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.

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.

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...

This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

This is a private act and involved a private hallway

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.

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.

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.

There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.

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.

The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.

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.

> (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.

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.

> it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.

Who is in power? What does our Constitution say? The executive branch is not granted absolute authority over immigration policy and the treatment of humans—citizens or otherwise. That is a Constitutional crisis.

I'm not going to quibble on any other bits of misdirection or failure to read other people's posts. Pick your side.

Stop spreading misinformation.

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.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...

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...

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 other side views illegal immigrants as demigods that require daily exalting, special treatment, and should be shelted from the law.

There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is virtuous and must be praised and protected at all costs.

  > if you consider illegal immigrants as people

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? _________________

  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?
  }

EDIT:

  > the bill of rights only applies to citizens

[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.

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.

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.

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.

As a properly documented immigrant i have no such feelings.

I've got great education, good job. Most of those poor illegals didn't have such luck, so if anything, the life is not fair to them, not to me.

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?

I mean, what’s next? If a judge doesn’t sign off on a warrant because they don’t find probable cause, is that obstructing justice?

In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.

What else would you put in the Occupation field at the end of the form?

That's no longer true (in practice),

https://apnews.com/article/irs-ice-immigration-enforcement-t... ("IRS acting commissioner is resigning over deal to send immigrants’ tax data to ICE, AP sources say")

I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.

> “Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School. “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”

> Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.” Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.

[...]

> In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

Granted, only that last one is actually the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are hundreds of Supreme Court cases testing individual pieces of the constitution, but as the professor said, for the most part they give all the same rights. MAGA has managed to make everyone doubt and argue over it. The party of "Constitution-lovers" flagrantly violating both the plain wording and decades of legal rulings on the Constitution.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-constitutional-ri...

The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.

As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]

This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!

This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...

> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection

[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.

[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections

Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's request since it was a public space and they didnt have a warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter. She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.

All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...

It does indeed look like she broke the law, but it was the right thing to do.

[1] https://www.mass.gov/news/commission-on-judicial-conduct-fil...

Sworn affidavit in the complaint against Judge Dugan.

Well that just say everything about the articles you've been reading, doesnt it?

>Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”) identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the United States

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...

I fully support him getting due process. But arresting him is part of that.

>It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status

Where did that happen?

He also was in court for battery. It seems like you're implying that since battery is not illegal entry that he couldn't be arrested. ??? If anything thats just another good reason not to aid his unlawful presence in the country.

A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be supremely objectionable in any democracy.

Kind of rich to be wagging your finger at a judge subverting the law considering what the counterparty has been doing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ("In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…")

"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken

For people _alleged_ to be among the worst elements of society. If they're that bad, try them, get your slam-dunk conviction, and jail them here.

Deportation does not annihilate a person, or shift them to another astral plane, it moves them a few dozen or hundred or thousand miles away. The counterfactual for 'if so-and-so was deported' is unknowable. They might have just walked back in the following week.

Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due process, for violating human rights, must be real.

> The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.

In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there is no rule of law and there is no remedy.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx-s1-4966725/a-decade-after-...

> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.

Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.

Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due process. That’s the entire part where the government is supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are currently skipping that part and essentially granting the executive branch unilateral authority to deport anyone to foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the words “illegal immigrant” or “MS-13”.

To make things even worse, these deportations are being overtly politically targeted. If you’re here on a legal visa and speak against this administration, they are making it clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend yourself.

You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly mistaken about who killed it.

The problem(s) are... - lack of due process (Constitution doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents) - leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from MD) - sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word - it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.

I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.

> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.

Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.

--- [1] -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf

[2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-was-held...

Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.

This is exactly what it looks like, nothing else.

The judge didn't want ICE screwing up her courtroom (as is her right), so she declined to allow them to serve the warrant in her court.

ICE went to her boss (different part of building).

Meanwhile, she concluded her hearing with the immigrant in question and then sent him down a private stairway to exit the building.

When ICE heard what she did, they had a warrant issued for her arrest, which was then served by the FBI. So, somebody did convince a local magistrate (not a full-blown judge) to issue that warrant.

My take (IANAL)... the judge was not in the wrong for decling to serve the initial warrant. But sending the guy down a private hallway was a dumb move. Was it a federal crime? Doesn't seem like it - a slap on the wrist from her boss probably should have been sufficient.

Really, just more of the Trump administration throwing their weight around and pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in the US.

> ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens

ICE has the authority to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, does it not? That's why they were at the courtroom in the first place. If said citizen has zero interest in disproving ICE's belief that they aren't an illegal immigrant, who's going to stop ICE from arresting them?

I’m inclined to think that people won’t get travel visas based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.

I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.

That is an extremely important distinction. Further, there are legitimate actions by the FBI in the cases of real judges and representatives in their public corruption prosecutions (see Kids for Cash). In this case, though, the charges are intended to intimidate. That is exactly what the director's tweet communicated and why it was deleted.

Oh my god, no, that never happened at all. This is a fever dream. How in the world and constitution Could Biden IMPEACH Trump when he wasn't a member of the House of Reps, which is the body that impeaches Presidents. Actually, Biden also couldn't arrest Trump, as federal arrests would be by the AG. Famously, Merrick Garland took forever to bring cahrges to Trump, and, unlike Trump did with his AGs, Biden never interfered.

Do you have any sources for this "famous" impeachment and arrests?

> I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of so many attempts on the same president.

Because no other President tried to start a violent coup when he lost the election! That is a good reason to arrest someone, which is included in your vague "variety of reasons".

My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should be free to leave California (without fear of California retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).

We are not one identical set of people with one identical culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who cluster together, mainly around people like us.

Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local communities know what is best for themselves. The more decentralized, the better.

Fuck Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, and Berkshire Hathaway.

The more decentralization the better.

Even when it's about tech or San Francisco.

The whole group is violating the law by overstaying visas or sneaking in the country, etc. Why is all of that OK to just let happen?