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?
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.
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.
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, 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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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)
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.
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.
"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
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Looks like I was wrong. For some reason I wasn't aware the that judge smuggled the subject out through the back door that goes through the judge's chambers, which typically judges avoid allowing the general public into, because it implies improper fraternization between a judge and someone involved in court cases.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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....
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.
> 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.
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).
>> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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...)
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?
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.
Readit News
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...
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Dead Comment
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”
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.
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.
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...
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.
False.
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?
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".
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.
This was definitely not them being helpful, but I'm incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
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)
This is a private act and involved a private hallway
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.
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.
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.)
Dead Comment
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.
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...Dead Comment
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.
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?"
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
> 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.
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.
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.
And the fact that they left and came back and someone they wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
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.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
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.
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
You cannot be held by law enforcement or the judiciary for being accused of a civil violation.
> 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.
There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.
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.
Deleted Comment
This is clearly facilitating escape and interfering with law enforcement. "Private" is the key word here.
Officers of the court have a higher responsibility to report the truth and cooperate with official processes than regular citizens.
The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
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.
" 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...
> (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/...
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
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.
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* 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.
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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 a world where we deport people without due process to subcontracted megaprisons in El Salvador “if” is doing a lot of work.
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.
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Edit: the charge isn't for refusing to enforce. It's for smuggling someone out in attempt to actively impede their arrest.
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-...
> “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 arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
> 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.
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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.
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.
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.
- 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.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...
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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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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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...)
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?
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?
are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they came here?