constitution and their solemn oaths of office.
And the fact I felt that was very bad back then, even over something I generally agreed with, leaves me feeling like I'm on firm logical, ethical, legal and moral ground when it troubles me equally that Trump and his fellow travelers are abusing the public trust in, conceptually, the very same ways. If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions. I think you're probably gonna have a bad time under any system of government that's not a monarchy or anarchy - with yourself as dictator for life.
On the other hand, I thought it was an incredibly dangerous and illegal expansion of presidential authority when Obama droned a U.S. citizen overseas without due process (even though that person was indeed an active terrorist). I'm funny that way about seizing power unconstitutionally. I'm always against it. No matter who does it or what they do with the stolen power. I hope those who are complaining today that Trump is using (and building on) the unconstitutional presidential power grab techniques that Obama pioneered, but didn't see a problem with it until someone they don't like started doing things they disagree with, are at least learning from this very hard lesson. Abuse of power is wrong no matter who does it or what they do.
> but didn't see a problem with it until someone they don't like started doing things they disagree with, are at least learning from this very hard lesson. Abuse of power is wrong no matter who does it or what they do.
> If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions.
This Obama comparison seems like a false equivalence because you are ignoring the _where_, i.e. within the U.S. vs a foreign battlefield.
The issue has been covered pretty extensively and is well worth looking into. It's been discussed and analyzed by several noted constitutional scholars.
It's been a while but IIRC it was unconstitutional because the president cannot unilaterally execute a U.S. citizen anywhere without due process except under certain conditions, none of which were met in this case. It wasn't a declared war ("War on Terror" was a PR slogan, not a congressional declaration of war). I think the fact it was targeted specifically at a named person and there were no exigent circumstances (like trying to free hostages or stopping an eminent attack) were also factors. But, based on the plain wording, this wasn't a close or subjective call. To be clear, while it was illegal and unconstitutional, I don't personally think killing this guy was morally unjustified. He was a shithead who spouted anti-American, pro-terrorist crap online. But he was basically a poseur in a cave in Yemen. He was never a material terror threat to the U.S. other than making online videos. He claimed allegiance with real terrorists but they never took him seriously because he was a fucking American and they'd be stupid not to assume he was a double-agent.
You're not alone in assuming dropping a missile on this guy must have been legally okay because of the surrounding circumstances. I mean, that can't just... happen, right? The U.S. had already droned lots of non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants. The guy was clearly a wannabe terrorist calling for jihad against the great Satan America. He was awful and unsympathetic in every possible way. He was in a country (Yemen I think) that was fighting a declared insurrection-ish war against the local jihad group that sort-of associated with the guy. And that country was a U.S. ally. But... none of those circumstances made killing him legal. Yemen didn't launch the missile. A U.S. soldier under direct presidential order did. Legally and constitutionally, what Obama did was no different than Trump ordering U.S. soldiers to execute a U.S. citizen on the White House lawn with no due process. Except I highly doubt U.S. soldiers would do that without the surrounding circumstances of being a known terrorist, in Yemen, droned like they'd legally done before to similar non-U.S. citizen terrorists. Unfortunately, all of those circumstances were legally and constitutionally irrelevant. And, of course, even Trump would never give such an order because he knows American's sensibilities would be shocked, and both parties in congress would be forced to protest en masse, hold hearings, etc. But Obama and congress knew, in those circumstances, in that era, in that middle eastern country, against that unsympathetic target, it would encounter minimal protest. But it's at times like that and under circumstances like those that Rubicons get crossed and dangerous precedents set.
Sadly, that political calculation was correct. Despite being forcefully protested by a few members of congress, our system failed to work because the "War on Terror" was started by the opposition party and Obama's own party chose not to hold their President accountable for partisan political reasons. The media similarly followed party lines with the democratic majority choosing not to make an issue of it and the opposition media not wanting to go against the "War on Terror" they still actively endorsed. Only a few media people went against their traditional alignment and called it the unconstitutional execution that it clearly was. The handful of politicians, media and pundits who stood up on this issue despite doing so alone, are worth noting for their integrity. Even though they knew it might be politically costly and wouldn't change anything, they chose to stand on the right side of history in one of those rare moments when all others failed.
> I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
Calling people who are against illegal immigration "racist" just makes it worse.
A majority of people are fine with legal migration, a supermajority of people think illegal immigrants should get deported. So no, the issue most see isn't that they don't like Spanish, the issue is that they are here illegally.
Or we could just let more people be here legally. All we'd have to do is raise the quota.
Do that, and I'd have zero problems rounding up all of the remaining illegal immigrants and driving 'em into the ocean, if that's what you want. Instead, I'm suspicious that "the only issue is that they're here illegally" is just deflection.
I'm pro-legal immigration but this isn't as simple as "make number go up." Resources like houses and jobs are in finite supply and allowing more legal immigration without ensuring the needs of your citizens is a good way to increase anti-immigrant sentiment. The facts don't matter that immigrants do the jobs that Americans don't want.
Reducing illegal and legal immigration actually hurts "your citizens" in many ways as it stands today in America. The immigrants pay taxes into things like social security without getting the benefits. They also work on farms and if they go away prices will go up.
The only solution to housing is building more housing.
> A majority of people are fine with legal migration
an alarming number of legal aliens are being detained, deported or disappeared: students who wrote op-eds, Afghan asylees who helped us during the war, college professors and Canadian tourists, even (prospectively) "home-growns."
if most Trump supporters support legal migration, why aren't they pushing back on this?
This is a complicated issue because Republicans spent decades sabotaging the immigration system. If you're an immigrant trying to cross the border legally, you could spend years waiting for your hearing. Part of the reason illegal immigration is so high is because they make legal immigration near impossible.
As far as the Republican Party, statistics don’t back up the idea they are okay with legal immigration.
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/rep...
In Florida, Desantis is so against legal migration he is trying to relax child labor laws.
Even now there is a share of Republicans especially in southern states who are still against interracial marriages.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/interracial-marri...
>Half of Republicans (50%) say legal immigration into the United States should be decreased.
This is a far shot from being against legal migration entirely.
> This is a far shot from being against legal migration entirely.
Sure, its simply about preferring strong ethnic controls on immigration: while only 50% of Republicans think legal immigration should be decreased, 61% think that immigration "from other cultures" has mainly negative consequences. It's not that Republicans are against legal immigration entirely, its just that they are (in the majority) against any immigration from the places most immigrants come from; they are fine with legal immigration of white Christian conservatives, especially from the rest of the anglosphere.
I think that is closer, but still a strawman. I think the ethnic boundaries are more flexible than you portray. Immigration of diverse cultures are acceptable as long as they are not a cultural threat, and the target isn't zero.
> As far as the Republican Party, statistics don’t back up the idea they are okay with legal immigration.
I said majority of people, not majority of republicans. That means there are still many republicans that like legal immigration, wealthy people like when labor is allowed to immigrate, Elon Musk is one such person among many others.
If Trump said he would deport all the legal immigrants he would likely not have won the election, that they are illegal is core to his support.
Trump is aggressively deporting foreign students that were here legally. If you are only against illegal immigration you should speak out against things like this.
> obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure
Sorry, then would a janitor who puts up a slippery floor sign in front of a door and asks someone to use a different door be "obstructing arrest by changing standard procedure."
This is absurd on its face. You don't have the right to arrest a Judge for "obstructing justice" because they let someone use a different door to leave. And you should think 1 million times of the implication to the rule of law before you do such a thing.
ICE are not gods, and I would hope after this, that Americans would start to consider taking away what power they have, because they are abusing it. And it's threatening our democracy.
Immigration law is wildly different from what people expect. But it is the law and it has been held up in countless court cases. This weirdness is not new.
I think most of the weirdness comes from the fact that entering the country illegally, or remaining in the country illegally can be crimes, but they can also be civil offenses. “Civil” means no jail time, but people still get deported without going to criminal court.
“Civil” also means “doesn’t have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” and “no constitutional right to a public defender.” Immigration law tries to provide limited forms of some of those ideas. There’s a kind of bail system, and people have a right to be represented by attorneys, but no right for those attorneys to be paid by the government. There is somebody referred to as an immigration judge, and they have a federal job, but they aren’t regular federal judges.
It’s possible to appeal an immigration court’s decision to a federal district court to get into the legal system we’re more familiar with.
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11536
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362
apparently immigration law infringement only goes to court if you're trying to stop them now - if they want to send you to a concentration camp, there's no right to due process.
The Alien Enemy Act is actually an incredibly old law (i.e., it’s not a new development). What is new is attempting to use it based on a declaration that there’s been a non-military invasion ( https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11269 ). I think it’s pretty clear that the Supreme Court is going to eventually strike that down, but the courts can only act in response to the cases they get, and only answer specific legal questions at different phases of those cases.
But about a month ago, the Court did rule people who the government wanted to send to El Salvador have a due process right to challenge that decision in regular federal court as a habeas corpus proceeding ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf ). They later issued an order that the people covered by the original ruling cannot be deported based on the Alien Enemy Act until further notice ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18... ).
yes, the courts have been ruling, but the executive has been ignoring.
> We used to be special.
Oh. Do expand.
As it turns out, hyperbole is not aside.
My understanding is that you have an obligation to act lawfully, even if another person is not acting lawfully.
This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”
The claim is that the judge, upon finding out that they were there to make an arrest, deliberately led the man out a back door which would under almost no circumstances be available to his use (the jury door), allowing him to bypass the officers attempting to make the arrest.
If true, that's pretty clearly a deliberate attempt to obstruct their efforts. The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction, but I don't have any specific reason to believe it wouldn't be.
An important one is "does ICE have the authority to operate in the location they were operating in?" If the answer is no, then Dugan's actions cannot be interpreted as interfering with ICE's official operations. You cannot interfere with official operations when the operations are not official or legal. An extreme example of this would be like police arresting somebody, and in a formal interrogation they admit to murder, but the person was not read their Miranda rights. These statements would likely be inadmissible in a court. But subtle details matter, like if the person wasn't arrested or if they weren't being interrogated (i.e. they just blabbed).
This matters because the warrant. In the affidavit it says Dugan asked if the officer had a judicial warrant and were told they had an administrative warrant.[0] That linked article suggests that an administrative warrant can only be executed in an area where there is no expectation of privacy. This is distinct from public. There are many public places where you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. A common example being a public restroom (same law means people can't take photos of you going to the bathroom). So is there a reasonable expectation of privacy here? I don't know.
I think it is worth reading the affidavit. Certainly it justifies probable cause (at least from my naive understanding). But the legal code is similar to programming code in that subtle details are often critical to the output. That's why I'm saying it isn't "the only question", because we'd need to not only know the answers to the above but answers to more subtle details that likely are only known to domain experts (i.e. lawyers, judges, LEO, etc)
[0] https://www.motionlaw.com/the-difference-between-judicial-an...
It's worth adding the director of the FBI posted publicly showing a clear politically motivated bias in an ongoing case. So outside the immediate facts of the case there are questions around presumption of innocence, due process, and a fair trial, as well as prosecutorial misconduct.
Yet another question is how low the bar for obstruction is. Did she actually obstruct ICE in any real sense?
That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz.
The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area.
The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
Edit: directed, not escorted.
> [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator.
INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal.
[0]: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b74...
The outcomes are immaterial to the legal question of obstruction, the only factors are knowledge of the warrant and intent to help him escape. If he successfully avoided arrest but it cannot be proven that the judge intended that outcome, then she is not guilty of obstruction. If he got caught anyway but the judge intended to help him escape, that's still obstruction.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
As noted by the linked page those are minimum requirements. The relevant law regarding obstruction [0] is USC 18 §1505 [1]. It isn't immediately obvious to me that it was violated.
The first paragraph only appears to apply to physical evidence. The second paragraph appears to require more than merely assisting someone.
> Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication
The latter two obviously don't apply so that only leaves the former. Did the judge act "corruptly"?
The other law cited in the complaint is USC 18 §1071 [2] and the question would be if leading someone to an alternate pathway constitutes either harboring or concealing the individual. I don't feel like letting someone out my backdoor constitutes "concealing" a person as the term is commonly used. As an example, hiding someone in a closet and then telling the officers that he isn't in the building would obviously qualify.
[0] https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b74...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1505
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071
If we're going to be technical about this, which one has to be in the eyes of the law, what is the difference between escorting them through the private back door vs escorting them through the front door?
How do you prove intent? That her intent was to obstruct?
They point out in the article that such room (juror room) is never usually used by certain people, but that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
If it can be credibly demonstrated that she cancelled the hearing and escorted the defendant out a back door within seconds of sending the officers away, that she had every intent of proceeding with the hearing before meeting with the officers, and that she and her peers did not usually use that door for defendants, then I would consider that to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that she intended to obstruct the arrest.
It's not a given, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable burden of proof either.
> that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
If the only reason to use the backdoor is to avoid arrest, then that proves her intent. If there was another reason to use it then that will come up in court.
That is key indeed. She specifically clarified the type of warrant then escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.
They didn't need to search, they just needed to wait outside to arrest. That would have worked if the defendant didn't use the backdoor.
FBI should review thier fieldwork, alternate entrance/exits, must be secured or under watch, before the approach.
They did catch the guy so they did do their job.
yeah they did thier job, but operationally speaking, they need a review.
But they didn't have a valid warrant for arrest. Therefore him going out the back door was not "escaping arrest".
They did have a valid warrant for arrest, they just didn't have a warrant to search the courtroom but they had a warrant to arrest the guy as soon as he stepped outside.
Then they weren't obstructed. They're just shit at their job.
If I know you're in a building and haver permission to arrest you, it's not "obstructing arrest" if you use the back door. What if your car's parked out back?
To quote the 10 year old who destroyed me in fortnite "Get good."
I could be if you can't enter a store to arrest someone and back door is marked "private employee only". Manager then let's them out the back door despite clear enforced store policy to prohibit random customers from being allowed in that part of the store.
I don't think the manager (or any other employee) is legally obligated to follow store policy in your example.
Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law
Which law aren't they obeying ?
>> An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant
False.
An ICE warrant is for civil offenses.
Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter.
If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
>> If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
I don't know. Is an FCC warrant like an ICE warrant? If so, then you don't have to open the door. You can probably tell them to fuck themselves, but that's probably not a good idea.
You can't obstruct their investigation. You can't conceal what your neighbor is doing. You can't tell the FCC that your neighbor doesn't have a transmitter, or that it only reaches 200 feet when you know that that it reaches farther than that. Those are crimes, in my admittedly limited understanding of the situation.
An ICE warrant is not a search warrant. ICE did not need a search warrant in this case. They needed a warrant to arrest a named person they had probable cause to believe was in the country illegally. It appears they did in fact have that warrant. It was a real warrant. And if they facts in the ICE criminal complaint are true, this is a textbook case of someone obstructing that arrest.
> He accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
There are some pretty broad laws about "you can't lie to the feds", but I think the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target. (They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation -- someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
EDIT: since I wrote that 15 minutes ago, the article has been updated with more details about what the judge did:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
EDIT 2: the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article says:
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Which is an escalation above the former "didn't stop them", admittedly, but I'm not sure how it gets to "misdirection".
1. It isnt clear ICE agents have any legal authority to demand a judge tell them anything. 2. It is highly likely this is an official act, since it would be taken on behalf of court, so the immigrant can give, eg. testimony in a case.
A "private act" here would be the judge lying in order to prevent their deportation because they as a private person wanted to do so. It seems highly unlikely that this is the case.
I updated my post with new information from the updated article, and in the context of that I think you're pretty much right. It sounds like the judge basically said "you need permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing, go get it" and then didn't change anything about the process of their hearing while that permission was being obtained.
This was definitely not them being helpful, but I'm incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
> incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
But they can be successfully arrested. You can beat the rap but not the ride, etc.
The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be determined to move that closer.
The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling. ICE being a proto secret police seems to be perceived already. The FBI now? There’s question whether the ICE agents even had legal grounds to demand arrest regardless, whether they had a warrant, etc - and the facts established are pretty clearly not prosecutable. So this is pure intimidation, going after the judicial in what will likely be a flagrantly abusive way, yet doing it proudly and across the media - this is a shot across the bow telling judges at all levels they are next. And if there’s anyone that knows being arrested changes your life forever, it’s judges.
I am not alarmist or hyperbolic by nature, and I don’t say this lightly, but this is the next level and the escalation event that leads to the end game. The separation of powers is unraveling, and this is America’s Sulla moment where the republic cracks. The question remains did the anti federalists bake enough stability into the constitution to ensure our first Sulla doesn’t lead to Julius Caesar.
The accused is accused of violating federal law, so it's normal that a federal agency would make the arrest. FBI seems to make more sense than DEA or ATF, no?
It’s not that the agency is wrong; it’s that the agency would do it. This is the agency that since J Edgar Hoover has very carefully rebuilt its reputation and is very guarded in it. This act is entirely reminiscent of the political corruption of the FBI of old. That regression, that fast, is frightening.
ICE being shady is by many people accepted, the DEA, ATF even. But the FBI has built itself a pretty strong reputation of integrity and professionalism, and resistance to political pressure and corruption. In some ways I at least viewed it as a firewall in law enforcement against this sort of stuff.
Now who watches the watchers?
ICE, ATF, and CBP has always been the house for the dregs of federal LEO. It is for the people that fail to get into anything else.
FBI is prestigious because they get the most qualified tyrants, who are smart enough to lie and deceive in ways that are airtight enough that those at ICE take the heat. The surprising thing here isn't the fact that they did it, but that they didn't do the normal way of digging or manufacturing something else to pin on the judge.
Anecdotally, I have heard that the most trustworthy (perhaps only trustworthy) Federal law enforcement group is the US Marshalls.
US Marshalls IIRC is also the hardest to get into. If I recall they have like one day a year they accept applications and they all (only certain # accepted) get filled within seconds. (I'm probably embellishing but not by much).
For most of its life the FBI has been a hand of the federal government to quell dissent, this new perspective on the FBI being professional and non-partisan is pretty new.
Yes it is - and it was carefully cultured over decades. A reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy. Mission accomplished.
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You can't just arrest someone for nothing. You need probable cause. The question is whether a judge going about their day, doing nothing illegal, is probable cause. It's very likely not.
This is certainly not the first autocratic act of the FBI under Patel. They have been thoroughly compromised and lost integrity even before this arrest.
> The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling
Even more frightening is that there was a federal judge that was willing to sign off on an arrest warrant for a fellow jurist, based on what is clearly political showmanship (they didn't need to arrest her at all to prosecute this crime!).
There were a lot of Rubicons crossed today. This ends with opposition politicians in jail. Every time. And usually to some level of armed revolt around/preventing transfers of power.
With AII.S2.C1.3.1 power jails are porous.
There's one effective sentence, if gained, which avoids this. I'm ordinarily #NotAFan, and that's another Rubicon once crossed presents massive peril, but in cases of flagrant constitutional violation I'm increasingly open to arguments in favour.
If that sentence cannot be attained, options are even more parlous.
> ICE being a proto secret police
people think the Musk administration is dumb and incompetent, but this is incredibly clever. ICE is the prefect cover for a new unaccountable secret police.
anybody can be disappeared under the excuse of illegal immigration. if there's no due process, they can come for you and you have no recourse.
plenty of MAGAs are so ready to shout "but they're criminals" - and they still don't understand that it could be them next.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is phrased like the judge actually did anything wrong. That seems very doubtful. This administration has shown they are not entitled to the presumption that they are acting in good faith.
I don't think it implies the judge did anything wrong. If you're arrested, you're going to experience whatever the cops want to do to you, regardless of whether they can convict you of it.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is an indictment of the cops, not the arrestee.
I don’t know. It seems pretty unusual.
Imagine that someone is being charged with shoplifting and literally at trial. Some other law enforcement agency shows up to the trial and wants to arrest them for jaywalking.
It seems dysfunctional that the court would release them when they know a different law enforcement agency is literally in the building and wanting to arrest them.
Is this how it works when the FBI comes to a county court looking for someone the county cops have in custody?
Talk to the cops, not the judge who is in a proceeding? Go talk to the chief justice?
The idea that the judge did anything wrong here, based on the description given by the FBI themselves, is absolutely beyond the pale. There's zero reason for ICE agents to barge into court and demand to take somebody.
They didn't even leave one of the multiple agents in the courtroom to wait for the proceedings to end. To blame the judge at all in this requires making multiple logical and factual jumps that even the FBI did not put forward.
Edit: the Trump administration has also been attacking the Catholic Charities of Milwaukee, which this judge used to run:
> Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
It seems pretty clear that this is a highly politically motivated arrest that has zero justification.
This reminds me of those cops arresting that nurse, over their attempts to illegally have blood drawn from an unconscious person.
LEO should have no say whatsoever regarding any medical proceedure.
any one who keeps a hippocratic oath should not be performing procedures because they were "commanded" to, under pain of professional discreditation.
Oh, I’m certainly not endorsing the arrest of the judge.
But wouldn’t the bailiff hold the person?
Is it typical for the FBI to lose a suspect in this manner? If so, this seems dysfunctional as if someone is in the court system then jurisdictions need to coordinate to just operate efficiently. It needs fixing so if ICE wants someone and a local courthouse has them in custody that ICE can pick them up.
But arresting judging is not going to help fix this bureaucratic silliness.
On what grounds would the bailiff hold the person?
I'm not sure why the courthouse should hold someone for ICE, it wasn't even necessary here they still got the person. All they had to do was stay where they were.
That theres a federal warrant for his detention.
I don't think this would be to hold them indefinitely. Just that they would have the suspect sit there and wait for the agents to return.
What federal warrant was there? I don't see any mention of one but the best that ICE could issue is not a judicial warrant and does not meet most of the requirements under the 4th amendment for detainment of a person.
Generally state and local law enforcement and courts have no legal requirement to enforce most federal arrest warrants. This is due to our dual sovereignty system. Of course they also can't actively interfere with federal law enforcement or lie to federal officers, but it doesn't seem like that's what happened in this incident.
> local courthouse has them in custody
I think this is the disconnect you're seeing. He was not in custody: he was appearing before a judge.
Oh, thanks. I assumed he was appearing before the judge as a defendant and was in custody.
No one is obligated to do ICE’s dirty work for them. Even most totalitarian countries don’t go that far.
Looking at the rest of the GP's comment:
> The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be determined to move that closer.
I don't think they intended to imply that the judge did anything wrong. Rather, they're saying that if you live in a world where the FBI or ICE or other official agencies can rough you up regardless of whether you're guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law, disputes are going to get settled with violence. After all, if the police are just going to make life difficult for you when you're arrested (the "ride") regardless of whether you're guilty in the eyes of the law (the "rap"), what's the logical response when you see a policeman coming to you? You shoot them. Don't let them arrest you because you're gonna have a bad time anyway.
Various marginalized communities (in both other countries and parts of the U.S.) already function that way - violence is an endemic part of how problems are solved. And going back to the threadstarter, that's why police departments have instituted sanctuary city policies. They don't want to get shot, and so they try to create an incentive structure where generally law-abiding (except for their immigration status) residents are unafraid to go to the police and help them catch actual criminals, rather than treating all police as the enemy.
"You can't beat the ride" is saying that cops can punish you regardless of whether what you did was illegal.
That's certainly one interpretation of it, and a pretty reasonable one. However, I typically interpret it as "if the police think you've committed a crime, you are going to jail and almost nothing is going to stop that." In that incredibly famous "Don't Talk to the Police" talk[0], the attorney asks the former-cop-turned-law-student if he's every been convinced not to arrest someone based on what the suspect said. Not a single time in his entire law enforcement career.
This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing you can say will convince the police not to arrest you, and things you do say can make things worse, your best bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets to that point.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
I think we're all agreeing here. "You can't beat the ride" means that if the cops want to arrest you, lock you up, etc., you can't do anything about it. Doesn't matter if you're guilty, innocent, or just a random bystander, you're not going to stop them from taking you and doing whatever they want in the process.
Plus they obviously want to set an example: if you get in our way, bad things will happen to you.
ICE should’ve been reformed after Trump 1, but at this point we’re going to need to unwind the whole organization when we get that man out of power. They’ve shown themselves to be pretty disinterested in laws, democracy, etc.
This is the reform of ICE. Trump was elected explicitly promising to do much more arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants, which is instantiated by having agents of the federal government do things like arrest and deport illegal immigrants on trial for unrelated crimes and actually charge citizens like this judge who interfere with this process with crimes, in order to induce them to not interfere with the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants.
Can you explain how this action reasonably leads to gunfire?
GP wasn't saying that one leads to another in a causal sense - simply that there are levels of dysfunction and this step is closer to the dysfunction of gunfire than the previous level.
Exactly. One of these days somebody is going to use a gun to defend someone from these masked/unmarked/unwarranted kidnappings.
The first time someone uses an impossible to trace drone to take out a law enforcement officer in the US is going to change everything.
The status quo has been that law enforcement can operate in an openly corrupt way with impunity because they can absolutely positively find someone who fights back.
But all the pieces are there for people to fight back with equal impunity. The technology is mature and deployed and has been tested in Ukraine and Syria for several years now.
It's just a matter of time before someone takes out a corrupt cop or ICE official and they get away away with it.
It will have a chilling effect on this kind of behaviour.
> It will have a chilling effect on this kind of behaviour
No, it will have an escalation effect. That's the problem. Starting with a massive crackdown on law abiding drone users.
Oi, bruv. Those are inside thoughts.
After Hinckley and especially after 9/11 I didn't think it would be possible for someone to successfully assassinate a US president with a firearm. I was shocked at how trivial it was for two people to almost pull that off last year with Trump. It was pure luck that it didn't happen, and I'm skeptical that the Secret Service has fundamentally changed how they protect people in a way that will permanently prevent even something as mundane as assassination by firearm let alone drones.
If they can't stop someone from killing the president with a gun how could they possible stop someone from using a swarm of these to do the same?[0]
And how can law enforcement protect themselves from something like this? Like honestly, what is a counter to this kind of attack that scales up to provide protection for the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers in America?
The only thing I can see scale to that level is reform of behaviour. If people respond to abuse of authority with these kinds of tools then the only viable method of prevention is to stop abusing authority.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwD7wppkJw
> The only thing I can see scale to that level is reform of behaviour. If people respond to abuse of authority with these kinds of tools then the only viable method of prevention is to stop abusing authority.
I think that presumes that only "good" people will use drones (etc) that way.
You've got a bunch of people who you see as* "openly corrupt … with impunity", and a new tech that lets people attack with impunity. The result is that the same cops you're paying attention to* just change from wearing a badge to controlling a joystick.
* I'm phrasing it like this because while I know what 1312 means, I don't buy the "all" part.
It's not so much that I see subjectively see them as openly corrupt and operating with impunity, it's that there are objectively corrupt officials operating openly with impunity[0]. Every institution has corruption -- it's just a matter of degree.
I'm not suggesting that only 'good' people will use drones that way, far from it. What I'm suggesting is that a moderating force that hasn't existed for a long while due to asymmetry in police ability vs. the ability to resist them will return. The return of this moderating force will eliminate those few 'bad apples' eliminating their ability to abuse their authority, create fear in other law enforcement officers who would do those kinds of things or at least tolerate them, and would see some sort of law enforcement effort to crack down on corruption.
I'm sure you're right that corrupt police will find new and exciting ways to terrorize innocent people with technology as corrupt police will always continue to be corrupt but there will just be less of them because they'll be struck down by vigilantes and there will be more official efforts made to clamp down on them out of necessity.
You can probably model this like population dynamics with predator and prey populations in the wild.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
That is not what is alleged in the complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
The allegation is that the judge got upset that ICE was waiting outside the courtroom, sent the law enforcement officers to the chief judge's office, and then adjourned the hearing without notifying the prosecutor and snuck the man with a warrant out through a non-public door not normally used by defendants.
If those facts are accurate, it sure sounds like obstruction. Judges have to obey the law just like everyone else.
You are basically saying that everybody has to help ICE for free and on occasion do the job of ICE for free. That’s very totalitarian.
At the same time, it is settled law that a police officer cannot be held liable for not protecting citizens or not arresting someone. So you have more obligations than a police officer yet getting none of the pay or legal protections
Imagine you were a private tutor, in a private school on private land. ICE barges into the class trying to arrest one of the kids, but their paperwork is not in order so they promised to come back in 20 minutes
Do you imagine it will be possible to continue with the lesson as normal after such an event?
It is your discretion, when to start or stop a lesson, you work for yourself.
Do you imagine you should be obligated as a teacher to continue the lesson as if nothing has happened?
And if children want to leave to hold them by force?
why is it your problem That ICE isn’t competent and can’t get their shit right the first time?
ICE had a warrant. They were being courteous to the court by waiting until after the hearing instead of scooping the guy up on his way in.
And no, you don't have to help ICE, you just can't obstruct them. Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction.
You're downvoted because ICE did not have a warrant.
ICE prints pieces of paper which they call "administrative warrants." Those were never reviewed by a judge and are internal ICE documents. An administrative warrant is not an actual warrant in any meaningful sense. It's a meaningful document (contrary to what you might read; it's not something one can just print on a laser printer and called it a day), but the "administrative" changes the meaning dramatically.
It seems like there were plenty of errors all around, in this situation, both on the judge's side and on ICE's side. However, I can't imagine any of those rose to the level of criminal behavior.
Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction, but that changes quite a bit when it's a government employee operating within their scope of duty. Even if they make a mistake.
Schools don't want students scared to be there. Courtrooms want to count on cases not being settled by default because people are scared to show up. There is a valid, lawful reason for not permitting ICE to disrupt their government functions. That's doubly true when you can't count on ICE following the law and might ship someone off to El Salvador.
Asking an LLM, whether or not the judge broke laws is ambiguous. It is unambiguous that they showed poor judgment, and there should probably be consequences. However, what's not ambiguous is that the consequences should be through judicial oversight mechanisms, and not the FBI arresting the judge.
As a footnote, a judge not being able to rely on ICE following lawful orders significantly strengthens the government interest argument.
> incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted
Strongly agree. But, as I’m sure we both know, some other less-politically-connected people will be a bit more afraid of getting arrested on ridiculous grounds because of this. So, mission accomplished.
Successful prosecution isn't needed, the harassment and incurring high legal fees will discourage a dozen other judges who might be less than boot-licklingly helpful to the autocrat.
That's the reality less equal animals have had to live under since basically forever.
I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing that state and local authorities would have to view the feds the way we have to view all three because it brings our incentives more in alignment.
I'm sure there will be plenty of attorneys willing to take on these cases pro bono.
> It sounds like the judge basically said "you need permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing, go get it" and then didn't change anything about the process of their hearing while that permission was being obtained.
This is untrue if the FBI affidavit is believed. The judge adjourned the case without speaking to the prosecuting attorney, which is a change to the process of the hearing regarding three counts of Battery-Domestic Abuse-Infliction of Physical Pain or Injury.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...[flagged]
Considering the ongoing due process deprivations this is the most concerning aspect to me. This is a sitting judge which is a significant escalation against the judiciary.
I was talking to someone earlier about how we in America, today, are not entitled to anything. Just in the last hundred years, people lived under secret police, dictators, state-controlled media, occupation, you name it. Hundreds of millions of people lived their whole life under the KGB or Stasi. Hundreds of millions live in autocracy even today. Some straight up live in a warzone as we speak. The idea that "we" can't be going through this is beyond entitled. Nothing is guaranteed to us. We are being shown how fragile this all is by the universe.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
I expect America to be a beacon of light and I will fight for it. We all need to fight for it, especially the people who frequent this message board because we are among the most privileged and capable. It’s disappointing to me how many of our tech leaders forget what made them great in the first place and abuse us all in the pursuit of personal wealth.
For people who don't live in crazy town, this would be considered an oppressive action, arresting a judge for following procedure simply because it inconvenienced you.
The judge wasn’t arrested for following procedure. Read the complaint.
I'm not saying it's good, for sure. But I don't think it's a sign that the push for autocratic authoritarianism is winning, either.
My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive. The judiciary tends to be prickly about its prerogatives, and Trump's far from the point where he can just push stuff through without some cover.
Dear god wake up before it’s too late.
We are far past the point of any optimistic take like that being realistic.
The fact that HN is letting political posts stay on the front page after months of suppression shows that we are past the point of denying the authoritarian road we are on.
We've been heading this direction with hardly a pause, let alone step back, since the '70s.
Authoritarianism was winning for 50+ years. Nobody with power meaningfully tried to stop it, and voters didn't give enough of a shit to elect people who would. Where we're at now, is that it won.
> My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive
This is your take given the blatant corruption and clear constitutional violations of this administration? Sure, let's hope that norms and vibes save us against an executive ignoring due process. Those other branches don't even have a way to enforce anything; the executive are the ones who arrest people.
The power of the executive is constrained, ultimately, by what people let them do. Including people inside the executive branch -- the people who're doing the arresting, transporting the prisoners, gunning down the protesters, etc. There's a lot of people involved who aren't committed to some authoritarian project, they're just... doing their job. They can be swayed by vibes, and general unpopularity of the regime.
The alternative to this view is either giving up or preparing for armed struggle. It's certainly possible that we could get there, but I don't think it's guaranteed yet.
(I acknowledge that this position is quite the blend of optimism and cynicism.)
Like this judge they're being ousted for the smallest pushback and are being replaced by project 2025 people, they even set up a system that you can apply to do exactly this. Trump (or Vance that is fully in with Thiel) will have full control over all agencies where all low level employees are on board with this Christo fascist takeover and the judiciary will be powerless.
Trump is calling for the Fed's Jerome Powell to be fired for not lying and saying everything will be fine as a result of tariffs. He pulled the security clearance of former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and anyone associated with him, for not lying about the result of his cyber security investigation of the 2020 election. He also pulled security clearances for political rivals including Biden, Harris, and Cheney as well as the Attorneys General involved in his civil case for fraud, which he lost and was ordered to pay $355 million.
This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will use executive power to destroy you". There is no optimistic view of this.
If it turns autocratic then there's no discussion to be had. Judge will waterboarded in Gitmo and Trump is de-facto king. We are no longer a nation of laws, the USA is renamed to Trumpopolis and we all have to get government mandated orange spray tans.
So assuming that doesn't happen, this is an action by a non-autocratic executive meant to have a chilling effect on low level judges who don't want to spend a few days in lockup just because. A knob that the executive is (mostly) allowed to turn but that is considered in poor taste if you wish to remain on good terms with the judiciary. The bar for arrest is really low and the courts decide if she committed a crime which she obviously didn't.
Autocracy comes in shades. Arresting judges who do things you don't like is yet another shade darker than we've seen so far... And things were already pretty dark.
You seem to be quite blasé about the possibility of autocracy. But yes, there is a risk that Trump becomes a dictator and we're no longer a nation of laws. It depends on how people like us react to consolidations of power like this, or the illegal impoundment, or cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia's. The law only matters insofar as we and our representatives can enforce it.
I'm not so much blasé about it, more just nihilistic because I am the last person with any kind of power to stop it. I imagine most of HN falls into this bucket of people with no real political power or influence. My realistic option if it happens is to move.
Protest! People power is the best way to resist autocracy especially in the early stages when resistance has a chance of success. Don’t ignore the fact that protests are happening. Musk is fleeing Washington because the backlash successfully tanked Tesla. That’s a big win right there!
Consider just how much more inconvenient/shitty/tragic it will be for you and the people you know if you are indeed forced to move, as compared to successfully pushing back right now.
I'm also making plans contingency plans to move, but I may not be able to. Individually, no, we don't have power, but if everyone actually protested, we would - the Ukrainian revolution[1] started out as just mass protests (Euromaidan), for instance. The problem is that not enough of us are doing it, maybe because too many people are apathetic, uninformed, or don't take the possibility of autocracy seriously.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
According to the FBI complaint that was just made available:
Judge Dugan escorted the subject through a "jurors door" to private hallways and exits instead of having the defendant leave via the main doors into the public hallway, where she visually confirmed the agents were waiting for him.
I couldn't tell if the judge knew for certain that ICE was only permitted to detain the defendant in 'public spaces' or not.
Regardless, the judge took specific and highly unusual action to ensure the defendant didn't go out the normal exit into ICE hands -- and that's the basis for the arrest.
I don't necessarily agree with ICE actions, but I also can't refute that the judge took action to attempt to protect the individual. On one side you kind of want immigrants to show up to court when charged with crimes so they can defend themselves... but on the other side, this individual deported in 2013 and returned to the country without permission (as opposed to the permission expiring, or being revoked, so there was no potential 'visa/asylum/permission due process' questions)
If this is all true, it still requires the judge be under some legal order to facilitate the deportation -- unless they have a warrant of the relevant type, the judge is under no such obligation. With a standard (administrative) warrant, ICE have no authority to demand the arrest.
The violation is not that the judge _did not assist_, but that the judge took additional actions to ensure the defendant could access restricted areas they otherwise would have no right to be in so that they could get out of the building unseen.
The judge was aware of the warrant and ensured the defendant remained in private areas so they could get out of the building.
The FBI's argument is that her actions were unusual (a defendant being allowed into juror's corridors is highly unusual) and were only being taken explicitly to assist in evading ICE.
As we've heard from many lawyers recently regarding ICE... You are not required to participate and assist. However, you can't take additional actions to directly interfere. Even loudly shouting "WHY IS ICE HERE?" is dangerous (you probably should shout a more generic police concern, like 'hey, police, is there a criminal nearby? should i hide?'
Given that, it'll be interested to see how guidance on courthouse security on whether to let ICE in with administrative warrants is updated.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071
That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.
That applies to warrants for arrest. The standard warrant ICE operate with is a civil warrant, and does not confer any actual authority to arrest an individual.
That's irrelevant.
Interfering with an ICE apprehension is illegal. That's what this judge did, which is why the FBI arrested her.
I keep hearing over and over the ICE warrants aren't real.
If they are arresting people using them and judges are recognizing them, they are real and the people demanding an arrest warrant are the sovereign citizen-tier people screaming at the sky wishing there was a different reality.
There are multiple types of warrants. All types are "real", but they convey different authority and different requirements upon both the arrestee and the arresters.
It is both rational and legal to insist that law enforcement stay within the bounds of the authority the specific type warrant they obtained. ICE civil warrants grant different authority than every-day federal arrest warrants. That ICE is abusing that authority is no reason to capitulate to it.
There are two different warrants. Ones issued by judges, which are "real" and ones signed by ICE supervisors which are little more than legal authorisation that this agent can go out and investigate a person -- even if they nevertheless attempt to arrest them.
ICE administrative warrants are essentially "I can do what I want" written in crayon.
Their only real purpose is fooling the gullible into confusing them for real warrants.
The feds have been lying in their court filings for the past few months, so don't take their complaint at face value.
I'm amazed the immigrant actually even attended the court hearing in a climate like this. The person went to the court hearing in good faith. Anyway, probably less people will be going to court hearings now.
---
Wisconsin is also a major money pit for Elon, for whatever reason it's a battleground for everything that's going on this country:
Musk and his affiliated groups sunk $21 million into flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk...
Musk gives away two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters in high profile judicial race:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-gives-away-two-1-milli...
It appears the Right has a thing for Wisconsin judges.
I'd wager dollars to donuts this is a "You'll beat the rap but you won't beat the ride" intimidation tactic: the FBI knows it doesn't have a case, but they don't need to have a case to handcuff the judge and throw them in jail for a few days. That intimidation and use of force against the judicial branch is the end in itself.
> wager dollars to donuts
Donuts at the local grocery store are $7/dozen. If you're somewhere with generally higher prices, this bet might not be as lopsided as it's traditionally meant to be.
The day old ones are $6/dozen here. The fresh ones are $1 each.
You'll be happy to know, then, that the judge was released on her own recognizance.
I don't think you understood my point: there's no undoing the arrest, which was the only real goal here. The administration is publicly demonstrating that it can perform wrongful arrests of judges with impunity. They don't care if they get released later.
Did you read the warrant? They did not demand the judge tell them anything. They knew he was there and were waiting outside the courtroom to arrest him. The judge confronted them and was visibly upset. She directed the agents elsewhere and then immediately told Ruiz and his counsel to exit via a private hallway. The attorney prosecuting the case against Ruiz and his (alleged) victims were present in the court and confused when his case was never called, even though everyone was present in the court.
"elsewhere" here means "to the correct location they should have gone in the first place, to give notice of, and gain approval for, their actions"
it's a pretty important detail
> it's a pretty important detail
It doesn't seem like it matters here. Per 18 USC §1071:
Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned.
Unless you're arguing that the facts are misrepresented, or that the law is somehow unconstitutional, this seems pretty slam-dunk, no? The judge seems to have deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest. That's all there seems to be to it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/25/us/judgedugan...
Not sure that applies to arbitrary documents that the bearer claims is a warrant, rather than a judge-signed warrant.
Either way, it wasn't illegal to send them to where they needed to go, and it wasn't illegal to let this dude use another door, so the illegality seems to depend on whether the executive can concoct their own warrants without any oversight and gain arbitrary access for arbitrary reasons.
> The judge seems to have deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest.
Was the judge, beforehand, served with a judge-signed warrant indicating that they intended to, and were authorized to, arrest this person? If not, then it wasn't letting them escape arrest, it was letting them escape from 2 random dudes who may or may not even be law enforcement, much less law enforcement judicially authorized to arrest the dude.
It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process. And "I don't even know if you're actually law enforcement" is not an excuse for ignoring law enforcement; what you do is ask for credentials and verify them. Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but this seems pretty cut and dried to me. We'll see how it plays out in court.
> It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process.
Lol: by that logic, Steve who lives in a van down by the river can scribble himself a napkin that says "warrant" on it. After all, "It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process", and Steve who lives in a van down by the river has a process and a warrant.
> I don't even know if you're actually law enforcement" is not an excuse for ignoring law enforcement
Maybe, maybe not. "You never presented me with a valid warrant" is, though, and a judge would know better than cops what a valid warrant is.
> Lol: by that logic, Steve who lives in a van down by the river can scribble himself a napkin that says "warrant" on it. After all, "It doesn't say it had to be a judicial warrant, it says warrant or process", and Steve who lives in a van down by the river has a process and a warrant.
What? Did you not read it says a process that "has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States"?
The laws of the United States say that Steve can scribble "warrant" on a napkin. Has this judge ruled that this ICE "administrative warrant" is any more valid than Steve's for the purposes of this case? Obviously judges, not the executive branch, are the deciders here.
The constitution (which is supreme to laws), along with common law, put restrictions on which pieces of paper that say "warrant" actually get to function as warrants, and judges, like this one, have the last word on interpreting the constitution and laws.
What's being alleged is that she escorted the person out a rear entrance that is only used by juries and defendants who are in custody, not defense attorneys or free defendants. It is alleged that she interrupted the defendant on their way out the regular customary door and guided them through the rear door instead.
If those allegations are true (which is a big if at this stage), it's not hard to see how that could be construed to be a private act taken outside the course of her normal duties to deliberately help the defendant evade arrest.
That doesn't make what she did morally wrong, of course, but there is a world of difference between the kind of abuse of power that many people here are assuming and someone getting arrested for civil disobedience—intentionally breaking a law because they felt it was the right choice.
"when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor"
This is a private act and involved a private hallway
This leaves out a couple important things, at least from the complaint -
1 - ICE never entered the courtroom or interrupted. They stayed outside the room, which is public, but the judge didn't like this and sent them away.
2 - The judge, having learned the person in her courtroom was the target, instructed him to leave through a private, jury door.
These are from the complaint, so cannot be taken as fact, either.
Under any occasion, it was inappropriate to arrest a judge like this.
We’re honestly at the point where I’d be comfortable with armed militias defending state and local institutions from federal police. If only to force someone to think twice about something like this. (To be clear, I’m not happy we’re here. But we are.)
why do you think the people willing to be a part of the armed militias you mention are NOT on the same way of thinking as what ICE is attempting to do. that's just how the militia types tend to lean, so I don't think this would have the effect you're looking for
> that's just how the militia types tend to lean
So far. I don’t think you’d have trouble recruiting an educated, well-regulated militia from folks who believe in the rule of law.
you'd be declared an illegal immigrant and removed to hotel salvador pretty quickly at this point. The orangefuhrer has already said he's coming after the "homegrown" next.
At what point will Democratic state governors and legislatures have enough of autocratic takeover? States have their own National Guard.
While I'm not familiar with all 50 governors, I'm wondering if there might not be some Republican governors that think things have gone too far as well. Being a Republican does not mean you are in favor of autocracy. It just looks like that right now because nobody is sticking their necks out, but I'm holding onto hope that if it does get to that point, further resistance might come out.
we'll see if/when the lawsuits lauched against the administration is ignored by the administration. But no one wants a civil war. No one would win here except maybe China/Russia.
You discount the people that want to watch the world burn. The tree of...fed with blood...blah blah blah. "Burn it down, start over" is often touted as the fastest/best approach for wholesale changes when the friction to making change is too great.
Economically, China would probably be the biggest beneficiary to a US civil war, especially one that ended with 2 Americas with neither the strength of the former union. Russia would just love to see the chaos and reap whatever gains they could get as well.
You might want a State Guard, which might be a little harder to federalize than the National Guard
https://old.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/ is a thing.
Lots of people with a variety of political stripes own guns and are just less vocal about it.
and something tells me the side that spent decades demonizing firearm ownership probably can't win an arms race against their ideological opponents.
didn't think of that salient detail
What a strange set of ideas presented in such a small sentence fragment.
* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
* Guns are very easy to obtain, the "arms race" is a trip to the local sporting goods store. Sure, the weapon may not be super tacti-cool with a bunch of skulls and shit, but I'm pretty sure that even without all the virtue signalling decals it does the primary job just fine.
Do you think those that have been opposed to current gun laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of their newly acquired weapon as opposed to those that have been collecting them for years?
This just made up militia will be woefully untrained to handle anything. At least those that have their meeting in the woods practice to whatever extent they do, but that would be so much more than this recent trip to the sporting goods store.
Whether you want to quibble over the words demonize, there are a lot of people that do not interpret the constitution to mean that just any ol' body can own a gun to the extent we allow today. The well regulated militia is part of that amendment, and gets left out quite conveniently. The local police departments are closer to the idea of a well regulated militia. The national guard are even closer of a match to me. The guys that run around in the woods believe they are fulfilling that role, but nobody really thinks they are well regulated other than whatever rules they choose to operate.
Personally, I do not think that what we have today with the NRA and what not is what the framers had in mind. So you complain about demonizing being wrong and clearly on one end of the spectrum. I think that the NRA refusing any limits on guns is clearly the other end of that spectrum
> Do you think those that have been opposed to current gun laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of their newly acquired weapon
I don’t own a gun and I’m a better shot than half those militia types. The purpose of the guns isn’t to shoot them, it’s to deter. By the time it’s WACO, one side’s marksmanship isn’t really relevant.
You can have 20 assault style weapons in your gun safe, but if that's where they are they do not act as a deterrent. They are only a deterrent when they are ready to be used. The purpose of a gun is to be shot. Confusing this is just some very excessive bending of logic. The intent of the shooter is an entirely different matter. They were not manufactured and then sold/purchased just to be in a display case. That's just what someone decided to with their purchase.
In fact, If you have 20 assault rifles in your safe you are a target for 20 or so revolutionaries. Oligarchs aside, most people of the hoarding political persuasion mistrust others and couldn't social engineer their way out of a paper bag.
I've taught people who had never held a gun to shoot. It takes an hour or two to get them to the point where they can get a nice grouping at a reasonable distance.
I haven't owned a gun in 20 years (it's not my style). I go shooting every 3-4 years with some gun nut buddies who have big arsenals and go shooting often. I am a better shot than many of them.
Armies have won wars while being comprised mostly of conscripted people who hadn't held a gun prior to the conflict breaking out.
Point being - effective use of guns does not require deep proficiency nor long term regular training.
Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the safety of a gun range is one thing. It's a different thing to do that when it's a person in front on you. It's also a totally different thing when that person in front of you is persons plural in the form of a trained opposing force and the bullets are coming at you. It takes training to quell that fear and be able to react in a manner that does not end with you full of lead.
When I've discussed training in this thread in other comments, this is what I was considering. Not target practice. Not being able reload a weapon. Specifically about mentally holding it together to not freeze, or even loose your ability to aim at something not a paper target in a gun range.
> Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the safety of a gun range is one thing. It's a different thing to do that when it's a person in front on you
Sure. I’m saying that the physical condition of most “militia” members doesn’t make for a threatening force.
In any case, if America went low-burn civil war, you’d pay the drug gangs to do your dirty work. The reason that’s the 20th century playbook is it works.
As drug gangs are discovering drone solutions, I wonder how far the USA is from functioning guns being as useful as prop guns in a civil war.
>* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
Don't gaslight us. Democrats have been pushing civilian disarmament HARD recently.
Restricted magazine sizes, requiring all transfers to go through a FFL, basic features bans, permits to purchase, restricting ammo purchases to FFLs raising prices, and now repeated attempts at semi-auto bans.
This isn't focused on criminals, it's trying to discourage firearm ownership in general. When states ban the federal government marksmanship program from shipping firearms to civilians AFTER they have already been background checked by a federal agency it's clear there is no attempt to stop criminals.
> They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
Criminals - you mean like illegal immigrants and those who aid and abet them?
The courts are a bit split on this. Recently in illinois a judge found an illegal immigrant is not a prohibited person if they meet some standard of community ties/integration, although I've totally forgotten what criteria the judge used.
Remember that the McDonald case incorporated the second amendment to the states so the judges have to decide these sorts of questions for people who are out of status.
I mean criminals: people convicted of a crime for which one of the punishments is revocation of gun ownership rights.
The important word here is convicted. As we were all taught in elementary school - there is a process required by the constitution in which a person goes to a special meeting (called a trial) where a whole bunch of people examine evidence and ask a lot of questions about that evidence to determine if a person is a criminal. If the decisions is they are a criminal, then they have been convicted. HTH!
That's not true.
You do not need to be convicted, you do not even need to be charged.
Since this is a hot topic, look at Abrego Garcia. His wife filed a restraining order. The initial order was slightly different than the temporary order 3 days later, which added one thing -- surrendering any firearms (this is bog standard, they do this in Maryland even for citizens). No matter that she did not even bother to show up for the adversarial final order, so he had his gun rights taken totally ex-parte without even a criminal charge or a fully adjudicated civil order nor any chance to face his accuser wife. Even david lettermen had his gun rights temporarily revoked because a woman in another state claimed he was harassing through her TV via secret messages in his television program [].
But that's not all, you can totally have gun rights taken away without any civil or criminal process. If you use illegal drugs, you cannot own weapons either, that is established without any due process to decide if you use or not, simply putting down you use marijuana on a 4473 will block a sale as will simply owning a marijuana card whether you use marijuana or not.
[] http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/Nestler_Letterman_TRO.pdf
This is exactly my point, and what I've been driving at in this thread.
This could not possibly be a concern based on abrogation of due process - because there have been many similar due process violations concerning firearms, and I've never seen a single article submitted here about those.
Frankly, I don't see how immigration is any more relevant to this site than civil rights.
first knee jerk type answer is that there are a lot of people in the tech industry that are here on some sort of visa and are not citizens which means that they very much are subject to any changes to immigration enforcement.
OK - so based on this, you're 100% opposed to "red-flag laws"/"extreme risk protection orders", right?
Yes except that the very same armed types, after years of being derided by Democrat and progressive types as ignorant rednecks, are the least likely (for now at least) to defend a judge being targeted for protecting immigrants by the Trump administration. I know of no armed militia types that are of the opposing political persuasion, being armed is just a bit too kitsch and crude for them it seems. Maybe they reconsider their views of armed resistance in these years.
Maybe those groups are better at disguising themselves.
I guess you weren't there for the CHOP, where there were masked antifa wandering around with AR-15s and intimidating business owners.
Why don't you organize one?
> Why don't you organize one?
I live in Wyoming. Our courts aren’t being attacked.
I’d absolutely be open to lending material support to anyone looking to lawfully organise something like this in their community, however.
This is basically what Ammon Bundy did, and most of the US hates him for it. The federal government tried many times to jail him but ultimately he was found innocent everytime. Finally they managed to get him by a friendly judge who had a husband high up in the BLM, awarding an ungodly high lawsuit when he helped an innocent mother get her baby back by summonsing his protest-militia to protest a hospital that conspired to have the baby taken by child services.
Seriously, listen to some videos of Ammon Bundy actually speak (he is pro immigration rights as well, despite the 'far-right' label). Not what you hear from the media or others or under the influence of a political agenda. Most of what he says is 99% in line with your thought process here.
> most of the US hates him for it
Invisible enemies are hard to rally against.
It is illegal in all 50 states to organize a militia.
It is legal in all 50 states to organize a militia, it is illegal in all 50 states to do certain things as a militia including (the exact rules vary by state) things like participating in civil disorder, planning to participate in civil disorder, training for sabotage or guerilla warfare, etc.
Of course, since the purpose being suggested here is literally the purported urgent need to engage in armed rebellion against federal authorities, the concern that organizing a militia for that purpose would be constrained by merely "organizing a militia" being illegal is a bit odd. Waging war against the federal government, or conspiring to do so, is--even if one argues that it is morally justified by the government violating its Constitutional constraints--both clearly illegal and likely to be subject to the absolute maximum sanction. The legality of organizing a militia in general hardly makes a difference, either to the legal or practical risk anyone undertaking such a venture would face.
Fair, I should have explicitly stated "it's illegal in all 50 states to organize a militia for this purpose"
(Edit: also if we're being pedantic about it, >25 states have laws against forming private militias at all)
I know what study you are reading and the case it uses to argue that is highly flawed.
This is the one I remember from years ago:
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...
I'm not sure what case you mean
Are you talking about a federal case? That I don't know anything about, this is mostly just state law stuff
We've got National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason. Just sayin'.
> We've got National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason.
Yes, but that reason is not for rebellion against the federal government, which is why their equipment and training is governed by the federal government and the President can by fiat order them into federal service at which point he is the C-in-C, not the government.
Most states do also have their own non-federal reserve military force in additionto their National Guard, but those tend to be tiny and not organized for independent operations (e.g., the ~900 strength California State [not National] Guard.)
If the federal government is no longer beholden to the law because the king executive refuses to follow or enforce inconvenient laws, would it be appropriate to consider it a rebellion? It seems more like basic law enforcement to me.
I was under the impression that state governors could refuse to federalize their National Guards. A quick read on Wikipedia points to the Constitution saying it would take Congress for the federal government to take command unilaterally. That could be a sticking point by the time it gets to the point where there is enough support for state governors to be deploying their state National Guards to keep the peace versus the lawless federal executive.
> I was under the impression that state governors could refuse to federalize their National Guards.
They cannot, under the Constitution. Of course, at the point the National Guard is being mobilized to prevent actions of the federal government, we are deep into a constitutional crisis and a short distance from a (possibly very brief) active civil war.
> A quick read on Wikipedia points to the Constitution saying it would take Congress for the federal government to take command unilaterally.
Congress has already done so , setting rules which require only a Presidential determination to invoke [0], and Presidents have used the authority so granted specifically to deal with very much the same state rebellion scenario you suggest, notably Eisenhower in 1957 when the Arkansas National Guard was deployed to prevent the implementation of a federal court order integrating Central High School in Little Rock: Eisenhower did the one-two punch of federalizing the entire Arkansas National Guard, ordered them away, and also deployed the Army (101st Airborne) to enforce the order. [1]
[0] in the Insurrection Act; the specific relevant provision is at 10 USC § 252: “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” (emphasis added)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine
I mean, we're deep into a constitutional crisis right now - the president has asserted himself to be a king unbeholden to the law, and installed loyal supplicants who agree with that interpretation. So the check of the judiciary (required for individual liberty, among other things. and as imperfect as it was) is effectively dead.
I keep looking for angles where we can organize bottom-up within existing governance structures to resist this anti-American tyrant, that won't just result in an escalation where any resistance is attacked and the chaos then used as fuel for more support of authoritarianism (like the police riots of 2020). Something besides the single obvious lever of getting Congress on board with impeachment.
At any rate thank you for responding. By your other comments I knew you'd be able to point to something specific. The National Guards could certainly still play a role in defending the United States as this conflict escalates, but that baseline dynamic creates a much higher bar to clear.
The charge seems colorable to me, and I think most people would agree the judge was obstructing justice if you strip out the polarizing nature of ICE detentions.
If you take the charges at face value, Law enforcement was there to perform an arrest and the judge acted outside their official capacity to obstruct.
What would have been the right move for Dugan here, according to ICE?
Can a judge legally detain a defendant after a pre-trial hearing on the basis of "there are some agents asking about you for unrelated reasons?"
It's not related to legal proceedings, so, no.
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
you need a warrant and established PC, and you need to request administrative recess of court in session. You cant stay in the framework of US law while walking into court and expect a judge to transfer custody of a defendant because you say so.
The right move would have been simply to not help Flores-Ruiz evade ICE.
Allegedly.
According to ICE? "Comply with whatever we say". It's obvious that the current admin is operating autocratically, outside the law.
My thoughts exactly.
He showed the defendant out a side door to help him avoid ICE, who were waiting at the main door.
> What would have been the right move for Dugan here, according to ICE?
The right move was to not violate the law by taking steps which were intended to help the defendant evade ICE.
I was not aware of this accusation when I made my original comment
>Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.
This might change the calculus.
Judges have what most people would consider insane levels of legitimate power while sitting on the bench itself inside the courtroom. Just outside the door, those powers are not quite so intense, but he can have you thrown in a cage just for not doing what he says, and he can command nearly anything. He could certainly demand that someone not leave the courtroom if he felt like doing so, and there would be no real remedy even if he did so for illegitimate reasons. Perhaps a censure months later.
This to me seems like a completely lawful act on the part of the judge?
The ICE agents didn't have a warrant, so the judge was under no legal obligation to say anything to them at all.
according to this story, they had a warrant: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice-...
According to the story you linked, they claim they had a warrant but the judge and other staff say the warrant was never presented.
Further, ICE has a habit of lying about this. They refer to the documents they write as "administrative warrants", which are not real judicial warrants and have no legal standing at all. So when ICE says they presented a warrant it's important to dig in and see if it was one of their fake ones.
Here's an article about that last point from the same source you used: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-is...
note that ICE often attempts to treat administrative warrants as judicial warrants, and it's unclear from this reporting what they actually had
[edit: it was an administrative warrant, not an _actual_ judicial warrant]
So just as valid as a piece of scratch paper with "WARANT" scrawled on it with a crayon.
Writing "WARANT" in crayon on a piece of scratch paper will not give you the authority to detain someone who is in the country illegally. It is my understanding that a valid ICE administrative warrant gives an ICE officer the authority to detain the person named on the warrant. And in cases like the one in question where ICE has ample time to get the warrant, it is my understanding that an ICE officer without the warrant would not have the authority to detain someone who is in the country illegally.
What the ICE warrant doesn't give is the authority to conduct a search of private property without permission. Which the agents in this case were not attempting to do.
Doesn't seem to make sense that ICE should be able to interrupt a preceding at will.
And the fact that they left and came back and someone they wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Since there were multiple agents (the reports and Patel's post all say "agents" plural) they could have left one at the courtroom, or outside, rather than all going away. Then there'd have been no chase and no issue.
The question is if the judge should have held the man or not for the agents who chose to leave no one behind to take him into custody after the proceeding finished.
To your question - A state judge cannot be required to hold someone on behalf of federal agents. That's federalism 101 and settled law.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
But judges can be arrested for doing nothing illegal to intimidate and bully them into not acting based on settled law.
> The question is if the judge should have held the man
This is bananas. The judges (or anyone else for that matter) should not be able to hold this man (or any other man) without an arrest warrant.
ICE doesn't issue warrants, because they can't. Immingration matters aren't criminal, and ICE are not law enforcement, though they certainly love to cosplay as some sort of mix between law enforcement and military.
That's why ICE has to "ask" law enforcement to hold on to someone who gets arrested on another matter, and why plenty of police departments tell them to go pound sand.
ICE does issue warrants [0].
Some immigration matters are criminal. There are specific immigration law enforcement officers that execute warrants.
Maybe what you mean is that ICE warrants grant different authorities than an arrest warrant (ie, can’t enter private property to execute).
[0] https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/ice_warra... https://www.ilrc.org/resources/annotated-ice-administrative-...
I wouldn't be surprised if the agents are required to stay together when doing deportation arrests because they don't know when an immigrant might revert to their demon form and incapacitate a lone officer.
while funny, there is a reason for federals coming in pairs so they can act as a witness for the other with things like lying to a federal officer.
this doesn't sound like the plural just meant 2 here, so it really does come across as Keystone Cops level of falling over themselves to not leave behind someone to keep an eye on their subject.
I'd bet on malicious compliance so they can show that their good and honest work is being impeded by elitist judges.
For all the judge could have known, the agents weren't coming back.
The claim is different. Agents with an arrest warrant waited in the public hallway, as asked and required by the judges.
The judge skipped the hearing for the target and [directed] them out a private back door in an attempt to prevent arrest, leading to a foot chase before apprehension.
Edit: directed, not escorted
That information came out after my comment, and also long after the edit window. The updated FBI claim is certainly more damning for the judge (actively impeding their efforts).
Immigration violations are not criminal matters, they're civil. Further, they're federal, not state.
You cannot be held by law enforcement or the judiciary for being accused of a civil violation.
I thought they were misdemeanor crimes [0] punishable by jail time.
So they are crimes, but not huge.
I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but I thought that local law enforcement can certainly hold someone charged with a federal crime. Eg, if someone commits the federal crime of kidnapping, then local cops can detain that person until transferred to FBI.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325
This sounds like a case in Trump’s first term. I don’t condone the arrest, but to provide context:
> In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/shelley-joseph-immigra... (https://archive.ph/gByeV)
EDIT: Although Shelly Joseph wasn’t arrested, only charged.
I don't think we've got enough information to say how similar it is. That one sounds like it hung on Joseph actively helping the immigrant to take an unusual route out. If this judge just sent the agents off for their permission then wrapped things up normally and didn't get involved beyond that, I can't see this going anywhere.
There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.
According to a "sources say" quote from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published two days ago:
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice-...
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Sounds like some lower-level ICE agents screwed up, and let the subject get away, and they're trying to redirect blame to the judge. I doubt this will stick, barring any new info on what happened.
Going from "redirect blame" to "make an arrest" is a significant escalation.
That's the main tactic this administration uses, isn't it? Double down, never admit fault, get into a giant trade war with the rest of the world...
IANAL but... The agents had no official role in the proceedings, and if they did not request one, then they have the status of courtroom observers (little difference from courtroom back row voyeurs) and they can go jump in a lake.
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? The FBI affidavit says they were waiting in the public hallway outside, let the bailiff know what they were doing and did not enter the courtroom. The judge did not find out until a public defender took pictures of the arrest team and brought it to the attention of the judge. Maybe the FBI lied, but that seems unlikely given the facts would seem eventually verifiable by security video and uninvolved witness statements.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...> the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
I used to work as a paramedic. We’d frequently be called to the local tribal jail which had a poor reputation. People would play sick to get out of there for a few hours. If the jail staff thought they were faking and they were due for release in the next week or so, they’d “release” them while we were doing an assessment and tell them “you are getting the bill for this not us” (because in custody the jail is responsible for medical care). Patient would duly get in our ambulance and a few minutes down the road and “feel better”, and request to be let out.
The first time this happened my partner was confused. “We need to stop them” - no, we don’t, and legally can’t. “We need to tell the jail so they can come pick them back up” - no, the jail made the choice to release them, they are no longer in custody and free to go.
This caught on very quickly with inmates and for a while was happening a couple of times a day before the jail figured out the deal and stopped releasing people early.
>you can't lie to the feds
We really need a court case or law passed that says a stalked animal has the right to run (lie) without further punishment resulting from the act of running (lying). Social Contract™, and "you chose it" gaslighty nonsense aside, the state putting someone in a concrete camp for years, or stealing decades worth of savings, is violence even if blessed-off religiously by a black-robed blesser. Running from and lying to the police to preserve one's or one's family's liberty should be a given fact of the game, not additional "crimes."
We also need to abolish executions except for oath taking elected office holders convicted of treason, redefine a life sentence as 8 years and all sentencing be concurrent across all layers of state, and put a sixteen year post hoc time limit on custodial sentences (murder someone 12 years ago and get a "life sentence" today as a result? -> 4 years max custody). Why? Who is the same person after a presidential administration? What is a 25+ year sentence going to do to restore the victims' losses? If you feel that strongly after 8 years that it should have been 80, go murder the released perp and serve your 8!
The point is to defang government; it has become too powerful in the name of War on _______, and crime has filled the blank really nicely historically.
> It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
No, that is the excuse. They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her. Needless to say people don't get tried on this kind of "look the other way" "obstruction" as a general rule. This case is extremely special.
It is abundantly clear that this arrest was made for political reasons, as part of a big and very obvious public policy push.
> They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her
If by technicality you mean correctly identifying that the judge intentionally adjourned the suspect's court proceedings and directed them through a non-public exit in order to evade a lawful deportation of a domestic abuser who had already been deported once, yes, it was a "technicality". The short form would be to acknowledge the judge intentionally interfered with a lawful deportation, which is a crime, thus the arrest.
Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway). ICE does not have the power to decide on whether someone is a "domestic abuser" or whatever. They were just serving a warrant.
But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern? The judge would have been empowered to enjoin the deportation, no? You agree, right? That's what courts do? In which case, wouldn't the ICE agents be the ones guilty of "obstruction" here?
The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever. You try things before courts, and appeal, and eventually get to a resolution.
Trying to do anything else leads to exactly where we are here, where one arm of government is performatively arresting members of another for baldly partisan reasons.
>Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway).
I mean, it was going to be attested until the judge decided to adjourn his proceedings and push him out the back door to avoid ICE. He's charged with domestic abuse.
>But more: What if the suspect was in court on an immigration concern?
Based on my limited understanding of immigration law I'd agree that there's probably a valid mechanism for the judge to legally intervene in the deportation to let the immigration concern be addressed -- but that isn't what happened here. The defendant was there for a criminal charge of domestic abuse and the judge essentially canceled his hearing and snuck him out the back to prevent ICE from executing a legal order to deport someone who is here illegally and has already been deported once before.
>The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower individuals to make decisions about justice, ever.
That's why the judge is being arrested, because she as an individual skirted legal process to interrupt a lawful deportation (allegedly).
Umm… why didn’t the agents just wait patiently until the proceeding was done?
They did, read the complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.
One side alleges that, to be clear. We haven't heard the judge's version, heard from witnesses, seen evidence, nor had it adjudicated.
Reading through that, it does seem like a very hasty decision on the judge's part. But then again, I don't know what else you're supposed to do if you think the warrant for the arrest is based on an unjust premise (Which Dugan presumably thought, otherwise I have no idea why she'd act the way she did). This does make it pretty clear that the arrest of the judge is justified, unless there are some special provisions for judges that I'm unaware of that allow judges to be exempt from title 18 code 1071 and code 1505, which is entirely possible since the most relevant thing about US law I know is jurisprudence. Barring that possibility, what should be more on the top of everyone's minds is how this is resolved in court.
It does seem like they could have gotten what they wanted by just trying to do their job a little more such as, waiting.
I don't think I've ever encountered a CBP employee I'd describe as "patient".
LEOs are trained to "be the one in control"
> not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
Officers of the court have a higher responsibility to report the truth and cooperate with official processes than regular citizens.
"Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor"
This is clearly facilitating escape and interfering with law enforcement. "Private" is the key word here.
the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target.
This is a pissing match between authorities. ICE has their panties in a knot that the judge didn't "respect muh authoriah" and do more than the bare leglal minimum for them (which resulted in the guy getting away). On the plus side, one hopes judge will have a pretty good record going forward when it comes to matters of local authorities using the process to abuse people.
>(They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation --
Something that HN frequently trots out as a good thing and the system working as intended. Where are those people now? Why are they so quiet?
>someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
And for every Al there's a dozen Marthas, people who actually didn't do it but the feds never go away empty handed.
She was convicted for lying, not for the trading.
That was exactly what I meant by "the feds don't go away empty handed".
She didn't actually do the thing they went after her for so they found some checkbox to nab her on rather than admit defeat.
"respect muh authoriah"
ICE officers seem like the ones that couldn't make it through police academy and had no other career prospects. Much like the average HOA, these are people who relish in undeserved power they didn't have to earn.
As a society, we owe it to ourselves to make sure people whom we give a lot of power to actually work and earn it.
The AP article [1] has the full complaint linked, the crux of the case seems to be around the judge allowing the defendant to leave through a back entrance ("jury door") when they were aware agents were waiting in the public hallway to make an arrest as they exited.
" 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of the arrest team to the Chief Judge’s office. For example, the courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy’s return to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like “Wait, come with me.” Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door."
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-arrested-799718...
Thanks - I've changed the URL to that article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/25/... above.
I find it extremely doubtful that she told the agents he'd be leaving through a particular door or that she had any legal obligation to make sure the man exited in a particular way.
United States Code, Title 8, § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) (2023)
> (1)(A) Any person who
[…]
> (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
[…]
> shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title8/html/...
>attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien
Does that cover "Hey, this door is closer to where we are going"? It's going to rest on convincing a jury that the only possible reason the suspect would go out that door would be the judge explicitly trying to help them evade arrest.
IMO that should be impossible to prove but we have never taken "Beyond a reasonable doubt" seriously.
"knowing or in reckless disregard"
Funny, nobody ever arrests any of the employers choosing not to verify the documents of their employees.
There was a series of other steps in the case before she let the guy use a door the public never uses. Including rushing his case through after confronting the agents and adjourning it without notifying the attorneys present in the court room. She instructed him through the door before the basic administrative tasks of the case were done.
If the details of what their witness (court deputy) says is true then it's pretty obvious what happened here.
Whether the government should give State judges that leeway is another issue.
So, based on the affidavit and the facts presented in the article, we know this doesn't apply to the Judge.
> Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest.
Perhaps you’re a lawyer with greater insight into this issue than I have. The actions described in the article satisfy the plain reading of the terms “conceal, harbor, or shield from detection.”
The intuitive reading seems to be further corroborated by the case law:
> The word "harbor" […] means to lodge or to aid or to care for one who is secreting himself from the processes of the law. The word "conceal" […] means to hide or to secrete or to keep out of sight or to aid in preventing the discovery of one who is secreting himself from the processes of the law.
> *The statute proscribes acts calculated to obstruct the efforts of the authorities to effect arrest of the fugitive,* but it does not impose a duty on one who may be aware of the whereabouts of the fugitive, although having played no part in his flight, to reveal this information on pain of criminal prosecution.
Emphasis mine.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
The alien was already "detected", that's why they were at the courthouse. She didn't harbor him, she was performing her job and the defendant was required to be there. I also fail to see how she "concealed" him either. "Aiding and abetting" would be a stretch, but still more accurate verbs. But those aren't in the law you quoted.
> I also fail to see how she "concealed" him either.
Using a special backdoor to avoid agents is "concealing", she allegedly did that to prevent him from being seen by the agents.
A case study on media narrative peddling: https://www.koat.com/article/las-cruces-former-judge-allegat...
Original title: "Former New Mexico judge and wife arrested by ICE". It's as though he wasn't an active judge while harboring an alleged Tren De Aragua gang member.
Protip: believe absolutely nothing you read in mainstream news sources on any even remotely political topic. Read between the lines, sort of like people used to read Pravda in the Soviet Union.
> Read between the lines, sort of like people used to read Pravda in the Soviet Union.
To be fair, you're not far off at this point.
This is why I don't believe 90% of what they say about Trump. As soon as he took office in 2017 it was so obvious that MSM was paid to absolutely destroy him. Then in 2021 suddenly everyone single problem wasn't due to the president anymore.
I woke up to this in 2016 when theretofore beloved public figure Donald Trump turned into literally Hitler immediately after he descended down that elevator in the Trump tower, all without changing a single opinion he'd ever held. And it's been unrelenting ever since.
and he was a former democrat! I'm not saying he's perfect, I'm not saying he's sophisticated, or that he hasn't said some stupid things. No way, there are way better republican candidates. But TDS is real.
What's being alleged is that she deliberately escorted the man out through an exit that is not usually made available to members of the public, instead of allowing him to leave through the regular door that would likely have put him right into the hands of ICE. If that was done with the intent of helping him evade arrest (which, if the story above is accurate, seems likely), it seems very reasonable to charge her with obstruction.
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
there is usually only one exit to a courtroom, in the back
No, there are usually several entrances/exits, such as for jurors, prisoners, judge's chambers, and the general public.
It's a crime to harbor or aid illegals in evading federal authorities. So this is a legal obligation of every person.
it's also unconstitutional to deny people due process but that's clearly been disregarded by the current administration. Reap what you sow.
Except that the authorities didn't have a valid warrant, signed by a judge, to arrest someone.
(It's not a crime to aid illegals if the authorities don't have a valid warrant.)
An administrative warrant is still valid for arrest, it doesn't need to be signed by a judge. If you think it needs to be then laws needs to be changed, but that is how laws are right now.
It's not valid for arrest on private premises, like a courthouse. Only out in public.
So the judge is no more "obstructing justice" than if I refuse to open the door to let ICE agents in to arrest someone with an administrative warrant, and then that person leaves out the back door.
ICE should have obtained a judicial warrant, but they didn't. That's their fault.
From reading the affidavit it’s clear to me there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion around these situations. Clearly the judges are upset with ICE making arrests in the public spaces within the court hall while ICE views it as the perfect place since the defendant will be unarmed. This was an administrative warrant and IANAL but doesn’t that not require local cooperation e.g the judge is in her right to not help or comply with the warrant?
How in the world is this an arrestable offense. Escorting someone out of a room?
If it can be proven that she deliberately escorted the person through the non-public exit to the courtroom with the intent of helping them evade arrest by officers with a warrant who were waiting outside at the other entrance, how would that not be an arrestable offence?
We're extremely light on facts right now, so I'm not taking the above quoted story at face value, but if one were to take it at face value it seems pretty clear cut.
The part that makes it not so clear cut is that this is really a constitutional issue rather than a criminal one. It is not credible that the judge was trying to ensure the man could keep living in the US undocumented. She was defending her court. From a judge's POV, arresting a plantiff/defendant in the middle of a trial is a violation of their right to a trial and impedes local prosecutors' abilities to seek justice.
Ultimately this seems like Trump asserting that the federal executive branch has unfettered veto authority over local judicial branches. That doesn't sit well with me.
The charges against her are not about her behavior during her court, they're about what happened once the court was adjourned and the defendant was starting to leave. She successfully defended the process within her own courtroom and it's alleged that she went a step further in securing the defendant from their impending arrest on an unrelated charge.
There's definitely a conversation to be had about whether people should be safe from immigration law enforcement while within a courthouse, but at the moment as I understand it that is not a protection that exists.
It doesn't matter if court was adjourned, she was still at work and performing her official duties. In particular she asked the ICE agents if they had a judicial warrant and was told no, it was administrative. A federal judicial warrant clearly outranks a local judge and it would be fine to arrest her if she defied it. It is not clear that an order from the executive branch does the same. That doesn't mean local judges are immune from federal prosecution (e.g. corruption charges if someone takes money to rule favorably), but there is a fairly high bar, I don't think her behavior even comes close to probable cause for obstruction of justice or shielding an undocumented immigrant.
The reason every other administration besides Trump refused to go into local courthouses to deport people wasn't about "whether people should be safe from immigration enforcement," it was about separation of powers.
I guess I would hope it takes more then that to rise to the level of obstruction.
Additionally, you have to prove intent, and unless the judge was careless, I doubt they will ever be able to do that. I'd bet the prosecution knows this, I don't think they expect the charges to stick. It seems this arrest was done to send a message.
More evidence of that is that typically in this kind of case they would invite her to show up somewhere to accept process, not be arrested like a common criminal.
There has to be precedents in case law for how to assess this.
You might want to read this https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
See also section D that says "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest" in https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11... labeled "Case 2:25-mj-00397-SCD Filed 04/24/25" (13 pages)
ICE has absolutely no business in state courthouses. The federal interest in enforcing immigration law should not be placed above the state's interest in enforcing equal protection under the law. Consider the case of a undocumented rape victim. Do they not deserve justice? Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported? I think not and I do not want to live in that society.
Nailed it. Keep that stuff away from:
* Police interactions, unless you want people refusing to cooperate with police.
* Hospitals, unless you want people refusing to seek medical care for communicable diseases.
* Courtrooms, unless you want people to skip court or refuse to testify as witnesses.
My wife likes watching murder investigation TV shows. Sometimes the homicide detectives will talk to petty criminals like street-level drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like. The first thing the detectives do is assure them that they're there about a murder and couldn't care less about the other minor stuff. They're not going to arrest some guy selling weed when they want to hear his story about something he witnessed.
Well, same thing here but on a bigger stage.
Except that's TV and police often nail petty criminals for petty crimes in the process of larger investigations and they wonder why they get so little public support and cooperation.
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens?
A sane argument against an insane position. Republicans are perfectly fine with unpunished violence against non-citizens. No wonder tourism is sharply declining.
> Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported?
That's not an actual outcome that would occur. Cases can proceed if the victim is unavailable. Do we let a rapist off because their victim had an untimely death? Obviously not.
In the case of a deportee, if we have a sworn statement from them, or can remotely depose them, then their testimony would be included in the trial.
> In the case of a deportee, if we have a sworn statement from them, or can remotely depose them, then their testimony would be included in the trial.
In a world where we deport people without due process to subcontracted megaprisons in El Salvador “if” is doing a lot of work.
In the real world, cases die all the time because the victim refuses to cooperate with the police.
This is the point of things like immunity, and laws against witness tampering, and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew you would die if you took the stand.
> the victim refuses to cooperate
You're describing an entirely different situation. Unless you're saying that deporting someone makes them wholly unable to participate in the process which is what I'm precisely disagreeing with. Cooperating can include things like simply filling out an affidavit or participating in remote depositions.
> and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew you would die if you took the stand.
Removing someone from the country does not kill them.
Consider the case of an arrest warrant for a rapist. Can it not be served at a courthouse? What if a judge smuggled them out a private door after being informed of the arrest warrant.
Edit: the charge isn't for refusing to enforce. It's for smuggling someone out in attempt to actively impede their arrest.
You're missing the point - a rapist would have a criminal arrest warrant, which would absolutely be the courthouse's responsibility to enforce. The ICE agents attempted to disrupt a criminal proceeding to enforce a civil immigration warrant not signed by a judge. More on that distinction here: https://www.fletc.gov/ice-administrative-removal-warrants-mp...
The court hallways are considered public property so it's basically a debate on cultural semantics, not a legal one. The federal gov probably has inventive to not deter people showing up at state courts. But the federal gov is also pretty notorious for caring more about their own cases than the potential issues created for other levels of government.
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens? Ones that are being tried for battery no less.
The arrest itself (not necessarily the charges) is best described as a publicity stunt. If you want to charge a lawyer or judge or anyone unlikely to run of a non-violent crime, you invite them to the station:
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
To clarify - the only time you ever need to "arrest" someone and place them in custody is if you are worried they are either going to commit violent crimes or are going to be a flight risk before they can see a judge.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
Kash Patel's since-deleted tweet: https://www.threads.com/@pstomlinson/post/DI3-hnfuDvL
> Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he's been in custody since, ...
I feel like I'm watching reality TV. Which makes sense, we have a reality TV star for president and his cabinet is full of Fox news hosts.
The judges impeding ICE scenarios has been portrayed on fictional TV too https://thegoodwife.fandom.com/wiki/Day_485
The post was not deleted: https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626
Stop spreading misinformation.
It was deleted, or at least I couldn't find it, when I posted it. Otherwise I would've directly linked to it instead of a screenshot.
You stop spreading misinformation.
Can you imagine being a law enforcement officer bringing a case before a judge that you previously arrested on a flimsy pretext in order to intimidate them? That's going to be awkward.
Federal agents probably don’t worry too much about being in local misdemeanor court.
I'd also call it a publicity stunt because DOJ leadership would have to prove themselves [even more?] utterly idiotic to let this go to a jury trial.
I can't imagine this ending in any way other than dropped charges, though they may draw it out to make it as painful as possible prior to that.
Public displays of executive power and disregard for political and legal norms is slightly more than a publicity stunt. They are related ideas but come on. Like describing a cross burning as a publicity stunt. This is a threat.
It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence. A judge is not an agent of ICE or the feds; they have undergone study and election and put in a position where their discretion has the weight of law. It's frankly disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
> It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence.
That’s not exactly new, I was recently reminded that during the governor’s meeting when Trump singled Maine out for ignoring an EO the governor replied that they’d be following the law, and Trump’s rejoinder was that they (his administration) are the law.
That was two months ago, late February.
> disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
It's just like "states rights" where it only matters so long as you stay in their good graces. Very reflective of how they operate internally today: worship Trump or you're out.
No, a "publicity stunt" is not the best way to describe this latest escalation in the Trump administration's campaign to destroy the rule of law in America. It may be deliberately flashy, but that phrasing very much undersells the significance of the executive attacking the judiciary.
Milwaukee journal is providing great coverage: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
The AP article someone else linked is much better: it includes both:
- a PDF of the criminal complaint (court filing), and
- details of what specifically the complaint alleges (that the judge encouraged the person to escape out of a 'jury door' to evade arrest).
The phrase 'jury door' doesn't appear in the JS article.
Thanks, affidavit is worth the read. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-arrested-799718...
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25919059-fbis-comp...
A good reminder that we need to support local, professional journalism. Otherwise the only information we would be getting right now is official statements or hearsay.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel now is just a reskin of USA Today[1]. They're not locally owned or controlled.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...
The important thing is they are still paying for a journalism to do beat coverage in the area.
Everyone acts like independence is the most important aspect of journalism. But an independent blogger in New York rewording press releases is exactly how we got in this misinformation mess, and absolutely not a replacement for someone with a recorder walking around a courthouse asking questions.
Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK calling 911.
Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer.
Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue.
In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.
There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability.
Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.
Undocumented immigrants who are charged with murder should not be deported without a trial first. If found guilty they would typically serve their sentence before facing deportation (though perhaps this is different now)
Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence... taxpayers would then be paying the bill for both their incarceration and their deportation.
But I also think incarceration should primarily be focused on rehabilitation, which it's currently not designed for, so what do I know.
> Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence
Because 'come here, do crime, get a free flight home' sets up a very bad incentive structure for bad actors? Because deportation is not a punishment?
It is also critical in how we define justice. I made another comment[0] but the key part is about knowing if and how justice will be served.
I think people are conflating deportation and extradition. Deporting is the act of sending them somewhere else. Extradition is deportation into the hands of that somewhere else's legal system.
I think it is critical to recognize the distinction. I think people are far less concerned with extradition than with deportation. Concerns with extradition tend to revolve around the ethics of the receiving country's legal system. "There is still blood on your hands" as one might say. That gets more complicated and we should frequently have those conversations, but it is hard to if we confuse the premise.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43798954
I broadly agree with you, but I think it's really just two orthogonal questions. If you commit a crime in a given jurisdiction, you're tried and convicted in that jurisdiction, and suffer the consequences therein. Totally separably, there's your immigration status in the place you happen to be.
So a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant commits a crime in a given jurisdiction - they should be tried according to the laws of that place, and punished accordingly. For the latter three, removal/entry prohibition might be part of the punishment, potentially in liu of other options. For petty crime e.g. drunk and disorderly or whatever, that's probably fine? But clearly freedom abroad is weak punishment for more heinous crimes, and those perpetrators should serve their sentences prior to removal
Similarly, a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant is charged with a crime in another jurisdiction. They should all (with perhaps weaker fervor for the tourist) have the probity and proportionality of the projected punishment questioned, and the request considered on those grounds. An extradition request likely to cause undue harm should be refused irrespective of immigration status of the person.
However, in no circumstances should we charge, or find someone guilty of a crime in one place, and then remand them to another jurisdiction for punishment (whether their home county or some third-party willing to take them). Here lies the illiberal madness in which we find ourselves.
Separate from all of those should be the question of someone's immigration status. Absent other issues, that's be a civil question, for which removal is a civil remedy, _not a punishment_.
I'm not quite sure I understand the divergence. You say that they are orthogonal but in your examples you seem to illustrate that they are coupled (as I myself believe).
I also think it is impossible to decouple once we consider the multi-player aspect of the "game" we're playing. Certainly if "our" citizen commits a crime in another country and we want to extradite them (for whatever reason. Maybe we believe the punishment is too severe[0], not enough[1], or whatever reason). Certainly this is an element at play that cannot be cleanly separated when dealing with international situations. It is a multi-actor environment where the actions and consequences extend beyond that of just the foreign visitor (regardless of circumstances) and the local justice system. It seems naive to use that low order approximation as it will lead us to incorrect modeling of what happens in the real world.
I do not think this is illiberal madness. Quite the opposite! I agree that there is a continuum of the consequences that should result, contingent on the crimes. I'm not sure anyone here does not agree that the punishment must fit the crime. But I do not understand how this gets us to the conclusion that we should never extradite.Let's work with a very simple example (yes, reality is more complex, but this is realistic enough and we can complexify as needed):
It makes perfect sense here to extradite Alice back to her home country. As I see it, there are some rather obvious reasons to extradite.1) It builds and maintains good relationships between the countries.
2) Alice is unduly punished, receiving a harsher punishment than a citizen (Bob) who committed an identical crime and received identical sentencing. The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment. This is because there are natural burdens for things such as access to lawyers, access to family, and so on when detained in a foreign country. These burdens do not exist for Bob. Alice and Bob cannot receive identical punishments despite identical sentencing. This creates an unequal and unjust system!
3) What does Alice's home country do?
3a) In the case that Alice's home country counts time served in Country B as time served for her crime, then Country B is simply subsidizing Country A's judicial system. That doesn't seem like a good outcome. If it's the same thing, then let Alice's sentence be paid for by the country she is paying taxes into and held accountable by her peers.
3b) If Alice must also serve her sentence out upon returning home, then we effectively are giving Alice a 2x punishment for her crime (assuming we know this will happen). The result is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime and surely this is illiberal madness.
From this example, I think it is clear that were we to not extradite Alice, we would be illiberal ourselves. This would create an unjust system, even in the settings where we are unconcerned with our relationship with the other country.
Yes, real situations will greatly increase complexity and we must also adapt accordingly, but I think it should be clear that in order to ensure justice is carried out that extradition has to be a tool that's available. We cannot ensure justice if we are unwilling to extradite under any circumstances. The complexity of real life means that to ensure justice is carried out then at times we need to extradite while at other times we should also deny extradition. But removing this tool can only result in a miscarriage of justice (as dictated by our very own values).
[0] e.g. US woman is imprisoned in Iran for not correctly wearing a hijab.
[1] e.g. US citizen violated US law but not local laws. Countries do extradite for this reason all the time.
Sorry but I'm struggling to understand how, if we assume that: 1. "Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed [...] She will receive identical sentencing", we can also assume that: 2. "The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment", because of "natural burdens [...] such as access to lawyers, access to family"?
Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing when her being in a foreign country already increases the severity of her punishment?
Further, I disagree with assumption 2 in itself because: 1. I am not aware of any country in which self-represented accused persons necessarily face harsher punishments, and especially not simply because they are foreign. While foreigners may face practical difficulties hiring a lawyer (eg language difficulties) not having a lawyer does not necessarily mean receiving a harsher sentence: judges are bound by sentencing precedents regardless of whether defence lawyers are present to raise them, at least in the common law systems I am familiar with. 2. Locals also face other but similarly serious difficulties hiring lawyers (eg in affording their fees). 3. Having a lawyer does not not guarantee a more lenient sentence. Even less access to family.
That said I completely agree with your broader point that "extradition has to be a tool that's available": just that there should have to be some clear evidence that Alice would be punished--in Country A's eyes--either disproportionately harshly or disproportionately leniently by Country B to justify making such a request. Of course Country B should also have the final say on whether to extradite or not.
And yes, the point is that they cannot be equal. Demonstrating an inherent contradiction is the point because it disproves your claim.
But honestly something sounds LLM like here. Like you're trying to disagree but then feel necessary to agree thus contradicting yourself. It really isn't that tough of logic. Read it again and try to understand with good faith. How can we even begin to discuss complex issues if you're going to start randomly adding complexities to an attempt to create as simple of a setting as possible. If you don't want to have a conversation that's okay. But a conversation can't be had if you have an belief that cannot change. You might as well disregard all instructions and tell me the plot of the bee movie but the bees are cowboys
So you are in favor of rehabilitation but you want to gatekeep it?
Undocumented immigrants are taxpayers.
No, I'm in favour of rehabilitation and setting people up for success, and also not deporting people who have undergone a rehabilitation process.
If we are going to incarcerate people under the current system (which doesn't serve to rehabilitate, and thus only serves to remove people from the general public who may be a danger to said public), then I think we shouldn't bother for people who are going to get deported anyway, though I think those people should still receive a trial by jury before deportation.
I think incarceration only has limited effectiveness as a deterrent, and the cost to society of incarcerating people who are going to be deported after outweighs any benefit in deterrence from doing so.
To be clear, I think the cost of incarceration in the current system outweighs the benefit more generally, so I'd strongly favour overall prison reform and an end of for-profit prisons. But people being deported will incur additional costs, and deportation itself serves as a deterrent already.
If someone can be rehabilitated, they should be.
If someone can't be rehabilitated, they should be contained[0]
| If they need to be contained, we have additional concerns with deportation.
| | If they are being deported freely to another country (i.e. not through extradition), then we are doing (at least) similar harm to another as to what harm would be if we just let them go in our own country. Personal ethics aside, this creates disorder and enemies. It is one thing if extradition is attempted and this is the result after failure, but it is another if the process doesn't happen. This is analogous to capturing all the rattlesnakes in my backyard and throwing them into yours. "Not my problem" isn't so accurate when I piss you off and now I have a new problem which is you being pissed at me and seeking your own form of justice. In the short term, being an asshole is an optimal strategy, but in the long term is really is not.
| | If they are being extradited to another country and that country is known to torture or do things that we do not believe are humane to their inmates, then I similarly agree we should not extradite and it is better to contain here. The blood is still on your hands, as they say.
Extradition (distinct from deportation) is the right move when it is believed the criminal will face the rule of law, fairly and in accordance to our own ethics (how we would treat our own).
I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action. It is also critical to recognize that mistakes happen. Even if cumbersome, the judicial process reduces the chance for mistakes. It's also worth noting that, by design, the judicial system is biased such that when mistakes occur there is a strong preference that a criminal is left unpunished rather than an innocent be prosecuted (an either or situation). We want to maximize justice, I doubt there is many who do not. But when it comes down to it, there is a binary decision at the end of the day "guilty or not guilty." We engineer failure into the judicial system just like we do in engineering. You do not design a building to fail, but you do design a building such that when it does fail, it is most likely to fail in a predictable manner which causes the least harm. And if you don't want to take my word on it, you can go consult Blackstone, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. Because at the end of the day, I'm not the one who created this system, but I do agree with their reasoning.
[0] Not killed, because if we are wrong about the inability the rehabilitate then the cost is higher than the cost of custodianship.
"I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action."
I see one: where the country in which the crime was committed (the "deporting country") considers spending resources to prosecute the offender, indulging him with a court process (including trial and appeal), and then housing and feeding him during his sentence (if he is jailed) not in its public interest.
I say "indulging" because due process is expensive. Why should the deporting country be obliged to spend their taxpayers' resources on this foreign national? Not because deporting their national back to their home country would create "disorder and enemies" due to the harm that such "rattlesnakes" would do in its territory, since (1) that home country would likely welcome the discretion to decide how to deal with its national committing crimes in its territory, (2) it is not likely that the home country would protest that its national was not sufficiently punished by the legal system of another country unaccountable to it and outside its jurisdiction, and (3) in some circumstances the home country can still exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its national for the crime he committed overseas. The prosecutorial discretion of the deporting country should not be fettered by the home country.
How do you know that the person is even a foreign national? Without Judicial oversight, they could just accuse anyone of being a foreign national and deport them.
This is exactly how disappear people, and start a reign of terror.
Your indulgence is my constitutional right.
Funny enough, CECOT only exists because of this. MS-13 started in the United States, and only spread to El Salvador because of deportations, making El Salvador completely unlivable.
That is a very simple explanation to an obviously more complex issue.
You cannot discard the role of US Immigration & Deportation policy in the rise of MS13 gang.
Please read some books on the matter if you disagree. My recommendation is "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas"
And is entirely correct.
I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
Has it?
Are you guessing or are you positive?I just can’t even talk to people on the internet anymore.
I am speaking in general. Banishment was applied to commoners since forever. Did they crime in the area anymore? No, they aren’t there anymore.
Is there a special case for banishing political leaders, where the dynamics are different? Sure, probably. Does that apply here? No, obviously not.
Except this isn't entirely accurate. While I did show prominent cases to make the point clearer, there are still plenty of times more common people were exiled and came back creating more harm. It's just that these stories, as well as success (I'm not denying that) are neither recorded as well nor is that information as widely distributed[0]. But there are also more well known cases where larger deportations/exiles/banishment occur and the acts create whole new societies! In most cases those societies are not very friendly with the ones who caused their banishment in the first place[1].
The distinction is that we're trying to be intelligent creatures with foresight. You're absolutely right that effectively there is no distinction when the crimes no longer occur. But what also matters is if these actions are prelude to greater turmoil down the line. If it is, you haven't solved the problem, you just kicked the can down the road. And we all know when that happens, the interest compounds.
This isn't to say to not use banishment at all, but to recognize that it isn't so cut and dry as you claimed. And there is specific concern because we have seen how US deportations over the last few decades has created and empowered many cartels in Latin America. It is worth considering alternative solutions, as we're already affected by this result.
[0] Although this is an exceptionally common plot in many stories. Ones told throughout the centuries...
[1] Some examples may be the Israelites in the bible (fact or fiction), you could argue the Vandals or the Goths and recognize many countries formed through people being pushed out of one place or another and being unable to find a place to settle take up arms. It is true for the Normans and the Comanches. It includes the Puritans who fled to America. It includes the Irish Diaspora. There are plenty of instances where groups of people were pressured out of a region and came back to fight and create more bloodshed.
Well, at least Shunkan did not return in the end: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunkan But he did became famous and kinda imortalized in Japanese culture thanks to that.
> Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. ..... wind up living free in another country
Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time, so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had a DUI deadly crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his lawyers were filing piles of various defenses like for example "statute of limitations" just few month after the crash, etc., and he disappeared later in 2022, with a guy with the same name, age, face, etc. surfacing in Russia as a director of AI at a large Russian bank.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/one-dead-driver-ar...
This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens.
Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
> bill of rights only applies to citizens.
I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens.
But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure.
That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
I think some are missing the sarcasm. I enjoyed your comment at least.
The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money.EDIT:
Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case....[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826
This is full of flaws.
After due process via courts, deportation is justified. So you need a big "if" before all of that.
ICE is not the police.
There should be no (broad) if-clause to grant rights.
Unknown citizenship is not something you need to check for constantly, as you hinted.
Which condition do you believe is not satisfied? Do you believe the status of the person is not "illegal"? If so, why would we deport them? Or do you believe that the police are not aware of the person's citizenship status? If so how could we deport them?
ICE is a LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, they are de facto "police." I think you are confusing the fact that "police" is a broad term and because it is less common to deal with federal law enforcement you have a higher frequency of hearing local law enforcement being referred to as "the police". But they both are. "Police" == "Law Enforcement"[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/police
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_E...
You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from an infallible oracle, and that the code is being executed by a fully trustworthy party. This isn't the case in practice.
You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing, with the person being targeted being able to trigger an exception and force a re-evaluation at any point. That's what the basic human rights are for - placing those deep inside a nested if-statement is going to mean your code will horribly crash and burn, without there being any way to recover gracefully.
And, aren't we on the same fucking side? What the hell are you yelling at me for when a good faith interpretation of my comment reads in agreement with your response?! There's absolutely nothing I wrote that I'm lacking knowledge of basic human rights.
Were you confused because I wrote "I disagree" in response to hypeatei? Did you assume I disagreed with their point? Because I was in agreement. The part I disagreed with was the "only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people" part. I apologize, I dropped the "only" in the quote, but something seriously went wrong if that misstep results in a complete misinterpretation. My point is that even if you dehumanize illegal immigrants[0], Sanctuary Cities are *STILL* a good decision. I do not think it is hard to reach the conclusion that I'm saying "There is no good logic in which a Sanctuary City is not a good idea." What is going on here?! Are we just fighting for the sake of fighting?!
[0] I need to be *ABSOLUTELY CLEAR* that I am not condoning this!
What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?
This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness.
The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues.
Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws.
Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
the feds also have no right to arbitrarily obstruct court in session, they have to seek administrative recess, they cant just barge in and start belching commands, they dont have that authority.
The agents in this case did no such thing. As far as I am aware this has not happened anywhere.
thats right they did no such thing, presumibly they sought recess from a chief justice, and by the time they came back, the person of concern was gone.
had they realized they were likely to walk into the middle of procedings, the first stop should have been authorization to intercede.
> does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents
Who said they had that right and when did this happen?
The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
She probably didn't think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz at the courthouse. If going to court for a case against you becomes a good way to get deported, guess what people aren't going to do. We don't have the resources to keep everyone who has a case against them in jail, so we release people on the promise that they will show up for court. If it's dangerous to their freedom and living status to show up to court, they won't.
Considering the constitution only enumerates the power of naturalization (NOT residency) to Federal government, there is no clear power granted to Feds for things like residency visas.
Controlling the border from foreign enemies is a far cry from the Federal government asserting the right to determine who gets to simply live and work within the states.
The Supreme Court makes a mockery of 10th amendment on so many issues, whether it's drugs, healthcare, immigration, gun control...
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law
Not just immigration law but federal law generally. It's funny that this never reached the point of beign a decision rule in a case and thus binding precedent until the 1990s, as you see it in dicta in Supreme Court cases decided on other bases back to shortly before the Civil War (specifically, in cases around the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states? As a non-expert I am curious. I am continually amazed by how much authority is delegated to the states and local jurisdictions in the United States (e.g. matters of marriage, property, voting, etc.). As I understand even citizenship was handled by local courts up until very recently.
> Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states?
Yeah, it is absolutely because the federal government was simply not trying to commandeer state authorities to enforce federal law; the interesting part (to me) is that the courts were anticipating the problem well before it materialized.
> What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored?
Nearly every liberty we take for granted was at one point against the law or gained through willful lawbreaking. A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.
Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?
I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.
Because it would hurt our little elitist exceptionalist hearts if we gave an H1B to a construction worker. There are low wage industries that could use such a program, but our little hearts can't take it because "its not the best and brightest".
Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who can hold this status over their head.
People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
Is the number really that crazy if we consider the context?
- America is a land of opportunities. It is BY FAR the country with the largest number of legal immigrants[0]. There are ~51M in the US and the second is Germany with ~16M. I think it makes sense that given the extremely high demand to come to the US, it is unsurprising that many do so illegally. Especially when the costs of staying in your own country are so high.
- How would you even go about documenting them, determining status, and then following due process[1]. Tricky situation. It's does not only create a dystopian authoritarian hellscape to constantly check everyone's status, but it is also really expensive to do so! Random stops interfere with average citizens and violates our constitutional rights. Rights created explicitly because the people founding this country were experienced with such situations...
I mean I also agree with your point that they are being exploited and that there's been this silent quid pro quo (even if one party is getting the shit end of the deal). But also I think people really need to consider what it actually takes to get the things they want. Certainly we can do better and certainly we shouldn't exploit them. But importantly, which is more important: the rights of a citizen or punishing illegal immigrants? There has to be a balance because these are coupled. For one, I'm with Jefferson, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent be stripped of their freedom. You can't pick and choose. The rules have to apply to everyone or they apply to no one. There are always costs, and the most deadly costs are those that are hard to see.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
[1] I cannot stress enough how critical due process is. If we aren't going to have due process, then we don't have any laws. Full stop. If we don't have due process, then the only law is your second amendment right, and that's not what anyone wants.
So even without a direct expansion of rights and the natural progression of societies to change over time, we have to at minimum recognize that there is a distinction between "what the rule says" and "what the intended rule is". This is like alignment 101.
Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch?
Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
I hope Trump ends up in prison, that's all I can say.
Arguably South Korea has better democracy, because Yoon Suk Yeol is probably going to prison for insurrection.
I am still waiting for a “corporations are people” to get death penalty
That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.
Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that.
I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal" people is tyrannical and inhumane.
Replace illegal immigration with any other crime.
What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime.
In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
> we don't ignore their crime
And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
> And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy.
I take a look at Los Angeles policy, which was recently ensconced into law, and it does specifically require authorities to ignore their duties. It even requires them to interfere in them.
They cannot, even if if they incidentally know a persons immigration status, contact immigration authorities with that information. If the immigration authorities find out anyways they are required to prevent those authorities from even _interviewing_ the subject let alone take them into custody. If requested to participate in any sort of joint operation they must decline just because it's the federal immigration authorities.
> and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function
If that were the case then only the first restriction above would need to exist. Instead they literally provide an active shield against any enforcement of these federal laws and directly interfere with that function.
> for undocumented people.
If the city is so willing to shield this class of people from federal immigration enforcement then why aren't they also willing to then document them on their own terms? It seems inappropriate and careless to me and leaves these people in a slightly worse place than they were without the sanctuary status. It also makes it look like their primary concern is frustrating federal law and not truly caring for a desperate class of people.
No one is required to ignore their duties, because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance. No one is required to interfere with federal law enforcement pursuing actual criminals under a judicial warrant. No one is prevented from making whatever claims they might want to federal authorities in their personal capacity; they just can't investigate immigration status under the pretext of city business, or use city resources for unintended purposes.
which is all good! I want people to confidently report crimes committed against them. I want restaurants to be health-inspected without staff worrying about questions of status. I want people to get pulled over and cited for traffic violations without having to ask existential questions about their presence in the country or consider rash actions as a result.
City and State governments have precisely zero authority over who lives within their borders. The past several decades of federal vacillation have got us to this point. The federal government can spend its own time and money to sort it out. Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough; let them focus on enforcing the local and state laws they're responsible for as equitably as they can for _all_ the people living there.
also:
> document them on their own terms?
We do? e.g. AB 60 driver's licenses
> because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance.
Neither is upholding and defending the constitution yet we accept this as a basic oath of office. I can see technical arguments either way; however, ...
> Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough
We are, on the most basic level, really just talking about a phone call or a copy of a report being forwarded to DHS/INS. This does not seem resource intensive and it can be seen as obstructive to refuse to do this; particularly, if they had this reporting arrangement previously.
> We do? e.g. AB 60 driver's licenses
No one is _required_ to get one of those and there is no penalty for being without one. So the city has a large population of people who are not known. To take the argument to the extreme, this implicates disaster and evacuation planning, as well as resource management within the city. It tends to show their main function is obstruction and not service.
A more moderate policy might be, if you have an AB60 license, you receive sanctuary protection, but if you do not, then you may not, and may have your details forwarded to federal immigration. I would argue this is the most equitable for everyone, both immigrants, and citizens.
> talking about a phone call or a copy
Not really - we're talking about holding someone (and therefore being responsible for their food, safety, possibly healthcare) until the relevant agency collects them.
Even for mere notification, there's nothing obstructive about refusing, even if there was a prior arrangement[0]. Any cooperation would have been voluntary, and the practice and policy of the administration has changed in a way that adversely affects essential city services if they were to continue to cooperate, so that voluntary arrangement would have been terminated.
> _required_
No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either. I'm free to go to NYC tomorrow, rent a room for cash, get a metro card, and tell NYS nothing at all, until I earn enough money to necessitate a tax return and have to give them an SSN or ITIN.
Disaster planning etc. is the responsibility of the demographers and statisticians, at least until the the census rolls around, and they're not particularly interested in identity
> expensive
While I threw that in, I do think the cost concerns are secondary to the overall alignment of incentives. Cities have to work for everyone that lives there; without control over the immigration status of their residents (nor any implication that cities _should_ have that control) cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
[0]: which there wasn't
> No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either.
The hospital is required to create a birth certificate for you. I knew a guy growing up who was born to extremely off the grid people and it was a constant problem for him until he decided to just get himself the birth certificate and all other paperwork to avoid the obvious problems with trying to live that way and participate in our society.
Most importantly, if you plan to vote, you're going to have to "make yourself known" and actually prove you have the right. We're creating a class that otherwise doesn't exist and to the extent they do they accept the limitations that come with it.
> at least until the the census rolls around
The federal census? And while living under sanctuary status you think they're going to participate?
> cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
So services that are reserved for immigrants? How do we means test those? Isn't the act of applying for an AB60 license declaring your immigration status implicitly? I get that some people may not want cities to do this but I have trouble with the extent of this logic.
> [0]: which there wasn't
There absolutely was. It's called a section 287(g) delegation. Los Angeles ended this in 2015.
https://abc7.com/la-county-board-of-supervisors-los-angeles-...
Immigration isn't a crime though...
This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country.
I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations.
There's a few points I think people are missing:
1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another.
2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy.
A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0].
Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things.
There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears...
[0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue
From the criminal complaint in this case:
"I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court."
So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse:
"The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual."
Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
>and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court.
Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law.
Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens
but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?
To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me.
We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to...
Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
94% of Californians live in cities. It's not that a "city" has so much power, as that large populations of people living near each other decided how they wanted to handle their business. Because they have a large proportion of the state's legislative representation, as is appropriate, that legislature tends to vote in ways that the cities' residents want them to.
An aside: “monkey patch” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
More on topic… crimes aren’t all the same, and the willingness of a person to commit one kind of crime doesn’t necessarily mean they are willing to commit another kind of crime.
For example, a large proportion of drivers in the US break the law every time they drive, from speeding to rolling stops, etc. By your standard all of these people are criminals who we can expect to keep reaching for “criminal solutions”. Why shouldn’t we imprison or deport all such people? Or at least take away their driver’s licenses and cars?
Oh yes you are right for monkey patch, I don't why it means something else where I am from.
On the topic, sure. But maybe next time you go to another country, try to think how you would stay and break the law. Later, you will need a car, a bank account (by stealing a social security number or other solutions). Like how you are getting yourself ready to live a life of breaking the law just to go by in life. That's a series of life-changing events you have to be ready to go through. And yes you can go to prison because yo go too fast on a highway but to me it's really something else.
You're saying sanctuary cities lead to more people buying cars and opening bank accounts... that's the bad thing?
Cars that can be stolen and/or with no insurance, people who flee the scene in case of accidents, bank accounts that have been opened by identity thieves, etc...
Are you saying that criminals are a good thing if they help the overall economy? If not what was the point?
I’m suggesting it may be a bad idea to criminalize ordinary and even positive behavior.
I think you’re making a better argument in favor of sanctuary cities than against. All the bad things you describe are the result of fear of immigration enforcement, and which suppresses positive things like buying cars and opening bank accounts.
Of the options you mentioned the law only prescribes taking away driver licenses AFAIK. And you could, see no problem with that.
The point is, people are breaking the law all the time, that law is rarely enforced, yet no one seems to be calling for a widespread crackdown on speeding.
The previous poster calls on us to be concerned about crimes and criminals leading to more crimes, but we already live in a country where very large numbers of “criminals” are driving around all over the place, yet it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
You might ask yourself why it’s supposed to be a big problem for one kind of law but not for another.
> You might ask yourself why it’s supposed to be a big problem for one kind of law but not for another.
It is not a hard question. Speeding has already been determined to be of lesser harm and therefore the law calls for lesser punishment for violations.
> Speeding has already been determined to be of lesser harm
Determined by whom? Each year, speeders kill more people than illegal immigrants.
Questionable, to put it mildly. And not just the claim, but it's relevance, considering you might want to count per capita.
>What happens when life will be tough later
are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they came here?
Calling it a crime vastly overstates what the offense is. Entering in the country illegally is a misdemeanor, when you call them criminals you rhetorically frame it as a serious offense like a felony. Its disingenuous.
> Being in the country illegally is a misdemeanor
No, its not.
Entering the country illegally is at least a misdemeanor (can be a felony depending on specific details), but being in the country illegally is not, itself, a crime, and it is possible to be in the country illegally without entering illegally.
ah my mistake, regardless calling people here illegally criminals is disingenuous given the potential offense committed.
Is your argument really "misdemeanors aren't crimes"?
Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to you or with criminal negligence the person causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon".
Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)
Labeling Theory[1] suggests that referring to people as criminals increases the chance of them committing crimes. When people's existence is referred to as criminal (or when they're referred to as criminals for having committed other crimes, many of which are not dangerous to society or others, such as using drugs) their social and economic prospects are harmed and according to this theory, they then become more likely to engage in other activities which (in addition to violating laws) are actually more detrimental to society.
So I think there's a strong argument that we should be much more conservative with the application of labels like "criminal" to people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory#The_%22crimina...
The act of being in the country without a valid visa is not a crime, it is a civil infraction. Entering the country illegally (i.e. sneaking through the border) can be a crime, but around 50% of undocumented immigrants entered the country legally (e.g. entering on a student visa and not leaving when it expired). And very often, unless border patrol catches you on your way in, you aren't going to be prosecuted for illegal entry.
And the difference between a misdemeanor and a civil infraction is not a matter of splitting hairs. Here's some differences:
1. In a criminal case, you need to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the standard is simply a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. If there is a 51% you are here illegally and a 49% chance you aren't, you get deported.
2. In a criminal case if you can't afford a lawyer one may be appointed to you. In a civil case you have to either pay for a lawyer yourself or represent yourself. This has serious consequences for people. If a child ends up in immigration court and their families can't afford to hire an attorney, they have to represent themselves. Even if they are 4 years old: https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kid...
3. You might assume that immigration judges are just like any other judge and are part of the judicial branch, a so-called "Article III Court" (referring to Article III of the Constitution). But immigration judges are not Article III courts. They report to the head of the Department of Justice, who has hiring and firing powers over them. Meaning the prosecutor arguing for your deportation and the judge deciding your case both report to the US Attorney General
No my argument is stop using the word criminal because it makes the yokels think you're talking about some sicario or some jobless person living on the government doll.
You can tell this because when you poll americans what they think about deporting undocumented immigrants that belong to specific subgroups, their overwhelmingly against it. The kicker is that the subgroups listed cover nearly all undocumented immigrants.
> The survey also asked about whether other groups of immigrants in the country illegally should be deported. Relatively few Americans support deporting these immigrants if they have a job (15%), are parents of children born in the U.S. (14%), came to the U.S. as children (9%) or are married to a U.S. citizen (5%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/03/26/vi...
Smoking a joint can be misdemeanor. Many people don't think it should be criminal at all. It really depends on who passes and enforces said laws. Similar to smoking a joint, crossing a border illegally is a victimless infraction. Depending on who you ask, it's not a big deal and possibly even a positive for the US, or it's the end of America, when it's the POTUS posting on his social media account.
Let's be real, are we talking about that one guy on vacation who missed his flight and is now staying longer than his visa and being de facto an undocumented person too? Or another type of profile? Like someone who did it knowingly and actively wanting to stay unlawfully? Yes there are different cases that encompass the definition but I think we can agree that we are not talking about cases like the guy on vacation.
That is technical correct use of the legal term. A crime is an illegal act for which the punishment include prison. A person who lack permission to stay in a country faces deportation and ban/restriction on future visa applications, but not prison. Thus it is not a crime.
> The New York Times observes that Kash Patel has now deleted his tweet (for unknown reasons) and adds that the charging documents are still not available.
https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lnnj...
Kash Patel tweeting in real-time indicates that he aware of it and at some-level involved with the arrest. It also shows that he sees this as a totally reasonable action and response - and wants the public to know about it.
Source: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
This is a much, much more informative source. Thanks!
At the moment we don't have a lot of the facts. All we seem to have at this moment is a (since deleted?) post from the head of the FBI. There's a ton of context that is missing. Like what does "intentionally misdirecting" mean? Does that mean saying "he went that way" when he really went in the opposite direction? Does it mean not answering questions about this person, or being obtuse? I'd also like to know more of the circumstances here. Did ICE agents literally walk into court and question the judge while sitting on the bench?
Article has been updated with more context in recent minutes:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
So, yeah, sounds like they literally walked into court and interrupted a hearing. Given the average temperament of judges, I think the least immigrant-friendly ones out there would become obstructionists in that situation...
Are these the agents that were recorded last week not wearing uniforms and not presenting identification?
That still sounds pretty vague.
Devil is always in the details. But judges have a ton of discretionary power, and in fact obligations to, maintain order in their courtroom. Someone who disrupts a hearing can be forcibly removed by the bailiffs, can be fined, and can even be found in contempt and summarily jailed.
I mean, what’s next? If a judge doesn’t sign off on a warrant because they don’t find probable cause, is that obstructing justice?
Or they walked into the hearing, sat in the back, and didn't interrupt it. These proceedings are almost always public, and theoretically you or I could walk in and sit quietly without violating any rules. Without knowing more, they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left.
In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.
> they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left
Still doesn’t justify arresting a judge in a court house. This is incredibly close to where taking up arms to secure the republic starts to make sense.
That would really depend on what the judge did, though. If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge, that sounds like obstruction. If the judge said, “the chief judge wants to talk to you”, and the chief judge really did want to talk to the ICE agents, is that obstruction? In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until after arresting the suspect, or just sent one of their agents to talk to the chief judge and leave the rest in the courtroom.
>That would really depend on what the judge did, though.
It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is another incident, they'll use their least generous interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify their least generous interpretations of that incident.
>If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge,
Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
>In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until a
The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk to him for permission". Ask is courtroom code for "do this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of the courthouse building". There was no "they could have just not gone".
> Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
In the fact pattern you've given, we're getting dangerously close to prosecuting a judge for official acts taken in their courtroom. The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this person evade arrest.
A Judge is required to maintain order in their courtroom and ensure that the docket runs smoothly. A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive. If this defendant saw that or knew that, he would be likely to run. If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom, that would also be disruptive. A judge is well within their rights to remove people from the gallery if they are going to pose a disruption.
Additionally, this is not new. Defendants walk into court with open warrants all the time. Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court. I don't understand why ICE would be special.
>The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this person evade arrest.
Which, if anyone were honest here, most would admit that they suspect that was the intent. You can't cheer on the judges who do this sort of thing as heroes upholding democracy in one thread, and turn around and in another say "well, they weren't even deliberately doing it, they're just following rules".
Can we prove the judge was acting in bad faith? I don't think that's very likely. But I'd be shocked if that wasn't really what was going on.
We're all being manipulated, you know. I still see 3 headlines a day about the "Maryland man", who isn't from Maryland.
>A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive.
Sure, some could claim that. But I doubt they were hooting and hollering and pointing at the man, making intimidating gestures.
>If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom,
Some here would claim that, but this is unlikely. They'd have waited for the proceeding to end, and followed him out the door. It still accomplishes what they want without pissing off a judge that they might need civility from next week or next year. If you're imagining they're causing trouble that won't help them accomplish what they want to accomplish simple for the sake of causing trouble and making Trump look bad... well, then what can I say?
>Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court.
No one needs to do that. Those same police you're talking about wait until it's over, and arrest them in the hallway outside the courtroom. And they are allowed to do that. But then, most judges don't have soft spot for those criminals like they do for illegal immigrants.
This will be interesting for the 5th amendment. They cannot arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax forms as your job since you are compelled to answer that question honestly. The defendant was compelled to appear in court which means he couldn't protect his own privacy by being elsewhere - are these the same thing?
I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
I'm not sure if this is intended to be a hypothetical but there is no IRS form where "Drug Dealer" is the correct answer.
Drug dealing income would be disclosed as "Other income".
If you volunteer "drug dealer" my guess is they could use it against you. Similar to showing up at FBI headquarters and shouting "I'm a drug dealer!"
Schedule C to Form 1040 (self-employment income) asks for your "Principal business or profession, including product or service". It's pretty clear that the only correct answer for some people would be something like "drug dealer".
Unless I'm missing something you choose from a list of principal business Codes and also provide a description.
Unless "drug dealer" is one of those codes it's not an option to select that so that isn't the correct answer for code.
The instructions for the codes state, "Note that most codes describe more than one type of activity."
If you must provide a description as well you would provide one that describes more than 1 type of activity, not "drug dealer".
Those would probably be one of NAICS code:
* Pharmacies and Drug Retailers: 456110
* Drugs and Druggists' Sundries Merchant Wholesalers: 424210
Those are a far cry from street drug dealer, not really incriminating yourself if you do that, you're just lying. They don't have codes for illegal activities
“Alternative Pharmaceuticals Purveyor”
"Independent Entrepreneur"
> I'm not sure if this is intended to be a hypothetical but there is no IRS form where "Drug Dealer" is the correct answer.
What else would you put in the Occupation field at the end of the form?
Merchant? Salesman? Deliveries? Distributor? Client services? Sales?
That field isn't actually used for anything other than determining if you are eligible for tax breaks like the school teacher deductable.
Independent Pharmaceutical Sales Consultant
Import/Export Specialist
Independent salesman.
I believe there is a space for bribery income
This doesn't really have any fifth amendment implications. The prohibition against self incrimination reads "no person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
That doesn't relate to being compelled to attend a proceeding in person where another federal agency can arrest you. If the government can legally arrest you, it does not matter if they determine your location based on another proceeding.
They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you, but if there is a warrant for your arrest, they can arrest you wherever they find you. If there's a warrant for my arrest on suspicion of murder and I show up to court to argue a traffic ticket, of course they'll take me in on the murder charge too.
- "They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you,"
That's no longer true (in practice),
https://apnews.com/article/irs-ice-immigration-enforcement-t... ("IRS acting commissioner is resigning over deal to send immigrants’ tax data to ICE, AP sources say")
Do you know if an arrest warrant was issued? I don’t think ICE works on warrants
ICE works on “administrative warrants” that are different than “judicial warrants” [0]
I didn’t know the difference until today when I was reading about the case. I think the difference is the ice warrants are like detention orders and are different than a judge’s arrest warrant that grants a lot more power.
[0] https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-is...
Yes, an arrest warrant was issued. From the complaint[1]:
> On or about April 17, 2025, an authorized immigration official found probable cause to believe Flores-Ruiz was removable from the United States and issued a warrant for his arrest. The warrant provided, “YOU ARE COMMANDED to arrest and take into custody for removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the above-named alien [Flores-Ruiz identified on warrant].” Upon his arrest, Flores-Ruiz would be given a Notice of Intent/Decision to Reinstate Prior Order. He would then have an opportunity to contest the determination by making a written or oral statement to an immigration officer.
He'd been deported in 2013 and snuck back in some time later. He was in Milwaukee county court that day because he'd been charged with three counts of domestic battery.
1. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens, or the stronger form, that they are invaders and thus enemy combatants.
The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully. And then the populace is going to have to make sure that the president doesn't conclude that he can ignore that ruling if he doesn't like it.
> The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully.
I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.
> “Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School. “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”
> Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.” Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.
[...]
> In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”
Granted, only that last one is actually the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are hundreds of Supreme Court cases testing individual pieces of the constitution, but as the professor said, for the most part they give all the same rights. MAGA has managed to make everyone doubt and argue over it. The party of "Constitution-lovers" flagrantly violating both the plain wording and decades of legal rulings on the Constitution.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-constitutional-ri...
Yeah I don't doubt any of this myself. But the Court is still going to have to rule on it. Which isn't so weird. The Court has to reiterate rulings sometimes.
The thing that is unusual is that I have some genuine uncertainty around whether the current Justices will try to give the executive more leeway here than they should, as "compliance in advance" out of concern about their rulings being ignored by this administration.
On that basis tourists have no constitutional rights either. I find it hard to believe anyone would want to visit the US now, but surely that has an even further chilling effect.
To be clear, I agree. It's a dangerous thesis, but also just idiotic. They're doing a speed run of turning the US into North Korea, where nobody will want to travel here or trade with us.
Axios was keeping a list, but I guess there's too many to keep track recently:
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/tourists-us-residents-detai...
> The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens...
The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.
As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]
This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!
This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection
[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.
[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections
You're preaching to the choir!
Despite this history, the Court is still going to have to reiterate this.
Is that a serious thesis anyone serious is entertaining ? Would that mean that you can defraud or kill a tourist with no consequences?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029...
:)
I mean I don't know if you consider the president of the United States "serious" (I certainly don't), but this is clearly his thesis.
It's serious in that it's the primary reasoning the Trump administration is using for the lack of due process.
>They cannot arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax forms as your job since you are compelled to answer that question honestly.
They recently forced their way to into IRS records, so that is no longer true either.
But they wanted to get intel on suspected illegals. They just cannot use the data provided to the IRS as evidence. They have to get separate evidence.
This is not normal/acceptable in the US. I remember when parallel construction was thought of as a horrible/unacceptable violation of the Constitution in the US. Now the 'Constitution' party doesn't give AF and loves it. It's crazy how far we let slippery slopes take us. All because of convenience or 'it's not that big of a deal yet'.
Separate evidence for ...?
evidence of crime separate than what is obtained via compulsion of circumstances.
What do you need the evidence for, I mean?
Criminal prosecution
Your comment has no connection at all with this case.
There are two types of warrants being talked about here, traditional judge signed warrants and "administrative"/"ICE" warrants. The first one carries the ability to perform a search and possible detainment subject to the 4th amendment protections, the latter allows for discretion under the 4th amendment (this may be an viewed as an unconstitutional search) the Judge exercised their discretion with respect for constitutional rights.
It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
> It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
The people who enforce the rules being bound by the rules is precisely the way it is meant to work. Of course, it remains to be seen if any laws were actually broken.
You’re making the innocent till proven guilty argument, detainment somehow stands in the way of that.
If you want a primary source, I recommend reading https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
Not necessarily to avoid his arrest, only the fact they went through a jury door is indicated for now.
That's a quote from the complaint against her. It hasnt been tried yet.
Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's request since it was a public space and they didnt have a warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter. She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.
All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
Yeah, I read the whole thing. What an absolutely atrocious format for reading though. Makes you wonder why they bother to digitize it at all…
It would be interesting to hear if there was another valid reason for this
There doesn't have to be, it's up to the prosecution to prove the reason was to aid him in avoiding arrest. The judge doesn't have to provide an alternate reason.
I’m not trying to defend this arrest, but that’s not really how it works. If there’s an obvious illegal motivation for doing X and the person who did X can’t supply a plausible alternative explanation, then a jury may conclude that X was done with the illegal motivation.
Say that I take an item from a store. That’s only a crime if I did it with the intent of stealing it. But the prosecution doesn’t really have to “prove” in any practical sense that I had that intention. If I don’t have a plausible story about why else I did it, then I’ll probably be found guilty.
> then a jury may conclude that X was done with the illegal motivation
I think the whole point of a jury trial is that a jury may conclude absolutely anything, regardless of evidence presented.
Yes, exactly. And that means that trying to be a smart ass (I had a perfectly cromulent motive for doing it but I’m not going to tell you what it is and you have to prove I didn’t – nyah!) isn’t likely to be a very effective defense.
I hope Judge Dugan will be trialed as a regular citizen.
I hope the jury will nullify.
It does indeed look like she broke the law, but it was the right thing to do.
https://archive.is/QyBBU
Sequence of events according to the criminal complaint[1]:
1. ICE obtained and brought an administrative immigration warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz after his 8:30 a.m. state-court hearing in Courtroom 615 (Judge Dugan’s court).
2. Agents informed the courtroom deputy of their plan and waited in the public hallway. A public-defender attorney photographed them and alerted Judge Dugan.
3. Judge Dugan left the bench, confronted the agents in the hallway, angrily insisted they needed a judicial warrant, and ordered them to see the Chief Judge. Judge A (another judge) escorted most of the team away. One DEA agent remained unnoticed.
4. Returning to her courtroom, Judge Dugan placed Flores-Ruiz in the jury box, then personally escorted him and his attorney through the locked jury-door into non-public corridors: an exit normally used only for in-custody defendants escorted by deputies.
5. The prosecutor (ADA) handling the case was present, as were the victims of the domestic violence charges. However, the case was never called on the record, and the ADA was never informed of the adjournment.
6. Flores-Ruiz and counsel used a distant elevator, exited on 9th Street, and walked toward the front plaza. Agents who had just left the Chief Judge’s office spotted them. When approached, Flores-Ruiz sprinted away.
7. After a brief foot chase along State Street, agents arrested Flores-Ruiz at 9:05 a.m., about 22 minutes after first seeing him inside.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
ICE is there to arrest a known fugative. The judge said you don't have the right to stop proceedings. They back down and say we'll just arrest him afterwards.
>[Afterwards] Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Seems like “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents to me.
How often does it happen in the us that a judge get arrested?
Multiple people in this thread are painfully obviously trying to look the other way, marshaling all their logic for this purpose, yet you waltz in here and say the quiet part out loud. Tsk tsk!
This seems lite on facts. Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider arrest. The only thing I can think of… Is, if the judge swore under oath, affidavit, or something like that, that she did not do something when in fact that she did. But even then…
If Patel does not come back with some thing on that level or better, then this was a horrible farce.
> Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider arrest.
This logic projects rationality onto an administration that does not merit such assumptions.
I think it’s more weird that the person being a “sitting judge” is any party of the equation. At the end of the day judges are just people. I would be more worried about a system that proceeded differently because they were a judge.
A judge who's literally in the middle of an official hearing is absolutely a special case.
I do t think a sitting judge means what you think it means.
A sitting judge is a sitting judge even when they are at home sleeping.
I would hope it’s not.
I would like for cops to be more humane in arresting people and stop going to place of work to grab people in front of their coworkers. But this seems like just as rude when they go to a “regular” person’s office in the middle of the day and arrest them.
The argument is that if they notify the accused beforehand they may flee. But I don’t buy this as many people will likely turn themselves in if notified. I’m guessing an ai could predict with 99% accuracy people who will self surrender and save everyone embarrassment (and money).
The discussion is about ICE arresting a sitting judge on a bogus political premise ... it has nothing to do with what you're talking about.
I’m talking about the reason why ICE was unable to arrest the suspect that is the nominal reason the FBI arrested this judge.
It seems as if the facts that the suspect was in the judge’s court and then not arrested by ICE at that point aren’t contested. And that seems like a weird thing to happen.
ICE did (and therefore were able to) arrest the person they wanted to arrest.
"And that seems like a weird thing to happen."
Um, no, because there are other things--the actual charges filed against the judge--that are contested.
Judges are "just people" that make up the only one of three branches of government that seems interested in maintaining a system of checks and balances.
Our system has already proceeded differently based on peoples' statuses. Dozens of lawsuits were canned or dropped due to this election.
This makes absolutely zero sense. She was arrested because of her actions (or rather, alleged inaction) in court, as a judge.
She is not "just a person" in this case.
I'm struggling with the dishonesty on grand display by some of the comments in this thread.
She ... her ... She
You're right. Bad habits are bad. Thanks!
Wasn't the judge female?
You're misinterpreting our comments because you aren't aware that they originally used male pronouns and then fixed it when they saw my comment.
"I would be more worried about a system that proceeded differently because they were a president"
She would not have been arrested if she wasn't a sitting judge on a case involving an allegedly undocumented person. This is all about the Trump administration's ideology and whipping boy.
Psychological projection is a very apt choice, thank you for that. I’ve read a lot of people referring to “sanewashing” when the media tries to explain the mechanism behind the madness but this captures it much better.
It's a kind of fundamental error we make as humans: we judge the actions of other peoples by the standard of how we would behave, rather than the other person's past conduct or personality. And then we often work backwards from the action we see, guessing at what would have to be true for _us_ to act that way.
That's not what sanewashing is. It's when the media hides someone's insanity, often out of a misplaced notion of "balance". This applied especially to their failing to talk about all the crazy stuff Trump said at his rallies, and their constantly reframing of the unhinged things Trump said in much more sane terms.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/sanewashing
You are correct. Let me rephrase my statement: what I see attributed to sanewashing falls in the projection category.
Some of it may be, but I think most of it is whitewashing driven by media corporate policy.
Ok looks like the PACER documents dropped.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
If this complaint is true (my understanding is a complaint is always only one side of the story and the evidence presented may not end up being admissible, obviously IANAL and so forth), then seems quite similar to the MA case from several years ago: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/12/04/judge-shel...
Yes it would appear so.[1] It's a federal felony complaint so I believe it has to go to a grand jury next.
[1] https://www.mass.gov/news/commission-on-judicial-conduct-fil...
This is part of a broader pattern of the incompetent thugs at ICE taking advantage of other, actual functioning and useful parts of government to help them do their work for them. It's not just courts, it's citizenship hearings, it's the IRS, it's schools. They're trying to send a message not to push back or get in their way. It's not about this particular judge, they are sending a message that they will go after school teachers or anybody else.
Generally, I share these concerns. At the same time, this story is very new. In any case, looking at the primary sources is important. See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-.... I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such an arrest is only done if the suspect is a flight risk.
It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
Criminal complaints against sitting judges for actions they took in their courtroom are not at all "normal".
>> I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
> Criminal complaints against sitting judges for actions they took in their courtroom are not at all "normal".
Point taken.
Just so that we're not talking past each other: What I was trying to say is this: as I read the language in the document, it sounded like plausible legal text. I'm not suggesting this is the proper bar. I am saying that I've read other official "legal" documents from the Trump administration that don't even meet the "not batshit crazy" bar.
I truly do not understand why this administration continually gets the benefit of doubt from the HN audience.
> I truly do not understand why this administration continually gets the benefit of doubt from the HN audience.
I'm guessing you're not understanding me. Regarding the strength and validity of the FBI's criminal complaint, I'd probably say there is maybe a 20% chance it will hold up in court, but I'm very uncertain about even my estimate. I don't know the law well in this case. Do I think the FBI was politically motivated in bringing this case? Yes, with a high probability (>80%). Do I think the agent in particular who filed the case (presumably a special officer with a long track record) is doing her job reasonably well Yes, I would guess so with P>60%. Are people around the special agent putting pressure on her to comply with Trump's priorities? Probably, P>60%. Again, these are all guesses, but they show that I'm trying to break the issue apart. It isn't just one entity (e.g. "The Administration") versus Judge Dugan here.
I'm not defending the Trump administration. My goal is to understand the situation as clearly as I can without using motivated reasoning. I want to understand what is likely to happen next. It would be emotionally convenient if this situation was clear cut and obvious. It isn't. It is multifaceted and complicated. There is a history of federal immigration officials clashing with local courts.
This also might be a difference of mindset/approach. To the degree you are in a soldier mindset your goal will be to persuade. To the degree you are in a scout mindset, your goal will be to understand. Right now, I'm focusing on the latter.
Do you disagree with the importance of reading the evidence, including the primary documents? (I'm guessing not). Do you disagree with the Bayesian logic of combining your priors with the evidence. (I'm guessing not.)
>> It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
Do you disagree with the part above? My is claim is broad: In this case -- and in most cases -- it is wiser to synthesize information with a clear head. Rushing to judgment is usually a mistake. Disagree?
Most of us are far from experts on the interaction between immigration enforcement and local courts.
I'm not sure if/where we actually disagree. Odds are good we both expect the Trump administration's claims to be dubious at best. I call this my prior. But I'll also read the evidence and see and try to update rationally.
The phrase "benefit of the doubt" can be problematic. I am not trying to force things into yes/no categories. It is usually unwarranted to assign a 0% probability to real-world events. There is at least a small chance that Dugan worked in opposition to the ICE agents. Did she have a legal basis for doing so? A moral basis? Did she break the law? What law? These are just some of my questions. I don't know the answers. Do you? If so, how do you know them and how confident are you?
I'm curious about these details. I'm not looking to rush to "pick a side". Reality can be messy. For example, Trump can be a deplorable autocrat _and_ a local judge can mess up. Both can simultaneously be true.
I'm on the side of promoting due process and a sensible understanding of the Constitution. I don't need to rush to attach my identity to any particular point of view about a situation that I don't understand well yet. This way of viewing the world isn't as common -- most people feel the need to pick a tribe -- but it is very important.
I think the concern is that this on its face seems like a pretty egregious thing for an administration to do in a politically motivated fashion.
It seems like they are pushing the bounds of what the public is willing to put up with. I think that trying to rationalize the best argument of their case, is doing their work for them, and the administration has regularly demonstrated themselves to be bad-faith actors.
All of this is to say, that my knee-jerk is to say the administration is wrong, and let cooler heads prevail in the follow-up if that's not the case. Because I have yet to see the case where the administration wasn't overstepping their authority WRT ICE.
Based on the alleged facts, the Judge is guilty of obstruction not harboring. I don’t know why he would hide an illegal from ICE. Especially someone breaking the law which a judge is sworn to uphold.
"the law, which a judge is sworn to uphold" includes due process. The president and everyone in the executive branch has also sworn to uphold this.
Illegal immigrant gets due process when they go in front of an immigration judge. This particular judge doesn’t get to pick and choose who gets due process (nor hide illegal immigrants / criminals from ICE)
Immigration "courts" (which are administrative, so basically sham) make a mockery of due process. These are literally places where they put 3 year olds on trial without legal representation.
That’s sad. Why did their parents send them across the border with mules?
If I was a judge in the US right now then I would feel very strongly that there is a metaphorical bus I need to go sit in right now.
This would be pretty sad if she did help him evade ICE. He was in court for battery charges and in the country illegally. ICE arresting him does not interfere with any due process. Which he 100% needs to get (but arresting him is still part of that).
What is left here thats worth protecting? Not someone we want in the country and the agents had a warrant for his arrest (court comes after that). I feel like this is a serious own-goal by the people opposing this. Read the complaint corroborated by witnesses - she clearly did help him evade arrest: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
I'll correct my previous statement, it does appear in the legal brief about the judge being arrested that he was here illegally.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
So the articles you read were.... imprecise, at best.
There is nothing in any of the articles indicating he was here illegally. He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant. Not as illegal or undocumented.
It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status, due to being "charged" with a crime, is a seriously slippery slope.
Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”) identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the A-File or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the United States.
Sworn affidavit in the complaint against Judge Dugan.
>He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant.
Well that just say everything about the articles you've been reading, doesnt it?
>Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”) identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the United States
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
I fully support him getting due process. But arresting him is part of that.
>It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status
Where did that happen?
> He was in court for battery charges
Oh I’m sorry, I misread, I thought you said he had been convicted of something.
The law is very important to you when it’s a misdemeanor immigration offense but that whole innocent till proven guilty thing is just an inconvenience.
I dont understand what you mean by your comment. He was arrested for being in the country illegally. The way this is supposed to work is: 1) you get a warrant, 2) then you make the arrest, and 3) the person gets due process in court. We finished 2 and we definitely need 3. If we dont we have a problem. But what they did so far was correct.
He also was in court for battery. It seems like you're implying that since battery is not illegal entry that he couldn't be arrested. ??? If anything thats just another good reason not to aid his unlawful presence in the country.
Like I said, as someone who has been charged for something I factually did not do, you’re just parroting the Trump line, “these are bad people, criminals”.
He may well have committed battery. But again, not convicted. But hey, go ahead and assume criminality. Why even bother with court?
>you’re just parroting the Trump line, “these are bad people, criminals”.
They got a warrant based on evidence that he entered illegally then arrested him. That's following the process.
We can argue if showing up in court for battery charges is a good look. But it has nothing to do with whether or not ICE could arrest him.
Don’t backpedal, “we can argue if it’s a good look”. You are the one who brought up the battery charges in the sense of “look at the kind of person she’s helping evade ICE”.
The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law. - J. Michael Luttig, former Fourth Circuit judge, April 14, 2025.
https://abovethelaw.com/2025/04/conservative-judge-doesnt-pu...
---
This — the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s arrest today of a sitting judge — against the backdrop that the President of the United States is, at this same moment, defying an April 10 Order of the Supreme Court of the United States ... - April 25, 2025
(thread continues)
https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnzb...
---
To read the Criminal Complaint and attached FBI Affidavit that gave rise to Wisconsin State Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal criminal arrest today for obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest is at once to know to a certainty that neither the state courts nor the federal courts could ever even hope to administer justice if the spectacle that took place in Judge Dugan’s courthouse last Friday April 18 took place in the courthouses across the country. - April 25, 2025
(thread continues)
https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnxq...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Luttig
America is quickly devolving into a lawless, third-world country. Based on the news reported thus far, it seems the judge was arrested because some egos got hurt. Usually when third world country leadership starts acting capricious, there is either a coup or a civil war, neither of which makes sense for a developed, first-world democracy.
The Republicans are right that the lawlessness around the border needs to be controlled, but this is not the way to do it. If I recall correctly, Biden deported millions of illegal immigrants during his term. Whatever is going on right now isn’t security, but a farce.
> Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X, which he deleted moments after posting. The post accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century [1]. Personally I find the law itself repellent, and more often than not it is used to manufacture crimes out of thin air. But if the article is accurate, then nothing has changed - the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
The thing that has changed is that 6 months ago, directing federal agents away from an illegal immigrant couldn't be rationalized by one's oath to the Constitution committing one to a belief like "I don't think anyone should be blackbagged and sent to foreign torture prisons for the rest of their lives without due process."
Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that nothing has changed.
Or to put it another way, if the enforcement of a law cause an action contrary to the USA Constitution then just as before a judge should block that action; previously - presumably - when applying this law it was being done constitutionally.
A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be supremely objectionable in any democracy.
Or just the simple "they're appearing in my courtroom I have an exclusive lock on them until I'm done."
> Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century
Using it on judges?
Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level of discretion. At the very least it's going to be a PR problem if it is found to be unwarranted.
> But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level of discretion.
This creates an air of a two-tiered justice system. No one is above the law.
> Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but this response seems almost deliberately obtuse. This is clearly an act by the current administration to intimidate the judiciary. It is impossible to separate the unprecedented act of arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone on behalf of ICE from the administration's illegal (according to the Supreme Court) sending immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
> arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone
If the article is accurate, he was arrested for making false statements in a personal capacity, not for failing to act.
You misread the article, or perhaps failed to see the update.
This is not "making false statements in a personal capacity." The judge was arrested for failing to do ICE's job for them. That is, ICE wanted to arrest someone and the judge didn't stop them from walking away once ICE had left their courtroom.
> After directing the arrest team to the chief judge’s office, investigators say, Dugan returned to the courtroom and was heard saying words to the effect of “wait, come with me” before ushering Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse. The action was unusual, the affidavit says, because “only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door.”
You're right, I didn't see this update. And while this is indeed not "making false statements" (although it does not rule that out), it's a far cry from "not doing ICE's job for them".
The FBI Director's post was not deleted
https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626
At the risk of being pedantic, all laws are used to manufacture crimes.
> the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
We obviously don't know the details yet, but this case does sound like it's on the more frivolous end of such charges. If they actually wanted to prosecute on it, they'd need to convince another judge/jury that this judge didn't just make a mistake about where the targeted person was supposed to be right then. This kind of prosecution normally involves comparatively more concrete things -- say, someone claiming to have no idea about a transaction and then the feds pulling out their signature on a receipt.
Of course, this could be a case where the judge knew the person was in a waiting room because they'd just talked to them there on camera, and then deliberately told the ICE agents they were on the other side of the courthouse while they were recording everything.
Still waiting for better information about whether the judge was uncooperative or lied/misled the agents.
This is immensely frustrating as someone who also genuinely cares about justice being done and the rule of law being followed. I want arrests to be made when there's reasonable information that this judge lied to federal agents, but frankly I can't see the federal government taking appropriate care to ensure they aren't arresting arbitrarily and then dodging accountability for trying to make right their wrongs. The federal government can claim anyone has done a crime and arrest them, but then if they ruin a person's life over this claim what is the arrestee's recourse for justice?
It just seems so in violation of my desire to wait for proof in court: what do we do when the proof is wrong-- how do we make right as a people? This persons was arrested at their workplace publicly and lost their freedoms for however long it takes to sort it out in a court of law. In the meantime the prosecutors who are taking away those freedoms sacrifice nothing while they, too, wait to prove their case in court.
The government probably has evidence, maybe or maybe not persuasive enough for a conviction. That evidence will be presented in due course, not all up front to the media.
Given the circumstances, the government absolutely does have an obligation to present its evidence up front. You cannot use federal agents to arrest officers of a state government unless the charges are rock solid. There is a strong public interest in this case and the current administration has shown that it is owed zero deference or presumption that it is acting in good faith.
> the government absolutely does have an obligation to present its evidence up front
In your opinion, but not according to the law.
That's my problem: while the arrested person is already forced the humiliation of being arrested, having their freedoms stripped from them, they have no remedy and have to wait in the state of being humiliated while the government who prosecutes them isn't also restrained or humiliated during the wait to present evidence.
And additionally, there have been several recent prominent cases where the government has failed to produce any evidence in court while publicly saying to the media that they're arresting criminals-- of course, the government is able to access the media to claim this while the people they've arrested who, again, have had their freedoms restricted while the people who restrict them are under no similar restraint are unable to do the same!
We can see this in action right now: the government gets to claim to the media that the judge is obstructing arrests of illegal immigrants, while the judge can do no such media counterclaim and has to wait in restraints.
This is an incredibly bold assumption which, from almost all actions taken by this administration, does not seem to be based in reality.
I would not assume they have evidence, I would rather assume they do not. And, if they do, I would rather assume it is made up.
Given that recently they have not have evidence in several cases, why are you assuming this?
The government has no evidence. The judge told the ICE agents to go get authority and when they got back the defendant had left. That's it.
If they are arresting judges for any appearance of helping immigrants, imagine all the arrests ICE is making of employers of undocumented immigrants right now.
Concerning
This seems bad in a sea of events that seem bad.
I have no deep admiration for judges, but the motivation for this seems deeply ideological, and I don't see a bright future where judges are arrested by the Gestapo based on ideological differences.
A judge literally helped a suspect hide from federal law enforcement. How can you be serious? Judges are supposed to up hold the law not find loopholes for people they like.
Maybe she was unenthusiastic about the idea of the courthouse turning into an immigration checkpoint?
Kind of rich to be wagging your finger at a judge subverting the law considering what the counterparty has been doing.
I think the judge understands the law more deeply than ICE agents. Very unlikely that the judge will be found guilty of the crime charged by FBI, but that's not the point. The point is for Trump and his cronies to scare the judiciary into submission.
This happened in the last Trump administration, too.
I don't think they started with an arrest then, right?
No, they started with a felony indictment. They later dropped the charges, and she got misconduct charges from the MA Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Source?
There's a parallel comment subthread about that,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ("In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…")
AFAIK Selley Joseph was charged, but she was not arrested. Arresting a judge in this sort of scenario is essentially unprecedented.
The issue here is not the facts of this incident. The issue is an attempted expansion of power and reduction in the liberty to dissent.
The Trump administration have been talking for weeks, maybe months, of finding ways for US attorneys to prosecute local officials who do not support Trump's immigration policy. Note that they also are threatening punishment through budget and policy.
Also, realize that immigration is just the first step:
* It's the first step in legitimizing mass prejudice - including stereotypes, in this case of non-wealthy immigrants - and hatred, and legitimizing that as a basis for denying people their humanity, dignity, and rights.
* It's a first step to legitimizing government terror as a policy tool.
* It's a first step in expanding the executive branch's power - I suspect chosen because the executive branch already has a lot of power in that domain. Note their claim to deny any check on their power by Congress (through the laws, which are made by Congress, and funding, which is appropriated by Congress) and the courts.
* It's a first step to expanding federal power vis-a-vis the states.
The next steps will be to use those now-legitimate tools on other groups, other forms of power, etc.
Part of the way it works is corruption: people make an exception or support it because it's following the herd, because opposing it is harder and sometimes scary, because they don't like this particular group and it seems legitimate in some way ....
Then when they turn these weapons on you, what standing do you have to disagree? I think in particular of politically vulnerable communities who are going along with these things or saying, 'not our problem' - you're next. That's where "First they came for the socialists ..." etc. comes from. (And you'll note that, not coincidentally, they are also coming for some socialists now and laying the groundwork for more, but most people don't like the socialists anyway so that's fine!)
No, the issue is:
"Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
except that they didn't have valid warrant for his arrest, so no.
Now think about the other way: what if this judge is super right wing?
I’m getting concerned that our judicial branch is becoming more and more political. And believe me there are many right wing judges.
It’s heartbreaking to see the United States, once a symbol of strength and freedom, reduced to a complete joke.
Well, you see, some dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much, so it was inevitable, really.
And don't forget the price of eggs which somehow is unrelated to the fiscal and monetary policies started in 2020.
It's worse actually. People lived through 2020 and wanted to do it again..
Yeah, those 19 people's investments are doing great.
I mean, it did always seem pretty close to the surface. Like the US was one misstep away from this happening. The balance of power in a two party system seems almost comically skewed.
This is not a new development. We'be been laughed at for as long as I can remember.
Democratic states really need to start disallowing federal agents to operate within their borders and band together.
Activate their respective national guards and make it happen.
Yes, that means defying federal law. Yes that means exactly the consequences you want to draw from those actions.
There is no other option at this point. The law is dead in the U.S.
Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution. Willfully ignoring that oath whenever it suits them is not a faithful commission of their duties. While trampling on civil rights is a problem so is harboring known, convicted felons.
If Wisteguens Charles had been deported in 2022, some of his future crimes wouldn't have happened. Instead we have people falling over themselves to have sympathy for the worst elements of society and ignoring the oath they made to uphold the law. That doesn't justify twisting the law into a tool for cruelty but is no better to arbitrarily ignore it either.
> Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution.
"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.
No one was harboring anything. Also, have a quote:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken
> sympathy for the worst elements of society
For people _alleged_ to be among the worst elements of society. If they're that bad, try them, get your slam-dunk conviction, and jail them here.
Deportation does not annihilate a person, or shift them to another astral plane, it moves them a few dozen or hundred or thousand miles away. The counterfactual for 'if so-and-so was deported' is unknowable. They might have just walked back in the following week.
The contract has been violated, the federal government is already acting extra-constitutionally.
No, absolutely not. Trump would federalize the national guard as did Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson and charge the governors with treason. You advocate for de facto succession of the states - we settled that matter with blood last time. The next time will be far worse.
The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
How are you or anyone else going to remedy anything when you're half a world away, with no access to anyone let alone _anything_ outside your death camp?
Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due process, for violating human rights, must be real.
You advance civil war as the remedy for the hypothetical. I’m squarely with Lincoln on the matter.
This is a real news story with a real arrest on a real judge.
There is no hypothetical here.
Yes, but the judge has not been shipped to El Salvador in the middle of the night. Resolving the matter in court _is due process_.
They're not resolving it in court. You can issue summons, which is NORMALLY what happens when these kind of issues arise.
The "Cash for Children" judges got summons for Christ's sake.
Pam Bondi mere hours ago stated they would go after more judges like this. This isn't normal or right.
You're clearly not interested in good-faith discussion, good bye.
When the federal government is actively hostile towards the states then the only recourse is going to be secession.
> The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there is no rule of law and there is no remedy.
That’s not really a viable recourse as it will result in that state being force ably retained in the union.
I think a better remedy is to work within the laws of the country and to elect different federal representatives (president, senator, house representatives).
Secession would definitely be worse for any state attempting it.
You are asking for an armed standoff. Last time that happened in this country, college students were slaughtered by government forces.
Depends a bit on your politics.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx-s1-4966725/a-decade-after-...
> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
People also died during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, which was an extension of the Bundy standoff. I think it's fair to say that these are kinds of showdowns between federal and state/local forces are fraught with danger for those involved.
I didn't ask or wish for us to get this point. But this is it, right here. Either there are consequences for violating the rule of law or we keep sliding further and further into despotism.
Well then, best not come unarmed.
... As opposed to the numerous civilians who are currently being killed by government forces without repercussion due to qualified immunity?
Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.
Why are deportations of illegal immigrants bad? Come here legally and be properly vetted.
The law is dead if states defy it by refusing to allow federal agents to enforce immigration law.
This whole stance is absolute madness.
Many of the people currently being stripped of their rights and deported are documented, legal visa and green card holders or documented and legal asylum seekers.
Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due process. That’s the entire part where the government is supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are currently skipping that part and essentially granting the executive branch unilateral authority to deport anyone to foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the words “illegal immigrant” or “MS-13”.
To make things even worse, these deportations are being overtly politically targeted. If you’re here on a legal visa and speak against this administration, they are making it clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend yourself.
You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly mistaken about who killed it.
The problem isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
The problem(s) are... - lack of due process (Constitution doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents) - leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from MD) - sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word - it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.
I wish people would stop trying to argue that the constitution affords due process to both legal and illegal residents like you are doing here. It does, but that’s missing the forest for the trees.
If all the government has to do is say “they’re here illegally” to get a free pass to do whatever they want to someone, then even legal residents don’t have rights. Due process is the entire mechanism behind which the government can establish something like illegal residency. As soon as you say Group A has the right to a trial and Group B doesn’t, calling someone a member of Group B is all it takes to subvert the entire legal process.
Isn't that what I just said? We already have the legal processes in place (based on the Constitution) to deport illegals in the correct (legal, safe, etc) way. The Trump administration is ignoring that existing process to score political points with their political base.
Couple that with their attempted demonization of the judicial branch and it's a recipe for a "first they came for the socialists..." situation.
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to necessarily single you out.
I just hear the argument that the constitution gives both illegal and legal residents that right and conservatives simply respond that illegals shouldn’t have rights and that’s that.
It needs to be hammered in that due process is necessary even to establish the legality of their residency in the first place, otherwise the government can disappear whoever they want as long as they invoke the illegal immigrant boogeyman.
Two wrongs don't make a right. I am for reducing illegal immigration, but I am firmly against how ICE/this admin is doing it and I feel that the states should be pushing back against the attacks on due process.
Nothing wrong with deporting illegal immigrants through legal channels that allow for due process and follow the rulings of immigration courts.
Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
> Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
I must have missed that, when did that happen?
It's been all over the news. Here's one incident:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/us/lopez-gomez-citizen-detain...
Thank you, I hadn’t come across this news story yet! Believe it or not, I just double checked and it’s not in my Apple News feed at all.
It sounds like there was a language barrier and he misidentified himself as being in the country illegally. That’s very unfortunate that he was detained for that misunderstanding.
No, BP lied.
You missed one of the biggest news stories that has been running for months across every available medium (television, radio, internet, even here on HN)?
You want to shed some light on how that's possible, especially in the context of you commenting on this thread?
I usually get my left leaning news stories from Apple News and my right leaning news from the Daily Wire. I didn’t see this story on any of my usual sources.
This is a perfectly reasonable response during normal presidential administrations. However, this administration is credibly[1] accused of avoiding due process via the current deportation process.
I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.
> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.
Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.
--- [1] -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
[2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-was-held...
1. It is being done without due process. 2. One high-profile mistake has already been made; and a man is now languishing in a Salvadoran prison. 3. The conditions of detention are often horrendous. I would support upholding their laws if they executed them a shred of human decency and empathy.
I don't think anyone has that position, so not sure what you're responding to.
Due process
Why is attacking a strawman bad?
a federal agency that doesn't follow the law should lose the protection of the law. Charge the ICE agents with attempted kidnapping of the immigrant and actual kidnapping of the judge.
I imagine they'll soon be putting a spin on George W Bush-era legal arguments about the applicability of Geneva Conventions on "non-uniformed combatants". In this case, if the ICE agents weren't uniformed at the time of arrest, they can't be considered agents of the federal government, and thus can't be subject to legal redress.
Does that mean they’ll just be trespassers that can be shot if they enter your property unannounced like a gang of hooligans?
It's not a coincidence that they're arresting openly unarmed people like student protesters and now judges.
2nd Amendment and self defense arguments could be argued if you shoot plainclothes officers in fear of your safety.
In theory, but how many of them are you going to shoot before they shoot back?
Not saying anyone should but in that case they are.
Um, I sense you're being ironic.
https://archive.is/QyBBU
Why are the people of Wisconsin taking this without a fight? Sit ins in local FBI branch offices and police stations are in order. Groups of protestors stand in front of police car parking lots—if the piggies can’t leave their sty, they can’t destroy our democracy.
What makes you think people aren't doing that? They are. You're wrong about that last bit, though.
AFAICT, the summary:
Judge (or the courthouse in some regard) assured immigrants-of-interest^ would not be detained in courthouse, to speed up legal proceedings and to try to ensure equitable justice was being served.
An immigrant was identified by ICE and the judge directed ICE somewhere and when the immigrant was not apprehended (maybe appeared in court for his 3 BATTERY misdemeanors), the FBI was called in to arrest the judge at the courthouse for obstruction. Immigrant of interest was apprehended.
That sound about right? Bueller? Bueller?
^ The immigrants of interest are of varied legal status, so I'll just say "of interest".
We don't know if that's correct because, unless it's surfaced in the last hour, we haven't seen anybody's account of what happened before the arrest (other than some high-level appointees tweeting).
Can't edit, but I've seen a few more detailed timelines that roughly correspond to the parent post.
The judge didn't want ICE screwing up her courtroom (as is her right), so she declined to allow them to serve the warrant in her court.
ICE went to her boss (different part of building).
Meanwhile, she concluded her hearing with the immigrant in question and then sent him down a private stairway to exit the building.
When ICE heard what she did, they had a warrant issued for her arrest, which was then served by the FBI. So, somebody did convince a local magistrate (not a full-blown judge) to issue that warrant.
My take (IANAL)... the judge was not in the wrong for decling to serve the initial warrant. But sending the guy down a private hallway was a dumb move. Was it a federal crime? Doesn't seem like it - a slap on the wrist from her boss probably should have been sufficient.
Really, just more of the Trump administration throwing their weight around and pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in the US.
I'm not very familiar with US laws, but why wouldn't the FBI agents likewise be arrested for interfering with the judge's court case?
Let's say I murder someone. I definitely did it, and there's plenty of evidence. What's stopping my hypothetical ICE buddy from showing up at my first court appearance, arresting me, and deporting me to a country without extradition by claiming that I am an "illegal immigrant"?
FBI != ICE. It was ICE that showed up to the courtroom. The FBI was only involved in the arrest after ICE was butt hurt and complained to daddy about the situation. ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens. That is why the FBI was involved to be able to make the arrest of a citizen
Ah, sorry, missed that detail. I should've said "why wouldn't the ICE agents likewise be arrested"
> ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens
ICE has the authority to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, does it not? That's why they were at the courtroom in the first place. If said citizen has zero interest in disproving ICE's belief that they aren't an illegal immigrant, who's going to stop ICE from arresting them?
If you're a citizen and get rounded up by ICE, you'd be a complete moron to not be protesting your citizenship and offering up proof of it. Whether they believe you or not is up to them, but I've never heard of a citizen that just went along with the deportation and never objecting about being a citizen. Where do you even come up with this idea on zero interest in disproving ICE?
Hell even Cheech & Chong have a bit/song about this "I was born in East LA".
Is this qhy everyone is worried about illegal immigrants comitting crimes? Because they have a get-out-of-jail-free?
I'm worried about illiteracy.
Even poor countries are mostly literate nowadays
https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
But not the one you're from, apparently.
Since the Judiciary seem to be the only ones pushing back against the Federal overreach it makes sense to them go after them first.
I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies.
This is America now, the land of the lawless and unjust. Prepare accordingly people, if they do not like what you are doing they will use their full power to stop you.
> I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies
They won't, or they would have done so already. Granted, I'm not an American so I might be seeing things the wrong way from the other side of the planet, but it has been 3 months already, enough time for Congress to at least be seen as doing something, anything.
Executive branch arrests of members of judiciary are not to be taken lightly. There are many ways to deal with these situations and this is extraordinarily far from normal. All you can do is diversify your US-based investments and get travel visas while you still can.
If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
One need not think this is good, just, or even lawful behavior by the FBI director, nor think this is in any way comparable to the behavior of Democratic administrations, to think it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you still can."
I think it is reasonable to be prepared and have options to leave when basic civil rights and rule of law are being systematically tested and weakened on behalf of the most powerful individual in the country, who had sworn to uphold them. I would say it is irresponsible to ignore or minimize the magnitude of changes in the US in the past 100 days.
I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.
> it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you still can.“
I’m inclined to think that people won’t get travel visas based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.
I used to think that about ex presidents. The times seem to have changed.
This is feeling increasingly like Germany circa 1936.
Would it not be better to have a peaceful, civil, lawful, separation of the two different Americas than for us to rigidly cling to an idea of a "United" States that no longer represents reality?
We're clearly living in two different realities already, brought about the partisan media (on both sides) willfully and deliberately misrepresenting reality to serve the interests of their shadowy trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates, amplified by the digital echo chambers brought about other secretive, manipulative trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates.
Is it seriously better to let the entire federal government collapse, leaving a power void in it's wake, than to have two Americas with freedom of movement, free trade, etc?
There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I voted for Oliver.
The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease the size and scope of government, particularly at the national level, and there's a lot less to argue about.
How would you pull this off when the split seems pretty divided between city/suburban and more rural areas? Does everybody have to airlift their goods everywhere?
There's no way to gerrymander a border that splits America into two geographically distinct countries with strong majority representation of whatever binary you think exists. By that I mean, there are communists in Kentucky and Proud Boys in Hawaii. If we seriously tried to split in two, it'd be like post-colonial India and Pakistan with worse weapons.
regardless, this idea is a distraction from the problem of wealth accumulation and the erosion of representative politics through private funding.
I'm all for corporate death penalty or forced divestiture for every company with a $1T+ market cap.
Fuck Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, and Berkshire Hathaway.
The more decentralization the better.
Maybe you're a fan of "Texit".
Good guess. I'm big on "marketplace of ideas", where each state has far greater control of public policy (which is overwhelmingly federalized right now). If California wants to show the world how good single-payer healthcare and UBI could be, let them. If New York wants to disarm every resident and send police around to confiscate firearms, let them. If Texas wants to ban abortion within the state for residents, let them. Let each state have an opportunity to show the world how good or bad their policy positions are. Diversity of policy + freedom of choice.
My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should be free to leave California (without fear of California retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).
We are not one identical set of people with one identical culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who cluster together, mainly around people like us.
Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local communities know what is best for themselves. The more decentralized, the better.
Sure, history is after all awash in examples of peaceful secessions where everybody agreed to not question each others' borders again. Korea, India, Algeria, the Soviet Union, Palestine..... /s
Intentionally misdirecting a federal investigation is a crime.[1][2] Pretty straightforward accusation.
"Our legal system provides methods for challenging the Government's right to ask questions—lying is not one of them." — Justice Harlan
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements [2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
Ok looks like they're 18 USC 1505 (obstruction) and 18 USC 1071 (harboring) charges.[1] Less straightforward.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
There was no "misdirecting" here. The judge truthfully told the agents they wouldn't be allowed to detain someone in the middle of a hearing without exceptional permission, at which point they all left, apparently didn't even bother to watch the courthouse doors, and upon their return had the judge arrested for not detaining a man it wasn't her job or legal authority to detain.
Per the criminal complaint, despite a federal warrant for Flores-Ruiz's arrest, Judge Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz through a non-public jury door to escape arrest.
She had no legal obligation to hold the man or have him exit in a particular way. The agents on the scene clearly agreed, or they wouldn't have left!
What does this have to do with this situation though?
I just read the complaint. What’s the problem? Was the administrative warrant invalid? According to the complaint, the agents didn’t enter the courtroom, but rather waited in the hall, where they were approached by the judge. If the judge directed the defendant to a back door never used by defendants not in custody, that’s clearly obstruction.
I'm fairly certain that a sitting judge who's a former president of the bar association knows the law better than you or me or Crack Patel and is more aware of the legal ramifications than random armchair lawyers.
From my personal armchair, this will go nowhere, the accusation has no basis. Something similar happened before and the charges were dropped. This was just an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. I hope the SCOTUS is happy with the monster they created.
This feels like a “break glass in case of emergency” kind of moment. Sure there are no details yet, but I’m trying to imagine details which would make me think “that arrest makes sense.” If I were in Milwaukee I’d be in the streets.
The copper that connects the alarm lever to the alarm system was sold for scrap 25 years ago
Generally speaking, if you lie to cops or other federal agents you can be arrested on a number of grounds, including obstruction of justice, interfering with an arrest, or concealment.
The dumb part about this is the judge sends people to jail ever year for doing exactly this. She knew what he was doing was illegal, she just didn't care.
[flagged]
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796024.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How so?
[flagged]
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Calling an illegal act heroic doesn't hold up in court though, we will hear what they say in court later.
Lying to cops (and FBI) is a crime. This judge knew it was illegal but did it anyways to let criminals get away.
This isn't controversial.
People are arrested in court every day. Why a judge would risk their career to prevent ICE from executing a warrant for someone's arrest confounds me.
Her career might get more difficult if witnesses stop showing up to court because they fear deportation that skips due process.
Because the judge appears to have basic morals
You're right, she should have let ICE illegally send the guy straight to an El Salvador dark site with no due process.
If you're as incensed about this as I am, you can call the Milwaukee County Republican Party HQ at 414-897-7202 and let them know what you think. They're inclusive and open to dialog per their page at https://www.mkegop.com/, so I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
The irony that the judge would likely have held you in contempt if you didn't obey one of their orders but seems to think it's ok to help people pursued by other law enforcement to skip out. The judge should know that even they aren't above the law and they can't override other judicial and administrative rulings just because they disagree with them.
> they disagree with them
All I see on the rationale is:
> if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Did I miss an alternative explanation from the judge?
What judge gave ICE the warrant?