[HN Gopher] FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immig...
___________________________________________________________________
FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration
authorities
Author : eterps
Score : 880 points
Date : 2025-04-25 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| bko wrote:
| https://archive.is/QyBBU
| yesco wrote:
| https://archive.is/QyBBU
| underseacables wrote:
| This seems lite on facts. Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting
| judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to
| motivate me to even consider arrest. The only thing I can think
| of... Is, if the judge swore under oath, affidavit, or something
| like that, that she did not do something when in fact that she
| did. But even then...
|
| If Patel does not come back with some thing on that level or
| better, then this was a horrible farce.
| jldugger wrote:
| > Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to
| be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider
| arrest.
|
| This logic projects rationality onto an administration that
| does not merit such assumptions.
| mycatisblack wrote:
| Psychological projection is a very apt choice, thank you for
| that. I've read a lot of people referring to "sanewashing"
| when the media tries to explain the mechanism behind the
| madness but this captures it much better.
| jldugger wrote:
| It's a kind of fundamental error we make as humans: we
| judge the actions of other peoples by the standard of how
| we would behave, rather than the other person's past
| conduct or personality. And then we often work backwards
| from the action we see, guessing at what would have to be
| true for _us_ to act that way.
| jibal wrote:
| That's not what sanewashing is. It's when the media hides
| someone's insanity, often out of a misplaced notion of
| "balance". This applied especially to their failing to talk
| about all the crazy stuff Trump said at his rallies, and
| their constantly reframing of the unhinged things Trump
| said in much more sane terms.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/sanewashing
| mbrumlow wrote:
| I think it's more weird that the person being a "sitting
| judge" is any party of the equation. At the end of the day
| judges are just people. I would be more worried about a
| system that proceeded differently because they were a judge.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Judges are "just people" that make up the only one of three
| branches of government that seems interested in maintaining
| a system of checks and balances.
| crooked-v wrote:
| A judge who's literally in the middle of an official
| hearing is absolutely a special case.
| prepend wrote:
| I would hope it's not.
|
| I would like for cops to be more humane in arresting
| people and stop going to place of work to grab people in
| front of their coworkers. But this seems like just as
| rude when they go to a "regular" person's office in the
| middle of the day and arrest them.
|
| The argument is that if they notify the accused
| beforehand they may flee. But I don't buy this as many
| people will likely turn themselves in if notified. I'm
| guessing an ai could predict with 99% accuracy people who
| will self surrender and save everyone embarrassment (and
| money).
| jibal wrote:
| The discussion is about ICE arresting a sitting judge on
| a bogus political premise ... it has nothing to do with
| what you're talking about.
| prepend wrote:
| I'm talking about the reason why ICE was unable to arrest
| the suspect that is the nominal reason the FBI arrested
| this judge.
|
| It seems as if the facts that the suspect was in the
| judge's court and then not arrested by ICE at that point
| aren't contested. And that seems like a weird thing to
| happen.
| macinjosh wrote:
| His hearing was never called on to the record. try
| reading the article before pontificating per HN rules.
| jibal wrote:
| Nothing in the article even remotely supports your claim
| ... which isn't even relevant.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| This makes absolutely zero sense. She was arrested because
| of her actions (or rather, alleged inaction) in court, as a
| judge.
|
| She is not "just a person" in this case.
|
| I'm struggling with the dishonesty on grand display by some
| of the comments in this thread.
| jibal wrote:
| She ... her ... She
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| You're right. Bad habits are bad. Thanks!
| kbelder wrote:
| Wasn't the judge female?
| jibal wrote:
| You're misinterpreting our comments because you aren't
| aware that they originally used male pronouns and then
| fixed it when they saw my comment.
| mring33621 wrote:
| "I would be more worried about a system that proceeded
| differently because they were a president"
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| Our system has already proceeded differently based on
| peoples' statuses. Dozens of lawsuits were canned or
| dropped due to this election.
| jibal wrote:
| She would not have been arrested if she wasn't a sitting
| judge on a case involving an allegedly undocumented person.
| This is all about the Trump administration's ideology and
| whipping boy.
| acdha wrote:
| Source:
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
| trelane wrote:
| This is a much, much more informative source. Thanks!
| eterps wrote:
| > The New York Times observes that Kash Patel has now deleted his
| tweet (for unknown reasons) and adds that the charging documents
| are still not available.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lnnj...
| crypteasy wrote:
| Kash Patel tweeting in real-time indicates that he aware of it
| and at some-level involved with the arrest. It also shows that
| he sees this as a totally reasonable action and response - and
| wants the public to know about it.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Democratic states really need to start disallowing federal agents
| to operate within their borders and band together.
|
| Activate their respective national guards and make it happen.
|
| Yes, that means defying federal law. Yes that means exactly the
| consequences you want to draw from those actions.
|
| There is no other option at this point. The law is dead in the
| U.S.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You are asking for an armed standoff. Last time that happened
| in this country, college students were slaughtered by
| government forces.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| I didn't ask or wish for us to get this point. But this is
| it, right here. Either there are consequences for violating
| the rule of law or we keep sliding further and further into
| despotism.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| ... As opposed to the numerous civilians who are currently
| being killed by government forces without repercussion due to
| qualified immunity?
|
| Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity
| would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't
| been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist
| before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking
| at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain
| clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse
| than Kent State before they get better.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Depends a bit on your politics.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx-s1-4966725/a-decade-
| after-...
|
| > Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal
| agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As
| does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from
| Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
| derektank wrote:
| People also died during the occupation of the Malheur
| National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, which was an extension
| of the Bundy standoff. I think it's fair to say that these
| are kinds of showdowns between federal and state/local
| forces are fraught with danger for those involved.
| dlachausse wrote:
| Why are deportations of illegal immigrants bad? Come here
| legally and be properly vetted.
|
| The law is dead if states defy it by refusing to allow federal
| agents to enforce immigration law.
|
| This whole stance is absolute madness.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| I don't think anyone has that position, so not sure what
| you're responding to.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Nothing wrong with deporting illegal immigrants through legal
| channels that allow for due process and follow the rulings of
| immigration courts.
|
| Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or
| trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
| dlachausse wrote:
| > Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or
| trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
|
| I must have missed that, when did that happen?
| alistairSH wrote:
| It's been all over the news. Here's one incident:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/us/lopez-gomez-citizen-
| detain...
| dlachausse wrote:
| Thank you, I hadn't come across this news story yet!
| Believe it or not, I just double checked and it's not in
| my Apple News feed at all.
|
| It sounds like there was a language barrier and he
| misidentified himself as being in the country illegally.
| That's very unfortunate that he was detained for that
| misunderstanding.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| You missed one of the biggest news stories that has been
| running for months across every available medium
| (television, radio, internet, even here on HN)?
|
| You want to shed some light on how that's possible,
| especially in the context of you commenting on this
| thread?
| dlachausse wrote:
| I usually get my left leaning news stories from Apple
| News and my right leaning news from the Daily Wire. I
| didn't see this story on any of my usual sources.
| stouset wrote:
| Many of the people currently being stripped of their rights
| and deported are documented, legal visa and green card
| holders or documented and legal asylum seekers.
|
| Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due
| process. That's the _entire part_ where the government is
| supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are
| currently skipping that part and essentially granting the
| executive branch unilateral authority to deport _anyone_ to
| foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the
| words "illegal immigrant" or "MS-13".
|
| To make things even worse, these deportations are being
| overtly politically targeted. If you're here on a legal visa
| and speak against this administration, they are making it
| clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you
| without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend
| yourself.
|
| You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly
| mistaken about who killed it.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right. I am for reducing illegal
| immigration, but I am firmly against how ICE/this admin is
| doing it and I feel that the states should be pushing back
| against the attacks on due process.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The problem isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
|
| The problem(s) are... - lack of due process (Constitution
| doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents) -
| leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from
| MD) - sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted
| abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word -
| it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.
| stouset wrote:
| I wish people would stop trying to argue that the
| constitution affords due process to both legal and illegal
| residents like you are doing here. It _does_ , but that's
| missing the forest for the trees.
|
| If all the government has to do is say "they're here
| illegally" to get a free pass to do whatever they want to
| someone, then even legal residents don't have rights. Due
| process is the _entire mechanism_ behind which the
| government can establish something like illegal residency.
| As soon as you say Group A has the right to a trial and
| Group B doesn't, calling someone a member of Group B is all
| it takes to subvert the entire legal process.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Isn't that what I just said? We already have the legal
| processes in place (based on the Constitution) to deport
| illegals in the correct (legal, safe, etc) way. The Trump
| administration is ignoring that existing process to score
| political points with their political base.
|
| Couple that with their attempted demonization of the
| judicial branch and it's a recipe for a "first they came
| for the socialists..." situation.
| stouset wrote:
| Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to necessarily single you out.
|
| I just hear the argument that the constitution gives both
| illegal and legal residents that right and conservatives
| simply respond that illegals shouldn't have rights and
| that's that.
|
| It needs to be hammered in that due process is necessary
| even to establish the legality of their residency in the
| first place, otherwise the government can disappear
| whoever they want as long as they invoke the illegal
| immigrant boogeyman.
| kashunstva wrote:
| 1. It is being done without due process. 2. One high-profile
| mistake has already been made; and a man is now languishing
| in a Salvadoran prison. 3. The conditions of detention are
| often horrendous. I would support upholding their laws if
| they executed them a shred of human decency and empathy.
| mola wrote:
| Due process
| surfaceofthesun wrote:
| This is a perfectly reasonable response during normal
| presidential administrations. However, this administration is
| credibly[1] accused of avoiding due process via the current
| deportation process.
|
| I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court
| ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego
| Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.
|
| > The Government's argument, moreover, implies that it could
| deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens,
| without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a
| court can intervene.
|
| Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US
| legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can
| be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US
| citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy,
| but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in
| custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being
| born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll
| ultimately see the intersection at some point.
|
| --- [1] --
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
|
| [2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-
| was-held...
| kansface wrote:
| _No, absolutely not._ Trump would federalize the national guard
| as did Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson and charge the
| governors with treason. You advocate for de facto succession of
| the states - we settled that matter with blood last time. The
| next time will be far worse.
|
| The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The
| rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| When the federal government is actively hostile towards the
| states then the only recourse is going to be secession.
|
| > The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it.
| The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the
| fact.
|
| In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign
| country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply
| acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there
| is no rule of law and there is no remedy.
| prepend wrote:
| That's not really a viable recourse as it will result in
| that state being force ably retained in the union.
|
| I think a better remedy is to work within the laws of the
| country and to elect different federal representatives
| (president, senator, house representatives).
|
| Secession would definitely be worse for any state
| attempting it.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| How are you or anyone else going to remedy anything when
| you're half a world away, with no access to anyone let alone
| _anything_ outside your death camp?
|
| Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the
| consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due
| process, for violating human rights, must be real.
| kansface wrote:
| You advance civil war as the remedy for the hypothetical.
| I'm squarely with Lincoln on the matter.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| This is a real news story with a real arrest on a real
| judge.
|
| There is no hypothetical here.
| kansface wrote:
| Yes, but the judge has not been shipped to El Salvador in
| the middle of the night. Resolving the matter in court
| _is due process_.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to
| uphold the constitution. Willfully ignoring that oath whenever
| it suits them is not a faithful commission of their duties.
| While trampling on civil rights is a problem so is harboring
| known, convicted felons.
|
| If Wisteguens Charles had been deported in 2022, some of his
| future crimes wouldn't have happened. Instead we have people
| falling over themselves to have sympathy for the worst elements
| of society and ignoring the oath they made to uphold the law.
| That doesn't justify twisting the law into a tool for cruelty
| but is no better to arbitrarily ignore it either.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| No one was harboring anything. Also, have a quote:
|
| "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one
| spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is
| against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and
| oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be
| stopped at all." - H.L. Mencken
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to
| uphold the constitution.
|
| "...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite
| aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.)
| That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and
| consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave
| trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith
| invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating
| the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome
| political speech in the context of and under the pretext of
| immigration enforcement.
| thrance wrote:
| The contract has been violated, the federal government is
| already acting extra-constitutionally.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > sympathy for the worst elements of society
|
| For people _alleged_ to be among the worst elements of
| society. If they're that bad, try them, get your slam-dunk
| conviction, and jail them here.
|
| Deportation does not annihilate a person, or shift them to
| another astral plane, it moves them a few dozen or hundred or
| thousand miles away. The counterfactual for 'if so-and-so was
| deported' is unknowable. They might have just walked back in
| the following week.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge
| Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X, which he
| deleted moments after posting. The post accused Dugan of
| "intentionally misdirecting" federal agents who arrived at the
| courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before
| her in an unrelated proceeding.
|
| Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a
| century [1]. Personally I find the law itself repellent, and more
| often than not it is used to manufacture crimes out of thin air.
| But if the article is accurate, then nothing has changed - the
| law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the
| law.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
| kemayo wrote:
| > the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not
| above the law.
|
| We obviously don't know the details yet, but this case does
| sound like it's on the more frivolous end of such charges. If
| they _actually_ wanted to prosecute on it, they 'd need to
| convince another judge/jury that this judge didn't just make a
| mistake about where the targeted person was supposed to be
| right then. This kind of prosecution normally involves
| comparatively more concrete things -- say, someone claiming to
| have no idea about a transaction and then the feds pulling out
| their signature on a receipt.
|
| Of course, this _could_ be a case where the judge knew the
| person was in a waiting room because they 'd just talked to
| them there on camera, and then deliberately told the ICE agents
| they were on the other side of the courthouse while they were
| recording everything.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The thing that has changed is that 6 months ago, directing
| federal agents away from an illegal immigrant couldn't be
| rationalized by one's oath to the Constitution committing one
| to a belief like "I don't think anyone should be blackbagged
| and sent to foreign torture prisons for the rest of their lives
| without due process."
|
| Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that
| nothing has changed.
| Spivak wrote:
| Or just the simple "they're appearing in my courtroom I have
| an exclusive lock on them until I'm done."
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Or to put it another way, if the enforcement of a law cause
| an action contrary to the USA Constitution then just as
| before a judge should block that action; previously -
| presumably - when applying this law it was being done
| constitutionally.
|
| A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any
| insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to
| abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be
| supremely objectionable in any democracy.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Federal agents have been using this to charge people for
| nearly a century
|
| Using it on judges?
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?).
| The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions;
| not their professional actions as a judge.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level of
| discretion. At the very least it's going to be a PR problem
| if it is found to be unwarranted.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| > But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level
| of discretion.
|
| This creates an air of a two-tiered justice system. No
| one is above the law.
| teachrdan wrote:
| > Being a judge might just be circumstantial
| (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's
| personal actions; not their professional actions as a
| judge.
|
| I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but this response
| seems almost deliberately obtuse. This is clearly an act by
| the current administration to intimidate the judiciary. It
| is impossible to separate the unprecedented act of
| arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone on
| behalf of ICE from the administration's illegal (according
| to the Supreme Court) sending immigrants to a prison in El
| Salvador without due process.
| like_any_other wrote:
| > arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone
|
| If the article is accurate, he was arrested for making
| false statements in a personal capacity, not for failing
| to act.
| teachrdan wrote:
| You misread the article, or perhaps failed to see the
| update.
|
| This is not "making false statements in a personal
| capacity." The judge was arrested for failing to do ICE's
| job for them. That is, ICE wanted to arrest someone and
| the judge didn't stop them from walking away once ICE had
| left their courtroom.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| At the risk of being pedantic, all laws are used to manufacture
| crimes.
| kemayo wrote:
| > 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".
| mjburgess wrote:
| 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.
| kemayo wrote:
| 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.
| willis936 wrote:
| [flagged]
| BizarroLand wrote:
| For people who don't live in crazy town, this would be
| considered an oppressive action, arresting a judge for
| following procedure simply because it inconvenienced you.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| The judge wasn't arrested for following procedure. Read
| the complaint.
| bix6 wrote:
| Considering the ongoing due process deprivations this is
| the most concerning aspect to me. This is a sitting judge
| which is a significant escalation against the judiciary.
| ivape wrote:
| I was talking to someone earlier about how we in America,
| today, are not entitled to anything. Just in the last
| hundred years, people lived under secret police,
| dictators, state-controlled media, occupation, you name
| it. Hundreds of millions of people lived their _whole
| life_ under the KGB or Stasi. Hundreds of millions live
| in autocracy even today. Some straight up live in a
| warzone as we speak. The idea that "we" can't be going
| through this is beyond entitled. Nothing is guaranteed to
| us. We are being shown how fragile this all is by the
| universe.
| bix6 wrote:
| The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
|
| I expect America to be a beacon of light and I will fight
| for it. We all need to fight for it, especially the
| people who frequent this message board because we are
| among the most privileged and capable. It's disappointing
| to me how many of our tech leaders forget what made them
| great in the first place and abuse us all in the pursuit
| of personal wealth.
| Spivak wrote:
| If it turns autocratic then there's no discussion to be
| had. Judge will waterboarded in Gitmo and Trump is de-
| facto king. We are no longer a nation of laws, the USA is
| renamed to Trumpopolis and we all have to get government
| mandated orange spray tans.
|
| So assuming that doesn't happen, this is an action by a
| non-autocratic executive meant to have a chilling effect
| on low level judges who don't want to spend a few days in
| lockup just because. A knob that the executive is
| (mostly) allowed to turn but that is considered in poor
| taste if you wish to remain on good terms with the
| judiciary. The bar for arrest is really low and the
| courts decide if she committed a crime which she
| obviously didn't.
| trealira wrote:
| You seem to be quite blase about the possibility of
| autocracy. But yes, there is a risk that Trump becomes a
| dictator and we're no longer a nation of laws. It depends
| on how people like us react to consolidations of power
| like this, or the illegal impoundment, or cases like
| Kilmar Abrego Garcia's. The law only matters insofar as
| we and our representatives can enforce it.
| Spivak wrote:
| I'm not so much blase about it, more just nihilistic
| because I am the last person with any kind of power to
| stop it. I imagine most of HN falls into this bucket of
| people with no real political power or influence. My
| realistic option if it happens is to move.
| trealira wrote:
| I'm also making plans contingency plans to move, but I
| may not be able to. Individually, no, we don't have
| power, but if everyone actually protested, we would - the
| Ukrainian revolution[1] started out as just mass protests
| (Euromaidan), for instance. The problem is that not
| enough of us are doing it, maybe because too many people
| are apathetic, uninformed, or don't take the possibility
| of autocracy seriously.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
| adriand wrote:
| Protest! People power is the best way to resist autocracy
| especially in the early stages when resistance has a
| chance of success. Don't ignore the fact that protests
| are happening. Musk is fleeing Washington because the
| backlash successfully tanked Tesla. That's a big win
| right there!
|
| Consider just how much more inconvenient/shitty/tragic it
| will be for you and the people you know if you are indeed
| forced to move, as compared to successfully pushing back
| right now.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Autocracy comes in shades. Arresting judges who do things
| you don't like is yet another shade darker than we've
| seen so far... And things were already pretty dark.
| kemayo wrote:
| I'm not saying it's good, for sure. But I don't think
| it's a sign that the push for autocratic authoritarianism
| is _winning_ , either.
|
| My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid
| overreach that works to turn other arms of government
| against the executive. The judiciary tends to be prickly
| about its prerogatives, and Trump's far from the point
| where he can just push stuff through without some cover.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid
| overreach that works to turn other arms of government
| against the executive
|
| This is your take given the blatant corruption and clear
| constitutional violations of this administration? Sure,
| let's hope that norms and vibes save us against an
| executive ignoring due process. Those other branches
| don't even have a way to enforce anything; the executive
| are the ones who arrest people.
| kemayo wrote:
| The power of the executive is constrained, ultimately, by
| what people let them do. Including people inside the
| executive branch -- the people who're doing the
| arresting, transporting the prisoners, gunning down the
| protesters, etc. There's a lot of people involved who
| aren't committed to some authoritarian project, they're
| just... doing their job. _They_ can be swayed by vibes,
| and general unpopularity of the regime.
|
| The alternative to this view is either giving up or
| preparing for armed struggle. It's certainly possible
| that we could get there, but I don't think it's
| guaranteed yet.
|
| (I acknowledge that this position is quite the blend of
| optimism and cynicism.)
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Like this judge they're being ousted for the smallest
| pushback and are being replaced by project 2025 people,
| they even set up a system that you can apply to do
| exactly this. Trump (or Vance that is fully in with
| Thiel) will have full control over all agencies where all
| low level employees are on board with this Christo
| fascist takeover and the judiciary will be powerless.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| Dear god wake up before it's too late.
| pesus wrote:
| We are far past the point of any optimistic take like
| that being realistic.
| vuggamie wrote:
| The fact that HN is letting political posts stay on the
| front page after months of suppression shows that we are
| past the point of denying the authoritarian road we are
| on.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| We've been heading this direction with hardly a pause,
| let alone step back, since the '70s.
|
| Authoritarianism was _winning_ for 50+ years. Nobody with
| power meaningfully tried to stop it, and voters didn 't
| give enough of a shit to elect people who would. Where
| we're at now, is that it _won_.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Trump is calling for the Fed's Jerome Powell to be fired
| for not lying and saying everything will be fine as a
| result of tariffs. He pulled the security clearance of
| former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and anyone associated
| with him, for not lying about the result of his cyber
| security investigation of the 2020 election. He also
| pulled security clearances for political rivals including
| Biden, Harris, and Cheney as well as the Attorneys
| General involved in his civil case for fraud, which he
| lost and was ordered to pay $355 million.
|
| This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will
| use executive power to destroy you". There is no
| optimistic view of this.
| californical wrote:
| > incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully
| prosecuted
|
| Strongly agree. But, as I'm sure we both know, some other
| less-politically-connected people will be a bit more afraid
| of getting arrested on ridiculous grounds because of this.
| So, mission accomplished.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully
| prosecuted for this.
|
| But they can be successfully arrested. You can beat the rap
| but not the ride, etc.
|
| The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where
| jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be
| determined to move that closer.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| "You can beat the rap but not the ride" is phrased like
| the judge actually did anything wrong. That seems very
| doubtful. This administration has shown they are not
| entitled to the presumption that they are acting in good
| faith.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I don't think it implies the judge did anything wrong. If
| you're arrested, you're going to experience whatever the
| cops want to do to you, regardless of whether they can
| convict you of it.
|
| "You can beat the rap but not the ride" is an indictment
| of the cops, not the arrestee.
| prepend wrote:
| I don't know. It seems pretty unusual.
|
| Imagine that someone is being charged with shoplifting
| and literally at trial. Some other law enforcement agency
| shows up to the trial and wants to arrest them for
| jaywalking.
|
| It seems dysfunctional that the court would release them
| when they know a different law enforcement agency is
| literally in the building and wanting to arrest them.
|
| Is this how it works when the FBI comes to a county court
| looking for someone the county cops have in custody?
| epistasis wrote:
| Talk to the cops, not the judge who is in a proceeding?
| Go talk to the chief justice?
|
| The idea that the judge did _anything_ wrong here, based
| on the description given by the FBI themselves, is
| absolutely beyond the pale. There 's zero reason for ICE
| agents to barge into court and demand to take somebody.
|
| They _didn 't even leave one of the multiple agents in
| the courtroom_ to wait for the proceedings to end. To
| blame the judge at all in this requires making multiple
| logical and factual jumps that even the FBI did not put
| forward.
|
| Edit: the Trump administration has also been attacking
| the Catholic Charities of Milwaukee, which this judge
| used to run:
|
| > Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty
| attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of
| the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
|
| It seems pretty clear that this is a highly politically
| motivated arrest that has zero justification.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This reminds me of those cops arresting that nurse, over
| their attempts to illegally have blood drawn from an
| unconscious person.
| rolph wrote:
| LEO should have no say whatsoever regarding any medical
| proceedure.
|
| any one who keeps a hippocratic oath should not be
| performing procedures because they were "commanded" to,
| under pain of professional discreditation.
| prepend wrote:
| Oh, I'm certainly not endorsing the arrest of the judge.
|
| But wouldn't the bailiff hold the person?
|
| Is it typical for the FBI to lose a suspect in this
| manner? If so, this seems dysfunctional as if someone is
| in the court system then jurisdictions need to coordinate
| to just operate efficiently. It needs fixing so if ICE
| wants someone and a local courthouse has them in custody
| that ICE can pick them up.
|
| But arresting judging is not going to help fix this
| bureaucratic silliness.
| epistasis wrote:
| On what grounds would the bailiff hold the person?
|
| I'm not sure why the courthouse should hold someone for
| ICE, it wasn't even necessary here they still got the
| person. All they had to do was stay where they were.
| prepend wrote:
| That theres a federal warrant for his detention.
|
| I don't think this would be to hold them indefinitely.
| Just that they would have the suspect sit there and wait
| for the agents to return.
| epistasis wrote:
| What federal warrant was there? I don't see any mention
| of one but the best that ICE could issue is not a
| judicial warrant and does not meet most of the
| requirements under the 4th amendment for detainment of a
| person.
| nradov wrote:
| Generally state and local law enforcement and courts have
| no legal requirement to enforce most federal arrest
| warrants. This is due to our dual sovereignty system. Of
| course they also can't actively interfere with federal
| law enforcement or lie to federal officers, but it
| doesn't seem like that's what happened in this incident.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| No one is obligated to do ICE's dirty work for them. Even
| most totalitarian countries don't go that far.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > local courthouse has them in custody
|
| I think this is the disconnect you're seeing. He was not
| in custody: he was appearing before a judge.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| "You can't beat the ride" is saying that cops can punish
| you regardless of whether what you did was illegal.
| pc86 wrote:
| That's certainly one interpretation of it, and a pretty
| reasonable one. However, I typically interpret it as "if
| the police think you've committed a crime, you are going
| to jail and almost nothing is going to stop that." In
| that incredibly famous "Don't Talk to the Police"
| talk[0], the attorney asks the former-cop-turned-law-
| student if he's every been convinced not to arrest
| someone based on what the suspect said. Not a single time
| in his entire law enforcement career.
|
| This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing
| you can say will convince the police not to arrest you,
| and things you do say _can_ make things worse, your best
| bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets
| to that point.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I think we're all agreeing here. "You can't beat the
| ride" means that if the cops want to arrest you, lock you
| up, etc., you can't do anything about it. Doesn't matter
| if you're guilty, innocent, or just a random bystander,
| you're not going to stop them from taking you and doing
| whatever they want in the process.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Looking at the rest of the GP's comment:
|
| > The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where
| jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be
| determined to move that closer.
|
| I don't think they intended to imply that the judge did
| anything wrong. Rather, they're saying that _if you live
| in a world where the FBI or ICE or other official
| agencies can rough you up regardless of whether you 're
| guilty or innocent in the eyes of the law, disputes are
| going to get settled with violence_. After all, if the
| police are just going to make life difficult for you when
| you're arrested (the "ride") regardless of whether you're
| guilty in the eyes of the law (the "rap"), what's the
| logical response when you see a policeman coming to you?
| _You shoot them_. Don 't let them arrest you because
| you're gonna have a bad time anyway.
|
| Various marginalized communities (in both other countries
| and parts of the U.S.) already function that way -
| violence is an endemic part of how problems are solved.
| And going back to the threadstarter, that's _why_ police
| departments have instituted sanctuary city policies. They
| don 't want to get shot, and so they try to create an
| incentive structure where generally law-abiding (except
| for their immigration status) residents are unafraid to
| go to the police and help them catch actual criminals,
| rather than treating all police as the enemy.
| roughly wrote:
| ICE should've been reformed after Trump 1, but at this
| point we're going to need to unwind the whole
| organization when we get that man out of power. They've
| shown themselves to be pretty disinterested in laws,
| democracy, etc.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| This _is_ the reform of ICE. Trump was elected explicitly
| promising to do much more arrests and deportations of
| illegal immigrants, which is instantiated by having
| agents of the federal government do things like arrest
| and deport illegal immigrants on trial for unrelated
| crimes and actually charge citizens like this judge who
| interfere with this process with crimes, in order to
| induce them to not interfere with the arrest and
| deportation of illegal immigrants.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling.
| ICE being a proto secret police seems to be perceived
| already. The FBI now? There's question whether the ICE
| agents even had legal grounds to demand arrest
| regardless, whether they had a warrant, etc - and the
| facts established are pretty clearly not prosecutable. So
| this is pure intimidation, going after the judicial in
| what will likely be a flagrantly abusive way, yet doing
| it proudly and across the media - this is a shot across
| the bow telling judges at all levels they are next. And
| if there's anyone that knows being arrested changes your
| life forever, it's judges.
|
| I am not alarmist or hyperbolic by nature, and I don't
| say this lightly, but this is the next level and the
| escalation event that leads to the end game. The
| separation of powers is unraveling, and this is America's
| Sulla moment where the republic cracks. The question
| remains did the anti federalists bake enough stability
| into the constitution to ensure our first Sulla doesn't
| lead to Julius Caesar.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| The accused is accused of violating federal law, so it's
| normal that a federal agency would make the arrest. FBI
| seems to make more sense than DEA or ATF, no?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's not that the agency is wrong; it's that the agency
| would do it. This is the agency that since J Edgar Hoover
| has very carefully rebuilt its reputation and is very
| guarded in it. This act is entirely reminiscent of the
| political corruption of the FBI of old. That regression,
| that fast, is frightening.
|
| ICE being shady is by many people accepted, the DEA, ATF
| even. But the FBI has built itself a pretty strong
| reputation of integrity and professionalism, and
| resistance to political pressure and corruption. In some
| ways I at least viewed it as a firewall in law
| enforcement against this sort of stuff.
|
| Now who watches the watchers?
| ty6853 wrote:
| ICE, ATF, and CBP has always been the house for the dregs
| of federal LEO. It is for the people that fail to get
| into anything else.
|
| FBI is prestigious because they get the most qualified
| tyrants, who are smart enough to lie and deceive in ways
| that are airtight enough that those at ICE take the heat.
| The surprising thing here isn't the fact that they did
| it, but that they didn't do the normal way of digging or
| manufacturing something else to pin on the judge.
| lliamander wrote:
| Anecdotally, I have heard that the most trustworthy
| (perhaps only trustworthy) Federal law enforcement group
| is the US Marshalls.
| ty6853 wrote:
| US Marshalls IIRC is also the hardest to get into. If I
| recall they have like one day a year they accept
| applications and they all (only certain # accepted) get
| filled within seconds. (I'm probably embellishing but not
| by much).
| mlinhares wrote:
| For most of its life the FBI has been a hand of the
| federal government to quell dissent, this new perspective
| on the FBI being professional and non-partisan is pretty
| new.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Yes it is - and it was carefully cultured over decades. A
| reputation takes years to build and seconds to destroy.
| Mission accomplished.
| scoofy wrote:
| >The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
| houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
| searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
| Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported
| by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
| place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
| seized.
|
| You can't just arrest someone for nothing. You need
| probable cause. The question is whether a judge going
| about their day, doing nothing illegal, is probable
| cause. It's very likely not.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is certainly not the first autocratic act of the FBI
| under Patel. They have been thoroughly compromised and
| lost integrity even before this arrest.
| exe34 wrote:
| > ICE being a proto secret police
|
| people think the Musk administration is dumb and
| incompetent, but this is incredibly clever. ICE is the
| prefect cover for a new unaccountable secret police.
|
| anybody can be disappeared under the excuse of illegal
| immigration. if there's no due process, they can come for
| you and you have no recourse.
|
| plenty of MAGAs are so ready to shout "but they're
| criminals" - and they still don't understand that it
| could be them next.
| ajross wrote:
| > The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is
| chilling
|
| Even more frightening is that there was a federal judge
| that was willing to sign off on an _arrest warrant_ for a
| fellow jurist, based on what is clearly political
| showmanship (they didn 't need to arrest her at all to
| prosecute this crime!).
|
| There were a lot of Rubicons crossed today. This ends
| with opposition politicians in jail. Every time. And
| usually to some level of armed revolt around/preventing
| transfers of power.
| pc86 wrote:
| Can you explain how this action reasonably leads to
| gunfire?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| GP wasn't saying that one leads to another in a causal
| sense - simply that there are levels of dysfunction and
| this step is closer to the dysfunction of gunfire than
| the previous level.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| Exactly. One of these days somebody is going to use a gun
| to defend someone from these masked/unmarked/unwarranted
| kidnappings.
| Teever wrote:
| The first time someone uses an impossible to trace drone
| to take out a law enforcement officer in the US is going
| to change everything.
|
| The status quo has been that law enforcement can operate
| in an openly corrupt way with impunity because they can
| absolutely positively find someone who fights back.
|
| But all the pieces are there for people to fight back
| with equal impunity. The technology is mature and
| deployed and has been tested in Ukraine and Syria for
| several years now.
|
| It's just a matter of time before someone takes out a
| corrupt cop or ICE official and they get away away with
| it.
|
| It will have a chilling effect on this kind of behaviour.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Oi, bruv. Those are inside thoughts.
| Teever wrote:
| After Hinckley and especially after 9/11 I didn't think
| it would be possible for someone to successfully
| assassinate a US president with a firearm. I was shocked
| at how trivial it was for two people to almost pull that
| off last year with Trump. It was pure luck that it didn't
| happen, and I'm skeptical that the Secret Service has
| fundamentally changed how they protect people in a way
| that will permanently prevent even something as mundane
| as assassination by firearm let alone drones.
|
| If they can't stop someone from killing the president
| with a gun how could they possible stop someone from
| using a swarm of these to do the same?[0]
|
| And how can law enforcement protect themselves from
| something like this? Like honestly, what is a counter to
| this kind of attack that scales up to provide protection
| for the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers
| in America?
|
| The only thing I can see scale to that level is reform of
| behaviour. If people respond to abuse of authority with
| these kinds of tools then the only viable method of
| prevention is to stop abusing authority.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEwD7wppkJw
| rob74 wrote:
| Plus they obviously want to set an example: if you get in
| our way, bad things will happen to you.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Successful prosecution isn't needed, the harassment and
| incurring high legal fees will discourage a dozen other
| judges who might be less than boot-licklingly helpful to
| the autocrat.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm sure there will be plenty of attorneys willing to
| take on these cases pro bono.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That's the reality less equal animals have had to live
| under since basically forever.
|
| I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing that state
| and local authorities would have to view the feds the way
| we have to view all three because it brings our
| incentives more in alignment.
| adolph wrote:
| > It sounds like the judge basically said "you need
| permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing,
| go get it" and then didn't change anything about the
| process of their hearing while that permission was being
| obtained.
|
| This is untrue if the FBI affidavit is believed. The judge
| adjourned the case without speaking to the prosecuting
| attorney, which is a change to the process of the hearing
| regarding three counts of Battery-Domestic Abuse-Infliction
| of Physical Pain or Injury. Later that
| morning, Attorney B realized that FloresRuiz's case had
| never been called and asked the court about it.
| Attorney B learned that FloresRuiz's case had been
| adjourned. This happened without Attorney B's
| knowledge or participation, even though Attorney B was
| present in court to handle Flores-Ruiz's case on
| behalf of the state, and even though victims were
| present in the courtroom. A Victim Witness
| Specialist (VWS) employed by the Milwaukee County District
| Attorney's Office was present in Courtroom 615 on April 18,
| 2025. The VWS made contact with the victims in
| Flores-Ruiz's criminal case, who were also in court.
| The VWS was able to identify Flores-Ruiz based upon the
| victims' reactions to his presence in court. The VWS
| observed Judge DUGAN gesture towards Flores-Ruiz and
| an unknown Hispanic woman. [...] The VWS stated that
| Judge DUGAN then exited through the jury door with Flores-
| Ruiz and the Hispanic woman. The VWS was concerned
| because Flores-Ruiz's case had not yet been called,
| and the victims were waiting.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.1
| 1...
| pseudo0 wrote:
| That is not what is alleged in the complaint: https://stora
| ge.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
|
| The allegation is that the judge got upset that ICE was
| waiting outside the courtroom, sent the law enforcement
| officers to the chief judge's office, and then adjourned
| the hearing without notifying the prosecutor and snuck the
| man with a warrant out through a non-public door not
| normally used by defendants.
|
| If those facts are accurate, it sure sounds like
| obstruction. Judges have to obey the law just like everyone
| else.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You are basically saying that everybody has to help ICE
| for free and on occasion do the job of ICE for free.
| That's very totalitarian.
|
| At the same time, it is settled law that a police officer
| cannot be held liable for not protecting citizens or not
| arresting someone. So you have more obligations than a
| police officer yet getting none of the pay or legal
| protections
|
| Imagine you were a private tutor, in a private school on
| private land. ICE barges into the class trying to arrest
| one of the kids, but their paperwork is not in order so
| they promised to come back in 20 minutes
|
| Do you imagine it will be possible to continue with the
| lesson as normal after such an event?
|
| It is your discretion, when to start or stop a lesson,
| you work for yourself.
|
| Do you imagine you should be obligated as a teacher to
| continue the lesson as if nothing has happened?
|
| And if children want to leave to hold them by force?
|
| why is it your problem That ICE isn't competent and can't
| get their shit right the first time?
| pseudo0 wrote:
| ICE had a warrant. They were being courteous to the court
| by waiting until after the hearing instead of scooping
| the guy up on his way in.
|
| And no, you don't have to help ICE, you just can't
| obstruct them. Sneaking a suspect out a back door while
| you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction.
| frognumber wrote:
| You're downvoted because ICE did not have a warrant.
|
| ICE prints pieces of paper which they call
| "administrative warrants." Those were never reviewed by a
| judge and are internal ICE documents. An administrative
| warrant is not an actual warrant in any meaningful sense.
| It's a meaningful document (contrary to what you might
| read; it's not something one can just print on a laser
| printer and called it a day), but the "administrative"
| changes the meaning dramatically.
|
| It seems like there were plenty of errors all around, in
| this situation, both on the judge's side and on ICE's
| side. However, I can't imagine any of those rose to the
| level of criminal behavior.
|
| Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the
| police is textbook, classic obstruction, but that changes
| quite a bit when it's a government employee operating
| within their scope of duty. Even if they make a mistake.
|
| Schools don't want students scared to be there.
| Courtrooms want to count on cases not being settled by
| default because people are scared to show up. There is a
| valid, lawful reason for not permitting ICE to disrupt
| their government functions. That's doubly true when you
| can't count on ICE following the law and might ship
| someone off to El Salvador.
|
| Asking an LLM, whether or not the judge broke laws is
| ambiguous. It is unambiguous that they showed poor
| judgment, and there should probably be consequences.
| However, what's not ambiguous is that the consequences
| should be through judicial oversight mechanisms, and not
| the FBI arresting the judge.
|
| As a footnote, a judge not being able to rely on ICE
| following lawful orders significantly strengthens the
| government interest argument.
| ldoughty wrote:
| 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)
| mjburgess wrote:
| If this is all true, it still requires the judge be under
| some legal order to facilitate the deportation -- unless
| they have a warrant of the relevant type, the judge is
| under no such obligation. With a standard (administrative)
| warrant, ICE have no authority to demand the arrest.
| trothamel wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071
|
| That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone -
| judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.
| mjburgess wrote:
| That applies to warrants for arrest. The standard warrant
| ICE operate with is a _civil_ warrant, and does not
| confer any actual authority to arrest an individual.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I keep hearing over and over the ICE warrants aren't
| real.
|
| If they are arresting people using them and judges are
| recognizing them, they are real and the people demanding
| an arrest warrant are the sovereign citizen-tier people
| screaming at the sky wishing there was a different
| reality.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| There are multiple types of warrants. All types are
| "real", but they convey different authority and different
| requirements upon both the arrestee and the arresters.
|
| It is both rational and legal to insist that law
| enforcement stay within the bounds of the authority the
| specific type warrant they obtained. ICE civil warrants
| grant different authority than every-day federal arrest
| warrants. That ICE is abusing that authority is no reason
| to capitulate to it.
| mjburgess wrote:
| There are two different warrants. Ones issued by judges,
| which are "real" and ones signed by ICE supervisors which
| are little more than legal authorisation that this agent
| can go out and investigate a person -- even if they
| nevertheless attempt to arrest them.
| habinero wrote:
| ICE administrative warrants are essentially "I can do
| what I want" written in crayon.
|
| Their only real purpose is fooling the gullible into
| confusing them for real warrants.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| That's irrelevant.
|
| Interfering with an ICE apprehension is illegal. That's
| what this judge did, which is why the _FBI_ arrested her.
| ldoughty wrote:
| The violation is not that the judge _did not assist_, but
| that the judge took additional actions to ensure the
| defendant could access restricted areas they otherwise
| would have no right to be in so that they could get out
| of the building unseen.
|
| The judge was aware of the warrant and ensured the
| defendant remained in private areas so they could get out
| of the building.
|
| The FBI's argument is that her actions were unusual (a
| defendant being allowed into juror's corridors is highly
| unusual) and were only being taken explicitly to assist
| in evading ICE.
|
| As we've heard from many lawyers recently regarding
| ICE... You are not required to participate and assist.
| However, you can't take additional actions to directly
| interfere. Even loudly shouting "WHY IS ICE HERE?" is
| dangerous (you probably should shout a more generic
| police concern, like 'hey, police, is there a criminal
| nearby? should i hide?'
| nxobject wrote:
| Given that, it'll be interested to see how guidance on
| courthouse security on whether to let ICE in with
| administrative warrants is updated.
| ivape wrote:
| I'm amazed the immigrant actually even attended the court
| hearing in a climate like this. The person went to the
| court hearing in good faith. Anyway, probably less people
| will be going to court hearings now.
|
| ---
|
| Wisconsin is also a major money pit for Elon, for whatever
| reason it's a battleground for everything that's going on
| this country:
|
| Musk and his affiliated groups sunk $21 million into
| flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-
| musk...
|
| Musk gives away two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters
| in high profile judicial race:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-gives-away-
| two-1-milli...
|
| It appears the Right has a _thing_ for Wisconsin judges.
| lostdog wrote:
| The feds have been lying in their court filings for the
| past few months, so don't take their complaint at face
| value.
| mullingitover wrote:
| 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.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _wager dollars to donuts_
|
| Donuts at the local grocery store are $7/dozen. If you're
| somewhere with generally higher prices, this bet might not
| be as lopsided as it's traditionally meant to be.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You'll be happy to know, then, that the judge was released
| on her own recognizance.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| 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.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _" elsewhere"_ here means "to the correct location they
| should have gone in the first place, to give notice of, and
| gain approval for, their actions"
|
| it's a pretty important detail
| dataflow wrote:
| > it's a pretty important detail
|
| It doesn't seem like it matters here. Per 18 USC SS1071:
|
| _Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest
| a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions
| of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his
| discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the
| fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the
| apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this
| title or imprisoned._
|
| Unless you're arguing that the facts are misrepresented,
| or that the law is somehow unconstitutional, this seems
| pretty slam-dunk, no? The judge seems to have
| deliberately escorted the defendant to the jury room for
| the purpose of letting them hide/escape arrest. That's
| all there seems to be to it.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/25/us/judgedu
| gan...
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "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
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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.
| euroderf wrote:
| Going from "redirect blame" to "make an arrest" is a
| significant escalation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's the main tactic this administration uses, isn't it?
| Double down, never admit fault, get into a giant trade war
| with the rest of the world...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > 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.
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| while funny, there is a reason for federals coming in pairs
| so they can act as a witness for the other with things like
| lying to a federal officer.
|
| this doesn't sound like the plural just meant 2 here, so it
| really does come across as Keystone Cops level of falling
| over themselves to not leave behind someone to keep an eye
| on their subject.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'd bet on malicious compliance so they can show that
| their good and honest work is being impeded by elitist
| judges.
| csomar wrote:
| > The question is if the judge should have held the man
|
| This is bananas. The judges (or anyone else for that matter)
| should not be able to hold this man (or any other man)
| without an arrest warrant.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| ICE doesn't issue warrants, because they can't.
| Immingration matters aren't criminal, and ICE are not law
| enforcement, though they certainly love to cosplay as some
| sort of mix between law enforcement and military.
|
| That's why ICE has to "ask" law enforcement to hold on to
| someone who gets arrested on another matter, and why plenty
| of police departments tell them to go pound sand.
| prepend wrote:
| ICE does issue warrants [0].
|
| Some immigration matters are criminal. There are specific
| immigration law enforcement officers that execute
| warrants.
|
| Maybe what you mean is that ICE warrants grant different
| authorities than an arrest warrant (ie, can't enter
| private property to execute).
|
| [0] https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/ic
| e_warra... https://www.ilrc.org/resources/annotated-ice-
| administrative-...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Immigration violations are not criminal matters, they're
| civil. Further, they're federal, not state.
|
| You cannot be held by law enforcement or the judiciary for
| being _accused_ of a civil violation.
| prepend wrote:
| I thought they were misdemeanor crimes [0] punishable by
| jail time.
|
| So they are crimes, but not huge.
|
| I'm not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but I
| thought that local law enforcement can certainly hold
| someone charged with a federal crime. Eg, if someone
| commits the federal crime of kidnapping, then local cops
| can detain that person until transferred to FBI.
|
| [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325
| analog31 wrote:
| For all the judge could have known, the agents weren't coming
| back.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| To your question - A state judge cannot be required to hold
| someone on behalf of federal agents. That's federalism 101
| and settled law.
|
| https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--
| h...
| 542354234235 wrote:
| But judges can be arrested for doing nothing illegal to
| intimidate and bully them into not acting based on settled
| law.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The claim is different. Agents with an arrest warrant waited
| in the public hallway, as asked and required by the judges.
|
| The judge skipped the hearing for the target and [directed]
| them out a private back door in an attempt to prevent arrest,
| leading to a foot chase before apprehension.
|
| Edit: directed, not escorted
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That information came out after my comment, and also long
| after the edit window. The updated FBI claim is certainly
| more damning for the judge (actively impeding their
| efforts).
| armchairhacker wrote:
| This sounds like a case in Trump's first term. I don't condone
| the arrest, but to provide context:
|
| > In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley
| MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade
| detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a
| courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly
| unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of
| justice...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/shelley-joseph-immigra...
| (https://archive.ph/gByeV)
|
| EDIT: Although Shelly Joseph wasn't arrested, only charged.
| kemayo wrote:
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| According to a "sources say" quote from a Milwaukee Journal
| Sentinel article published two days ago:
|
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice
| -...
|
| > _Sources say Dugan didn 't hide the defendant and his
| attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have
| said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk
| with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair
| to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a
| private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor._
| Centigonal wrote:
| What would have been the right move for Dugan here, according
| to ICE?
|
| Can a judge legally detain a defendant after a pre-trial
| hearing on the basis of "there are some agents asking about you
| for unrelated reasons?"
| crooked-v wrote:
| It's not related to legal proceedings, so, no.
|
| The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally
| doing it anyway.
| eterps wrote:
| My thoughts exactly.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| 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.
| rolph wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| According to ICE? "Comply with whatever we say". It's obvious
| that the current admin is operating autocratically, outside
| the law.
| lliamander wrote:
| The right move would have been simply to _not help_ Flores-
| Ruiz evade ICE.
| mulmen wrote:
| _Allegedly_.
| lliamander wrote:
| Certainly.
| marcusverus wrote:
| He showed the defendant out a side door to help him avoid
| ICE, who were waiting at the main door.
|
| > What would have been the right move for Dugan here,
| according to ICE?
|
| The right move was to not violate the law by taking steps
| which were intended to help the defendant evade ICE.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I was not aware of this accusation when I made my original
| comment
|
| >Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is
| accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her
| courtroom through the jury door last week after learning
| that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The
| man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after
| agents chased him on foot.
|
| This might change the calculus.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| 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.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that 's just how the militia types tend to lean_
|
| So far. I don't think you'd have trouble recruiting an
| educated, well-regulated militia from folks who believe in
| the rule of law.
| exe34 wrote:
| you'd be declared an illegal immigrant and removed to
| hotel salvador pretty quickly at this point. The
| orangefuhrer has already said he's coming after the
| "homegrown" next.
| goatlover wrote:
| At what point will Democratic state governors and
| legislatures have enough of autocratic takeover? States
| have their own National Guard.
| dylan604 wrote:
| While I'm not familiar with all 50 governors, I'm
| wondering if there might not be some Republican governors
| that think things have gone too far as well. Being a
| Republican does not mean you are in favor of autocracy.
| It just looks like that right now because nobody is
| sticking their necks out, but I'm holding onto hope that
| if it _does_ get to that point, further resistance might
| come out.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want a State Guard, which might be a little
| harder to federalize than the National Guard
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| we'll see if/when the lawsuits lauched against the
| administration is ignored by the administration. But no
| one wants a civil war. No one would win here except maybe
| China/Russia.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| and something tells me the side that spent decades
| demonizing firearm ownership probably can't win an arms
| race against their ideological opponents.
| dylan604 wrote:
| didn't think of that salient detail
| sophacles wrote:
| What a strange set of ideas presented in such a small
| sentence fragment.
|
| * Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want
| some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
|
| * Guns are very easy to obtain, the "arms race" is a trip
| to the local sporting goods store. Sure, the weapon may
| not be super tacti-cool with a bunch of skulls and shit,
| but I'm pretty sure that even without all the virtue
| signalling decals it does the primary job just fine.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Do you think those that have been opposed to current gun
| laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of their
| newly acquired weapon as opposed to those that have been
| collecting them for years?
|
| This just made up militia will be woefully untrained to
| handle anything. At least those that have their meeting
| in the woods practice to whatever extent they do, but
| that would be so much more than this recent trip to the
| sporting goods store.
|
| Whether you want to quibble over the words demonize,
| there are a lot of people that do not interpret the
| constitution to mean that just any ol' body can own a gun
| to the extent we allow today. The well regulated militia
| is part of that amendment, and gets left out quite
| conveniently. The local police departments are closer to
| the idea of a well regulated militia. The national guard
| are even closer of a match to me. The guys that run
| around in the woods believe they are fulfilling that
| role, but nobody really thinks they are well regulated
| other than whatever rules they choose to operate.
|
| Personally, I do not think that what we have today with
| the NRA and what not is what the framers had in mind. So
| you complain about demonizing being wrong and clearly on
| one end of the spectrum. I think that the NRA refusing
| any limits on guns is clearly the other end of that
| spectrum
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do you think those that have been opposed to current
| gun laws would be nearly as proficient at the use of
| their newly acquired weapon_
|
| I don't own a gun and I'm a better shot than half those
| militia types. The purpose of the guns isn't to shoot
| them, it's to deter. By the time it's WACO, one side's
| marksmanship isn't really relevant.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You can have 20 assault style weapons in your gun safe,
| but if that's where they are they do not act as a
| deterrent. They are only a deterrent when they are ready
| to be used. The purpose of a gun is to be shot. Confusing
| this is just some very excessive bending of logic. The
| intent of the shooter is an entirely different matter.
| They were not manufactured and then sold/purchased just
| to be in a display case. That's just what someone decided
| to with their purchase.
| kilna wrote:
| In fact, If you have 20 assault rifles in your safe you
| are a target for 20 or so revolutionaries. Oligarchs
| aside, most people of the hoarding political persuasion
| mistrust others and couldn't social engineer their way
| out of a paper bag.
| sophacles wrote:
| I've taught people who had never held a gun to shoot. It
| takes an hour or two to get them to the point where they
| can get a nice grouping at a reasonable distance.
|
| I haven't owned a gun in 20 years (it's not my style). I
| go shooting every 3-4 years with some gun nut buddies who
| have big arsenals and go shooting often. I am a better
| shot than many of them.
|
| Armies have won wars while being comprised mostly of
| conscripted people who hadn't held a gun prior to the
| conflict breaking out.
|
| Point being - effective use of guns does not require deep
| proficiency nor long term regular training.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the safety
| of a gun range is one thing. It's a different thing to do
| that when it's a person in front on you. It's also a
| totally different thing when that person in front of you
| is persons plural in the form of a trained opposing force
| and the bullets are coming at you. It takes training to
| quell that fear and be able to react in a manner that
| does not end with you full of lead.
|
| When I've discussed training in this thread in other
| comments, this is what I was considering. Not target
| practice. Not being able reload a weapon. Specifically
| about mentally holding it together to not freeze, or even
| loose your ability to aim at something not a paper target
| in a gun range.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Being able to shoot a gun at a paper target in the
| safety of a gun range is one thing. It 's a different
| thing to do that when it's a person in front on you_
|
| Sure. I'm saying that the physical condition of most
| "militia" members doesn't make for a threatening force.
|
| In any case, if America went low-burn civil war, you'd
| pay the drug gangs to do your dirty work. The reason
| that's the 20th century playbook is it works.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > They just want some laws preventing criminals from
| owning guns.
|
| Criminals - you mean like illegal immigrants and those
| who aid and abet them?
| ty6853 wrote:
| The courts are a bit split on this. Recently in illinois
| a judge found an illegal immigrant is not a prohibited
| person if they meet some standard of community
| ties/integration, although I've totally forgotten what
| criteria the judge used.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Remember that the McDonald case incorporated the second
| amendment to the states so the judges have to decide
| these sorts of questions for people who are out of
| status.
| sophacles wrote:
| I mean criminals: people convicted of a crime for which
| one of the punishments is revocation of gun ownership
| rights.
|
| The important word here is _convicted_. As we were all
| taught in elementary school - there is a process required
| by the constitution in which a person goes to a special
| meeting (called a trial) where a whole bunch of people
| examine evidence and ask a lot of questions about that
| evidence to determine if a person is a criminal. If the
| decisions is they are a criminal, then they have been
| convicted. HTH!
| ty6853 wrote:
| That's not true.
|
| You do not need to be convicted, you do not even need to
| be charged.
|
| Since this is a hot topic, look at Abrego Garcia. His
| wife filed a restraining order. The initial order was
| slightly different than the temporary order 3 days later,
| which added one thing -- _surrendering any firearms_
| (this is bog standard, they do this in Maryland even for
| citizens). No matter that she did not even bother to show
| up for the adversarial final order, so he had his gun
| rights taken totally ex-parte without even a criminal
| charge or a fully adjudicated civil order nor any chance
| to face his accuser wife. Even david lettermen had his
| gun rights temporarily revoked because a woman in another
| state claimed he was harassing through her TV via secret
| messages in his television program [].
|
| But that's not all, you can totally have gun rights taken
| away without any civil or criminal process. If you use
| illegal drugs, you cannot own weapons either, that is
| established without any due process to decide if you use
| or not, simply putting down you use marijuana on a 4473
| will block a sale as will simply owning a marijuana card
| whether you use marijuana or not.
|
| [] http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/Nestler_Letterman_TRO.pdf
| Ancapistani wrote:
| This is exactly my point, and what I've been driving at
| in this thread.
|
| This could not possibly be a concern based on abrogation
| of due process - because there have been many similar due
| process violations concerning firearms, and I've never
| seen a single article submitted here about those.
|
| Frankly, I don't see how immigration is any more relevant
| to this site than civil rights.
| dylan604 wrote:
| first knee jerk type answer is that there are a lot of
| people in the tech industry that are here on some sort of
| visa and are not citizens which means that they very much
| are subject to any changes to immigration enforcement.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| OK - so based on this, you're 100% opposed to "red-flag
| laws"/"extreme risk protection orders", right?
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| >* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want
| some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
|
| Don't gaslight us. Democrats have been pushing civilian
| disarmament HARD recently.
|
| Restricted magazine sizes, requiring all transfers to go
| through a FFL, basic features bans, permits to purchase,
| restricting ammo purchases to FFLs raising prices, and
| now repeated attempts at semi-auto bans.
|
| This isn't focused on criminals, it's trying to
| discourage firearm ownership in general. When states ban
| the federal government marksmanship program from shipping
| firearms to civilians AFTER they have already been
| background checked by a federal agency it's clear there
| is no attempt to stop criminals.
| Teever wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/ is a thing.
|
| Lots of people with a variety of political stripes own guns
| and are just less vocal about it.
| mindslight wrote:
| We've got National Guards under the command of state
| governors for a reason. Just sayin'.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We've got National Guards under the command of state
| governors for a reason.
|
| Yes, but that reason is not for rebellion against the
| federal government, which is why their equipment and
| training is governed by the federal government and the
| President can by fiat order them into federal service at
| which point he is the C-in-C, not the government.
|
| Most states do also have their own non-federal reserve
| military force in additionto their National Guard, but
| those tend to be tiny and not organized for independent
| operations (e.g., the ~900 strength California State [not
| National] Guard.)
| gosub100 wrote:
| Why don't you organize one?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why don 't you organize one?_
|
| I live in Wyoming. Our courts aren't being attacked.
|
| I'd absolutely be open to lending material support to
| anyone looking to lawfully organise something like this in
| their community, however.
| ty6853 wrote:
| This is basically what Ammon Bundy did, and most of the
| US hates him for it. The federal government tried many
| times to jail him but ultimately he was found innocent
| everytime. Finally they managed to get him by a friendly
| judge who had a husband high up in the BLM, awarding an
| ungodly high lawsuit when he helped an innocent mother
| get her baby back by summonsing his protest-militia to
| protest a hospital that conspired to have the baby taken
| by child services.
|
| Seriously, listen to some videos of Ammon Bundy actually
| speak (he is pro immigration rights as well, despite the
| 'far-right' label). Not what you hear from the media or
| others or under the influence of a political agenda. Most
| of what he says is 99% in line with your thought process
| here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _most of the US hates him for it_
|
| Invisible enemies are hard to rally against.
| dmoy wrote:
| It is illegal in all 50 states to organize a militia.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I know what study you are reading and the case it uses to
| argue that is highly flawed.
| dmoy wrote:
| This is the one I remember from years ago:
|
| https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-
| content/uploads/sites...
|
| I'm not sure what case you mean
| dmoy wrote:
| Are you talking about a federal case? That I don't know
| anything about, this is mostly just state law stuff
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It is legal in all 50 states to _organize_ a militia, it
| is illegal in all 50 states to do certain things as a
| militia including (the exact rules vary by state) things
| like participating in civil disorder, planning to
| participate in civil disorder, training for sabotage or
| guerilla warfare, etc.
|
| Of course, since the purpose being suggested here is
| literally the purported urgent need _to engage in armed
| rebellion against federal authorities_ , the concern that
| organizing a militia for that purpose would be
| constrained by merely "organizing a militia" being
| illegal is a bit odd. Waging war against the federal
| government, or conspiring to do so, is--even if one
| argues that it is morally justified by the government
| violating its Constitutional constraints--both clearly
| illegal and likely to be subject to the absolute maximum
| sanction. The legality of _organizing a militia_ in
| general hardly makes a difference, either to the legal or
| practical risk anyone undertaking such a venture would
| face.
| dmoy wrote:
| Fair, I should have explicitly stated "it's illegal in
| all 50 states to organize a militia for this purpose"
|
| (Edit: also if we're being pedantic about it, >25 states
| have laws against forming private militias at all)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| 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.
| senderista wrote:
| I guess you weren't there for the CHOP, where there were
| masked antifa wandering around with AR-15s and intimidating
| business owners.
| djeastm wrote:
| Maybe those groups are better at disguising themselves.
| spamizbad wrote:
| This to me seems like a completely lawful act on the part of
| the judge?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Umm... why didn't the agents just wait patiently until the
| proceeding was done?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't think I've ever encountered a CBP employee I'd
| describe as "patient".
| rolph wrote:
| LEOs are trained to "be the one in control"
| duxup wrote:
| It does seem like they could have gotten what they wanted by
| just trying to do their job a little more such as, waiting.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| They did, read the complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.c
| om/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
|
| The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public
| hallway outside the courtroom.
| mmooss wrote:
| One side alleges that, to be clear. We haven't heard the
| judge's version, heard from witnesses, seen evidence, nor
| had it adjudicated.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| She was convicted for lying, not for the trading.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That was exactly what I meant by "the feds don't go away
| empty handed".
|
| She didn't actually do the thing they went after her for so
| they found some checkbox to nab her on rather than admit
| defeat.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| "respect muh authoriah"
|
| ICE officers seem like the ones that couldn't make it through
| police academy and had no other career prospects. Much like
| the average HOA, these are people who relish in undeserved
| power they didn't have to earn.
|
| As a society, we owe it to ourselves to make sure people whom
| we give a lot of power to actually work and earn it.
| euroderf wrote:
| 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.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >you can't lie to the feds
|
| We really need a court case or law passed that says a stalked
| animal has the right to run (lie) without further punishment
| resulting from the act of running (lying). Social Contract(tm),
| 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.
| tedivm wrote:
| The ICE agents didn't have a warrant, so the judge was under no
| legal obligation to say anything to them at all.
| dionian wrote:
| according to this story, they had a warrant: https://www.json
| line.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice-...
| kabdib wrote:
| note that ICE often attempts to treat administrative
| warrants as judicial warrants, and it's unclear from this
| reporting what they actually had
|
| [edit: it was an administrative warrant, not an _actual_
| judicial warrant]
| Sharlin wrote:
| So just as valid as a piece of scratch paper with
| "WARANT" scrawled on it with a crayon.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Writing "WARANT" in crayon on a piece of scratch paper
| will not give you the authority to detain someone who is
| in the country illegally. It is my understanding that a
| valid ICE administrative warrant gives an ICE officer the
| authority to detain the person named on the warrant. And
| in cases like the one in question where ICE has ample
| time to get the warrant, it is my understanding that an
| ICE officer without the warrant would not have the
| authority to detain someone who is in the country
| illegally.
|
| What the ICE warrant doesn't give is the authority to
| conduct a search of private property without permission.
| Which the agents in this case were not attempting to do.
| tedivm wrote:
| According to the story you linked, they claim they had a
| warrant but the judge and other staff say the warrant was
| never presented.
|
| Further, ICE has a habit of lying about this. They refer to
| the documents they write as "administrative warrants",
| which are not real judicial warrants and have no legal
| standing at all. So when ICE says they presented a warrant
| it's important to dig in and see if it was one of their
| fake ones.
|
| Here's an article about that last point from the same
| source you used:
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-
| is...
| silisili wrote:
| This leaves out a couple important things, at least from the
| complaint -
|
| 1 - ICE never entered the courtroom or interrupted. They stayed
| outside the room, which is public, but the judge didn't like
| this and sent them away.
|
| 2 - The judge, having learned the person in her courtroom was
| the target, instructed him to leave through a private, jury
| door.
|
| These are from the complaint, so cannot be taken as fact,
| either.
| mempko wrote:
| If true, the judge is a hero
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| How so?
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| Because good people don't help nazis, they resist them.
| Jensson wrote:
| Calling an illegal act heroic doesn't hold up in court
| though, we will hear what they say in court later.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| For smuggling a domestic abuser out of her courtroom?
| Interesting.
| duxup wrote:
| Doesn't seem to make sense that ICE should be able to interrupt
| a preceding at will.
|
| And the fact that they left and came back and someone they
| wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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.
| adolph wrote:
| > 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.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed
| them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th
| floor"
|
| This is clearly facilitating escape and interfering with law
| enforcement. "Private" is the key word here.
| timewizard wrote:
| > not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving
| them the wrong information about their location.
|
| Officers of the court have a higher responsibility to report
| the truth and cooperate with official processes than regular
| citizens.
| ajross wrote:
| > 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.
| gazebo64 wrote:
| > 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.
| ajross wrote:
| Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and would
| have to be facts tried before a jury anyway). ICE _does not
| have the power_ to decide on whether someone is a
| "domestic abuser" or whatever. They were just serving a
| warrant.
|
| But more: What if the suspect was in court on an
| immigration concern? The judge would have been empowered to
| enjoin the deportation, no? You agree, right? That's what
| courts do? In which case, wouldn't the _ICE agents_ be the
| ones guilty of "obstruction" here?
|
| The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower
| individuals to make decisions about justice, ever. You try
| things before courts, and appeal, and eventually get to a
| resolution.
|
| Trying to do anything else leads to exactly where we are
| here, where one arm of government is performatively
| arresting members of another for baldly partisan reasons.
| gazebo64 wrote:
| >Hold up, all that stuff is completely unattested (and
| would have to be facts tried before a jury anyway).
|
| I mean, it was going to be attested until the judge
| decided to adjourn his proceedings and push him out the
| back door to avoid ICE. He's charged with domestic abuse.
|
| >But more: What if the suspect was in court on an
| immigration concern?
|
| Based on my limited understanding of immigration law I'd
| agree that there's probably a valid mechanism for the
| judge to legally intervene in the deportation to let the
| immigration concern be addressed -- but that isn't what
| happened here. The defendant was there for a criminal
| charge of domestic abuse and the judge essentially
| canceled his hearing and snuck him out the back to
| prevent ICE from executing a legal order to deport
| someone who is here illegally and has already been
| deported once before.
|
| >The point of the Rule of Law is that you don't empower
| individuals to make decisions about justice, ever.
|
| That's why the judge is being arrested, because she as an
| individual skirted legal process to interrupt a lawful
| deportation (allegedly).
| Supermancho wrote:
| AFAICT, the summary:
|
| Judge (or the courthouse in some regard) assured immigrants-of-
| interest^ would not be detained in courthouse, to speed up legal
| proceedings and to try to ensure equitable justice was being
| served.
|
| An immigrant was identified by ICE and the judge directed ICE
| _somewhere_ and when the immigrant was not apprehended (maybe
| appeared in court for his 3 BATTERY misdemeanors), the FBI was
| called in to arrest the judge at the courthouse for obstruction.
| Immigrant of interest was apprehended.
|
| That sound about right? Bueller? Bueller?
|
| ^ The immigrants of interest are of varied legal status, so I'll
| just say "of interest".
| alistairSH wrote:
| We don't know if that's correct because, unless it's surfaced
| in the last hour, we haven't seen anybody's account of what
| happened before the arrest (other than some high-level
| appointees tweeting).
| alistairSH wrote:
| Can't edit, but I've seen a few more detailed timelines that
| roughly correspond to the parent post.
|
| The judge didn't want ICE screwing up her courtroom (as is
| her right), so she declined to allow them to serve the
| warrant in her court.
|
| ICE went to her boss (different part of building).
|
| Meanwhile, she concluded her hearing with the immigrant in
| question and then sent him down a private stairway to exit
| the building.
|
| When ICE heard what she did, they had a warrant issued for
| her arrest, which was then served by the FBI. So, somebody
| did convince a local magistrate (not a full-blown judge) to
| issue that warrant.
|
| My take (IANAL)... the judge was not in the wrong for decling
| to serve the initial warrant. But sending the guy down a
| private hallway was a dumb move. Was it a federal crime?
| Doesn't seem like it - a slap on the wrist from her boss
| probably should have been sufficient.
|
| Really, just more of the Trump administration throwing their
| weight around and pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable
| in the US.
| bluGill wrote:
| This will be interesting for the 5th amendment. They cannot
| arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax forms as your
| job since you are compelled to answer that question honestly. The
| defendant was compelled to appear in court which means he
| couldn't protect his own privacy by being elsewhere - are these
| the same thing?
|
| I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting
| legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
| zdragnar wrote:
| They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you, but if
| there is a warrant for your arrest, they can arrest you
| wherever they find you. If there's a warrant for my arrest on
| suspicion of murder and I show up to court to argue a traffic
| ticket, of course they'll take me in on the murder charge too.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Do you know if an arrest warrant was issued? I don't think
| ICE works on warrants
| prepend wrote:
| ICE works on "administrative warrants" that are different
| than "judicial warrants" [0]
|
| I didn't know the difference until today when I was reading
| about the case. I think the difference is the ice warrants
| are like detention orders and are different than a judge's
| arrest warrant that grants a lot more power.
|
| [0]
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-
| is...
| ggreer wrote:
| Yes, an arrest warrant was issued. From the complaint[1]:
|
| > On or about April 17, 2025, an authorized immigration
| official found probable cause to believe Flores-Ruiz was
| removable from the United States and issued a warrant for
| his arrest. The warrant provided, "YOU ARE COMMANDED to
| arrest and take into custody for removal proceedings under
| the Immigration and Nationality Act, the above-named alien
| [Flores-Ruiz identified on warrant]." Upon his arrest,
| Flores-Ruiz would be given a Notice of Intent/Decision to
| Reinstate Prior Order. He would then have an opportunity to
| contest the determination by making a written or oral
| statement to an immigration officer.
|
| He'd been deported in 2013 and snuck back in some time
| later. He was in Milwaukee county court that day because
| he'd been charged with three counts of domestic battery.
|
| 1. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wie
| d.11...
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against
| you,"_
|
| That's no longer true (in practice),
|
| https://apnews.com/article/irs-ice-immigration-
| enforcement-t... ( _" IRS acting commissioner is resigning
| over deal to send immigrants' tax data to ICE, AP sources
| say"_)
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| >They cannot arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax
| forms as your job since you are compelled to answer that
| question honestly.
|
| They recently forced their way to into IRS records, so that is
| no longer true either.
| nashashmi wrote:
| But they wanted to get intel on suspected illegals. They just
| cannot use the data provided to the IRS as evidence. They
| have to get separate evidence.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Separate evidence for ...?
| nashashmi wrote:
| evidence of crime separate than what is obtained via
| compulsion of circumstances.
| saalweachter wrote:
| What do you need the evidence _for_ , I mean?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| This is not normal/acceptable in the US. I remember when
| parallel construction was thought of as a
| horrible/unacceptable violation of the Constitution in the
| US. Now the 'Constitution' party doesn't give AF and loves
| it. It's crazy how far we let slippery slopes take us. All
| because of convenience or 'it's not that big of a deal
| yet'.
| staticman2 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is intended to be a hypothetical but there
| is no IRS form where "Drug Dealer" is the correct answer.
|
| Drug dealing income would be disclosed as "Other income".
|
| If you volunteer "drug dealer" my guess is they could use it
| against you. Similar to showing up at FBI headquarters and
| shouting "I'm a drug dealer!"
| toast0 wrote:
| > I'm not sure if this is intended to be a hypothetical but
| there is no IRS form where "Drug Dealer" is the correct
| answer.
|
| What else would you put in the Occupation field at the end of
| the form?
| staticman2 wrote:
| Merchant? Salesman? Deliveries? Distributor? Client
| services? Sales?
|
| That field isn't actually used for anything other than
| determining if you are eligible for tax breaks like the
| school teacher deductable.
| jandrese wrote:
| Independent salesman.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Independent Pharmaceutical Sales Consultant
| amacbride wrote:
| Import/Export Specialist
| zepton wrote:
| Schedule C to Form 1040 (self-employment income) asks for
| your "Principal business or profession, including product or
| service". It's pretty clear that the only correct answer for
| some people would be something like "drug dealer".
| staticman2 wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something you choose from a list of
| principal business Codes and also provide a description.
|
| Unless "drug dealer" is one of those codes it's not an
| option to select that so that isn't the correct answer for
| code.
|
| The instructions for the codes state, "Note that most codes
| describe more than one type of activity."
|
| If you must provide a description as well you would provide
| one that describes more than 1 type of activity, not "drug
| dealer".
| kstrauser wrote:
| Those would probably be one of NAICS code:
|
| * Pharmacies and Drug Retailers: 456110
|
| * Drugs and Druggists' Sundries Merchant Wholesalers:
| 424210
| macinjosh wrote:
| Those are a far cry from street drug dealer, not really
| incriminating yourself if you do that, you're just lying.
| They don't have codes for illegal activities
| QuercusMax wrote:
| "Independent Entrepreneur"
| cbfrench wrote:
| "Alternative Pharmaceuticals Purveyor"
| tyre wrote:
| I believe there is a space for bribery income
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| This doesn't really have any fifth amendment implications. The
| prohibition against self incrimination reads "no person ...
| shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against
| himself."
|
| That doesn't relate to being compelled to attend a proceeding
| in person where another federal agency can arrest you. If the
| government can legally arrest you, it does not matter if they
| determine your location based on another proceeding.
| jibal wrote:
| Your comment has no connection at all with this case.
| sanderjd wrote:
| The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights
| because they aren't citizens, or the stronger form, that they
| are invaders and thus enemy combatants.
|
| The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or
| non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here
| unlawfully. And then the populace is going to have to make sure
| that the president doesn't conclude that he can ignore that
| ruling if he doesn't like it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| On that basis tourists have no constitutional rights either.
| I find it hard to believe anyone would want to visit the US
| now, but surely that has an even further chilling effect.
| sanderjd wrote:
| To be clear, I agree. It's a _dangerous_ thesis, but also
| just idiotic. They 're doing a speed run of turning the US
| into North Korea, where nobody will want to travel here or
| trade with us.
| axus wrote:
| Axios was keeping a list, but I guess there's too many to
| keep track recently:
|
| https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/tourists-us-residents-
| detai...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Is that a serious thesis anyone serious is entertaining ?
| Would that mean that you can defraud or kill a tourist with
| no consequences?
| const_cast wrote:
| It's serious in that it's the primary reasoning the Trump
| administration is using for the lack of due process.
| bdangubic wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2016/01/23/464129029...
|
| :)
| sanderjd wrote:
| I mean I don't know if you consider the president of the
| United States "serious" (I certainly don't), but this is
| clearly his thesis.
| zzrrt wrote:
| > The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence
| or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living
| here unlawfully.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or
| centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.
|
| > "Yes, without question," said Cristina Rodriguez, a
| professor at Yale Law School. "Most of the provisions of the
| Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and
| jurisdiction in the United States."
|
| > Many parts of the Constitution use the term "people" or
| "person" rather than "citizen." Rodriguez said those laws
| apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not
| they are a citizen.
|
| [...]
|
| > In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote "it is well
| established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due
| process of law in deportation proceedings."
|
| Granted, only that last one is actually the Supreme Court.
| Perhaps there are hundreds of Supreme Court cases testing
| individual pieces of the constitution, but as the professor
| said, for the most part they give all the same rights. MAGA
| has managed to make everyone doubt and argue over it. The
| party of "Constitution-lovers" flagrantly violating both the
| plain wording and decades of legal rulings on the
| Constitution.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-constitutional-
| ri...
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah I don't doubt any of this myself. But the Court is
| still going to have to rule on it. Which isn't _so_ weird.
| The Court has to reiterate rulings sometimes.
|
| The thing that is unusual is that I have some genuine
| uncertainty around whether the current Justices will try to
| give the executive more leeway here than they should, as
| "compliance in advance" out of concern about their rulings
| being ignored by this administration.
| daheza wrote:
| Since the Judiciary seem to be the only ones pushing back against
| the Federal overreach it makes sense to them go after them first.
|
| I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if
| they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his
| cronies.
|
| This is America now, the land of the lawless and unjust. Prepare
| accordingly people, if they do not like what you are doing they
| will use their full power to stop you.
| paganel wrote:
| > I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if
| they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his
| cronies
|
| They won't, or they would have done so already. Granted, I'm
| not an American so I might be seeing things the wrong way from
| the other side of the planet, but it has been 3 months already,
| enough time for Congress to at least be seen as doing
| something, anything.
| chews wrote:
| There are two types of warrants being talked about here,
| traditional judge signed warrants and "administrative"/"ICE"
| warrants. The first one carries the ability to perform a search
| and possible detainment subject to the 4th amendment protections,
| the latter allows for discretion under the 4th amendment (this
| may be an viewed as an unconstitutional search) the Judge
| exercised their discretion with respect for constitutional
| rights.
|
| It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the
| rules get trapped by other rules.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _It 's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce
| the rules get trapped by other rules._
|
| The people who enforce the rules being bound by the rules is
| precisely the way it is meant to work. Of course, it remains to
| be seen if any laws were actually broken.
| rekttrader wrote:
| You're making the innocent till proven guilty argument,
| detainment somehow stands in the way of that.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| This feels like a "break glass in case of emergency" kind of
| moment. Sure there are no details yet, but I'm trying to imagine
| details which would make me think "that arrest makes sense." If I
| were in Milwaukee I'd be in the streets.
| rgreeko42 wrote:
| The copper that connects the alarm lever to the alarm system
| was sold for scrap 25 years ago
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Executive branch arrests of members of judiciary are not to be
| taken lightly. There are many ways to deal with these situations
| and this is extraordinarily far from normal. All you can do is
| diversify your US-based investments and get travel visas while
| you still can.
|
| If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by
| finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
| trelane wrote:
| I used to think that about ex presidents. The times seem to
| have changed.
| derektank wrote:
| One need not think this is good, just, or even lawful behavior
| by the FBI director, nor think this is in any way comparable to
| the behavior of Democratic administrations, to think it's
| irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you
| still can."
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I think it is reasonable to be prepared and have options to
| leave when basic civil rights and rule of law are being
| systematically tested and weakened on behalf of the most
| powerful individual in the country, who had sworn to uphold
| them. I would say it is irresponsible to ignore or minimize
| the magnitude of changes in the US in the past 100 days.
|
| I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have
| a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being
| weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any
| modern precedent.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas
| while you still can."
|
| I'm inclined to think that people won't get travel visas
| based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.
| hidingfearful wrote:
| a federal agency that doesn't follow the law should lose the
| protection of the law. Charge the ICE agents with attempted
| kidnapping of the immigrant and actual kidnapping of the judge.
| rchaud wrote:
| I imagine they'll soon be putting a spin on George W Bush-era
| legal arguments about the applicability of Geneva Conventions
| on "non-uniformed combatants". In this case, if the ICE agents
| weren't uniformed at the time of arrest, they can't be
| considered agents of the federal government, and thus can't be
| subject to legal redress.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Does that mean they'll just be trespassers that can be shot
| if they enter your property unannounced like a gang of
| hooligans?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Not saying anyone _should_ but in that case they _are_.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| 2nd Amendment and self defense arguments could be argued if
| you shoot plainclothes officers in fear of your safety.
| alistairSH wrote:
| In theory, but how many of them are you going to shoot
| before they shoot back?
| rchaud wrote:
| It's not a coincidence that they're arresting openly
| unarmed people like student protesters and now judges.
| trelane wrote:
| Um, I sense you're being ironic.
| openasocket wrote:
| At the moment we don't have a lot of the facts. All we seem to
| have at this moment is a (since deleted?) post from the head of
| the FBI. There's a ton of context that is missing. Like what does
| "intentionally misdirecting" mean? Does that mean saying "he went
| that way" when he really went in the opposite direction? Does it
| mean not answering questions about this person, or being obtuse?
| I'd also like to know more of the circumstances here. Did ICE
| agents literally walk into court and question the judge while
| sitting on the bench?
| kemayo wrote:
| Article has been updated with more context in recent minutes:
|
| > ICE agents arrived in the judge's courtroom last Friday
| during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-
| old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges
| in Wisconsin.
|
| > Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit
| court's chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time
| they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
|
| So, yeah, sounds like they literally walked into court and
| interrupted a hearing. Given the average temperament of judges,
| I think the least immigrant-friendly ones out there would
| become obstructionists in that situation...
| dmix wrote:
| That still sounds pretty vague.
| sixothree wrote:
| Are these the agents that were recorded last week not wearing
| uniforms and not presenting identification?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Or they walked into the hearing, sat in the back, and didn't
| interrupt it. These proceedings are almost always public, and
| theoretically you or I could walk in and sit quietly without
| violating any rules. Without knowing more, they could have
| just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they
| would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had
| left.
|
| In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful
| obstruction.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they could have just been waiting patiently for the
| hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside
| the courtroom after he had left_
|
| Still doesn't justify arresting a judge in a court house.
| This is incredibly close to where taking up arms to secure
| the republic starts to make sense.
| openasocket wrote:
| That would really depend on what the judge did, though. If
| the judge said, "the guy you are looking for is with the
| chief judge" and it turns out he wasn't with the chief
| judge, that sounds like obstruction. If the judge said,
| "the chief judge wants to talk to you", and the chief judge
| really did want to talk to the ICE agents, is that
| obstruction? In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone
| to see the chief judge until after arresting the suspect,
| or just sent one of their agents to talk to the chief judge
| and leave the rest in the courtroom.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >That would really depend on what the judge did, though.
|
| It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge
| did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in
| the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is
| another incident, they'll use their least generous
| interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify
| their least generous interpretations of that incident.
|
| >If the judge said, "the guy you are looking for is with
| the chief judge" and it turns out he wasn't with the
| chief judge,
|
| Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can
| stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along
| so that the immigrant could leave before they could
| possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
|
| >In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see
| the chief judge until a
|
| The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk
| to him for permission". _Ask_ is courtroom code for "do
| this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at
| least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of
| the courthouse building". There was no "they could have
| just not gone".
| openasocket wrote:
| > Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can
| stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along
| so that the immigrant could leave before they could
| possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
|
| In the fact pattern you've given, we're getting
| dangerously close to prosecuting a judge for official
| acts taken in their courtroom. The only difference is
| that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in
| bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this
| person evade arrest.
|
| A Judge is required to maintain order in their courtroom
| and ensure that the docket runs smoothly. A bunch of ICE
| agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be
| interpreted as disruptive. If this defendant saw that or
| knew that, he would be likely to run. If ICE was going to
| arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom, that
| would also be disruptive. A judge is well within their
| rights to remove people from the gallery if they are
| going to pose a disruption.
|
| Additionally, this is not new. Defendants walk into court
| with open warrants all the time. Police are not allowed
| to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court.
| I don't understand why ICE would be special.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the
| judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent
| of assisting this person evade arrest.
|
| Which, if anyone were honest here, most would admit that
| they suspect that was the intent. You can't cheer on the
| judges who do this sort of thing as heroes upholding
| democracy in one thread, and turn around and in another
| say "well, they weren't even deliberately doing it,
| they're just following rules".
|
| Can we _prove_ the judge was acting in bad faith? I don
| 't think that's very likely. But I'd be shocked if that
| wasn't really what was going on.
|
| We're all being manipulated, you know. I still see 3
| headlines a day about the "Maryland man", who isn't from
| Maryland.
|
| >A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could
| definitely be interpreted as disruptive.
|
| Sure, some could claim that. But I doubt they were
| hooting and hollering and pointing at the man, making
| intimidating gestures.
|
| >If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of
| a courtroom,
|
| Some here would claim that, but this is unlikely. They'd
| have waited for the proceeding to end, and followed him
| out the door. It still accomplishes what they want
| without pissing off a judge that they might need civility
| from next week or next year. If you're imagining they're
| causing trouble that won't help them accomplish what they
| want to accomplish simple for the sake of causing trouble
| and making Trump look bad... well, then what can I say?
|
| >Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants
| in the middle of court.
|
| No one needs to do that. Those same police you're talking
| about wait until it's over, and arrest them in the
| hallway outside the courtroom. And they are allowed to do
| that. But then, most judges don't have soft spot for
| those criminals like they do for illegal immigrants.
| openasocket wrote:
| Devil is always in the details. But judges have a ton of
| discretionary power, and in fact obligations to, maintain
| order in their courtroom. Someone who disrupts a hearing can
| be forcibly removed by the bailiffs, can be fined, and can
| even be found in contempt and summarily jailed.
|
| I mean, what's next? If a judge doesn't sign off on a warrant
| because they don't find probable cause, is that obstructing
| justice?
| anonym29 wrote:
| Would it not be better to have a peaceful, civil, lawful,
| separation of the two different Americas than for us to rigidly
| cling to an idea of a "United" States that no longer represents
| reality?
|
| We're clearly living in two different realities already, brought
| about the partisan media (on both sides) willfully and
| deliberately misrepresenting reality to serve the interests of
| their shadowy trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates, amplified
| by the digital echo chambers brought about other secretive,
| manipulative trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates.
|
| Is it seriously better to let the entire federal government
| collapse, leaving a power void in it's wake, than to have two
| Americas with freedom of movement, free trade, etc?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Maybe you're a fan of "Texit".
| anonym29 wrote:
| Good guess. I'm big on "marketplace of ideas", where each
| state has far greater control of public policy (which is
| overwhelmingly federalized right now). If California wants to
| show the world how good single-payer healthcare and UBI could
| be, let them. If New York wants to disarm every resident and
| send police around to confiscate firearms, let them. If Texas
| wants to ban abortion within the state for residents, let
| them. Let each state have an opportunity to show the world
| how good or bad their policy positions are. Diversity of
| policy + freedom of choice.
|
| My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing
| activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of
| association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with
| Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should
| be free to leave California (without fear of California
| retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against
| you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to
| leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state
| and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).
|
| We are not one identical set of people with one identical
| culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of
| right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who
| cluster together, mainly around people like us.
|
| Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun
| laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the
| people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local
| communities know what is best for themselves. The more
| decentralized, the better.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| There's no way to gerrymander a border that splits America into
| two geographically distinct countries with strong majority
| representation of whatever binary you think exists. By that I
| mean, there are communists in Kentucky and Proud Boys in
| Hawaii. If we seriously tried to split in two, it'd be like
| post-colonial India and Pakistan with worse weapons.
|
| regardless, this idea is a distraction from the problem of
| wealth accumulation and the erosion of representative politics
| through private funding.
| anonym29 wrote:
| I'm all for corporate death penalty or forced divestiture for
| every company with a $1T+ market cap.
|
| Fuck Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla,
| Broadcom, and Berkshire Hathaway.
|
| The more decentralization the better.
| rchaud wrote:
| Sure, history is after all awash in examples of peaceful
| secessions where everybody agreed to not question each others'
| borders again. Korea, India, Algeria, the Soviet Union,
| Palestine..... /s
| sylens wrote:
| How would you pull this off when the split seems pretty divided
| between city/suburban and more rural areas? Does everybody have
| to airlift their goods everywhere?
| patrickmay wrote:
| There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted
| for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I
| voted for Oliver.
|
| The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and
| executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease
| the size and scope of government, particularly at the national
| level, and there's a lot less to argue about.
| jwsteigerwalt wrote:
| Still waiting for better information about whether the judge was
| uncooperative or lied/misled the agents.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| This is immensely frustrating as someone who also genuinely
| cares about justice being done and the rule of law being
| followed. I want arrests to be made when there's reasonable
| information that this judge lied to federal agents, but frankly
| I can't see the federal government taking appropriate care to
| ensure they aren't arresting arbitrarily and then dodging
| accountability for trying to make right their wrongs. The
| federal government can claim anyone has done a crime and arrest
| them, but then if they ruin a person's life over this claim
| what is the arrestee's recourse for justice?
|
| It just seems so in violation of my desire to wait for proof in
| court: what do we do when the proof is wrong-- how do we make
| right as a people? This persons was arrested at their workplace
| publicly and lost their freedoms for however long it takes to
| sort it out in a court of law. In the meantime the prosecutors
| who are taking away those freedoms sacrifice nothing while
| they, too, wait to prove their case in court.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The government probably has evidence, maybe or maybe not
| persuasive enough for a conviction. That evidence will be
| presented in due course, not all up front to the media.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Given the circumstances, the government absolutely does
| have an obligation to present its evidence up front. You
| cannot use federal agents to arrest officers of a state
| government unless the charges are rock solid. There is a
| strong public interest in this case and the current
| administration has shown that it is owed zero deference or
| presumption that it is acting in good faith.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _the government absolutely does have an obligation to
| present its evidence up front_
|
| In your opinion, but not according to the law.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Given that recently they have not have evidence in several
| cases, why are you assuming this?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| That's my problem: while the arrested person is already
| forced the humiliation of being arrested, having their
| freedoms stripped from them, they have no remedy and have
| to wait in the state of being humiliated while the
| government who prosecutes them isn't also restrained or
| humiliated during the wait to present evidence.
|
| And additionally, there have been several recent prominent
| cases where the government has failed to produce any
| evidence in court while publicly saying to the media that
| they're arresting criminals-- of course, the government is
| able to access the media to claim this while the people
| they've arrested _who, again, have had their freedoms
| restricted while the people who restrict them are under no
| similar restraint_ are unable to do the same!
|
| We can see this in action right now: the government gets to
| claim to the media that the judge is obstructing arrests of
| illegal immigrants, while the judge can do no such media
| counterclaim and has to wait in restraints.
| jibal wrote:
| The government has no evidence. The judge told the ICE
| agents to go get authority and when they got back the
| defendant had left. That's it.
| const_cast wrote:
| This is an incredibly bold assumption which, from almost
| all actions taken by this administration, does not seem to
| be based in reality.
|
| I would not assume they have evidence, I would rather
| assume they do not. And, if they do, I would rather assume
| it is made up.
| bonif wrote:
| It's heartbreaking to see the United States, once a symbol of
| strength and freedom, reduced to a complete joke.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, you see, some dogs and cats were being eaten, and the
| other lady cackled too much, so it was inevitable, really.
| staplers wrote:
| It's worse actually. People lived through 2020 and wanted to
| do it again..
| crawsome wrote:
| Yeah, those 19 people's investments are doing great.
| trelane wrote:
| This is not a new development. We'be been laughed at for as
| long as I can remember.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I mean, it did always seem pretty close to the surface. Like
| the US was one misstep away from this happening. The balance of
| power in a two party system seems almost comically skewed.
| jaco6 wrote:
| Why are the people of Wisconsin taking this without a fight? Sit
| ins in local FBI branch offices and police stations are in order.
| Groups of protestors stand in front of police car parking lots--
| if the piggies can't leave their sty, they can't destroy our
| democracy.
| tptacek wrote:
| This happened in the last Trump administration, too.
| pvg wrote:
| I don't think they started with an arrest then, right?
| tptacek wrote:
| No, they started with a felony indictment. They later dropped
| the charges, and she got misconduct charges from the MA
| Commission on Judicial Conduct.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| Source?
| perihelions wrote:
| There's a parallel comment subthread about that,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ( _"
| In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley
| MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade
| detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of
| a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the
| highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of
| justice..."_)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| AFAIK Selley Joseph was charged, but she was not arrested.
| Arresting a judge in this sort of scenario is essentially
| unprecedented.
| esbranson wrote:
| Intentionally misdirecting a federal investigation is a
| crime.[1][2] Pretty straightforward accusation.
|
| "Our legal system provides methods for challenging the
| Government's right to ask questions--lying is not one of them."
| -- Justice Harlan
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements [2]
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
| jmull wrote:
| What does this have to do with this situation though?
| crooked-v wrote:
| There was no "misdirecting" here. The judge truthfully told the
| agents they wouldn't be allowed to detain someone in the middle
| of a hearing without exceptional permission, at which point
| they all left, apparently didn't even bother to watch the
| courthouse doors, and upon their return had the judge arrested
| for not detaining a man it wasn't her job or legal authority to
| detain.
| esbranson wrote:
| Per the criminal complaint, despite a federal warrant for
| Flores-Ruiz's arrest, Judge Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz
| through a non-public jury door to escape arrest.
| crooked-v wrote:
| She had no legal obligation to hold the man or have him
| exit in a particular way. The agents on the scene clearly
| agreed, or they wouldn't have left!
| esbranson wrote:
| Ok looks like they're 18 USC 1505 (obstruction) and 18 USC 1071
| (harboring) charges.[1] Less straightforward.
|
| [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-
| states-...
| djoldman wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| 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.
| jandrese wrote:
| 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.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Federal agents probably don't worry too much about being in
| local misdemeanor court.
| Kapura wrote:
| 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.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > 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.
| masklinn wrote:
| > It is a statement that the current regime wants to
| discourage judicial independence.
|
| That's not exactly new, I was recently reminded that during
| the governor's meeting when Trump singled Maine out for
| ignoring an EO the governor replied that they'd be following
| the law, and Trump's rejoinder was that they (his
| administration) are the law.
|
| That was two months ago, late February.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| genter wrote:
| Kash Patel's since-deleted tweet:
| https://www.threads.com/@pstomlinson/post/DI3-hnfuDvL
|
| > Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he's
| been in custody since, ...
|
| I feel like I'm watching reality TV. Which makes sense, we have
| a reality TV star for president and his cabinet is full of Fox
| news hosts.
| fencepost wrote:
| I'd also call it a publicity stunt because DOJ leadership would
| have to prove themselves [even more?] utterly idiotic to let
| this go to a jury trial.
|
| I can't imagine this ending in any way other than dropped
| charges, though they may draw it out to make it as painful as
| possible prior to that.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| If you're as incensed about this as I am, you can call the
| Milwaukee County Republican Party HQ at 414-897-7202 and let them
| know what you think. They're inclusive and open to dialog per
| their page at https://www.mkegop.com/, so I'm sure they'd love to
| hear from you.
| bix6 wrote:
| Milwaukee journal is providing great coverage:
| https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel now is just a reskin of USA
| Today[1]. They're not locally owned or controlled.
|
| [1]
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-
| co...
| legitster wrote:
| The important thing is they are still paying for a
| journalism to do beat coverage in the area.
|
| Everyone acts like independence is the most important
| aspect of journalism. But an independent blogger in New
| York rewording press releases is exactly how we got in this
| misinformation mess, and absolutely not a replacement for
| someone with a recorder walking around a courthouse asking
| questions.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The AP article someone else linked is much better: it includes
| both:
|
| - a PDF of the criminal complaint (court filing), and
|
| - details of what specifically the complaint alleges (that the
| judge encouraged the person to escape out of a 'jury door' to
| evade arrest).
|
| The phrase 'jury door' doesn't appear in the JS article.
| bix6 wrote:
| Thanks, affidavit is worth the read.
| https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-
| arrested-799718...
| esbranson wrote:
| Ok looks like the PACER documents dropped.
|
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
| martinjacobd wrote:
| If this complaint is true (my understanding is a complaint is
| always only one side of the story and the evidence presented
| may not end up being admissible, obviously IANAL and so forth),
| then seems quite similar to the MA case from several years ago:
| https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/12/04/judge-shel...
| esbranson wrote:
| Yes it would appear so.[1] It's a federal felony complaint so
| I believe it has to go to a grand jury next.
|
| [1] https://www.mass.gov/news/commission-on-judicial-conduct-
| fil...
| crote wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with US laws, but why wouldn't the FBI
| agents likewise be arrested for interfering with the judge's
| court case?
|
| Let's say I murder someone. I _definitely_ did it, and there 's
| plenty of evidence. What's stopping my hypothetical ICE buddy
| from showing up at my first court appearance, arresting me, and
| deporting me to a country without extradition by claiming that I
| am an "illegal immigrant"?
| dylan604 wrote:
| FBI != ICE. It was ICE that showed up to the courtroom. The FBI
| was only involved in the arrest after ICE was butt hurt and
| complained to daddy about the situation. ICE does not have
| authority to arrest citizens. That is why the FBI was involved
| to be able to make the arrest of a citizen
| Y_Y wrote:
| Is this qhy everyone is worried about illegal immigrants
| comitting crimes? Because they have a get-out-of-jail-free?
| nis0s wrote:
| America is quickly devolving into a lawless, third-world country.
| Based on the news reported thus far, it seems the judge was
| arrested because some egos got hurt. Usually when third world
| country leadership starts acting capricious, there is either a
| coup or a civil war, neither of which makes sense for a
| developed, first-world democracy.
|
| The Republicans are right that the lawlessness around the border
| needs to be controlled, but this is not the way to do it. If I
| recall correctly, Biden deported millions of illegal immigrants
| during his term. Whatever is going on right now isn't security,
| but a farce.
| empath75 wrote:
| This is part of a broader pattern of the incompetent thugs at ICE
| taking advantage of other, actual functioning and useful parts of
| government to help them do their work for them. It's not just
| courts, it's citizenship hearings, it's the IRS, it's schools.
| They're trying to send a message not to push back or get in their
| way. It's not about this particular judge, they are sending a
| message that they will go after school teachers or anybody else.
| xpe wrote:
| Generally, I share these concerns. At the same time, this story
| is very new. In any case, looking at the primary sources is
| important. See
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-
| states-.... I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does
| appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
|
| Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan
| is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such
| an arrest is only done if the suspect is a flight risk.
|
| It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of
| detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to
| conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
| jibal wrote:
| Criminal complaints against sitting judges for actions they
| took in their courtroom are not at all "normal".
| xpe wrote:
| >> I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear
| to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
|
| > Criminal complaints against sitting judges for actions
| they took in their courtroom are not at all "normal".
|
| Point taken.
|
| Just so that we're not talking past each other: What I was
| trying to say is this: as I read the language in the
| document, it sounded like plausible legal text. I'm not
| suggesting this is the proper bar. I am saying that I've
| read other official "legal" documents from the Trump
| administration that don't even meet the "not batshit crazy"
| bar.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| I truly do not understand why this administration continually
| gets the benefit of doubt from the HN audience.
| tlogan wrote:
| Now think about the other way: what if this judge is super right
| wing?
|
| I'm getting concerned that our judicial branch is becoming more
| and more political. And believe me there are many right wing
| judges.
| jawiggins wrote:
| The AP article [1] has the full complaint linked, the crux of the
| case seems to be around the judge allowing the defendant to leave
| through a back entrance ("jury door") when they were aware agents
| were waiting in the public hallway to make an arrest as they
| exited.
|
| " 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after
| Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of
| the arrest team to the Chief Judge's office. For example, the
| courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy's return
| to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to
| the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather
| than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel
| and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick
| the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked
| toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The
| courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge
| DUGAN say something like "Wait, come with me." Despite having
| been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of
| Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his
| counsel out of the courtroom through the "jury door," which leads
| to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also
| unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had
| previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury
| box because it was exclusively for the jury's use. Second,
| according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court
| staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used
| the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not
| in custody never used the jury door."
|
| [1]: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-
| arrested-799718...
| euroderf wrote:
| There has to be precedents in case law for how to assess this.
| trollied wrote:
| You might want to read this
| https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--
| h...
| crooked-v wrote:
| 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.
| dionian wrote:
| there is usually only one exit to a courtroom, in the back
| crooked-v wrote:
| No, there are usually several entrances/exits, such as for
| jurors, prisoners, judge's chambers, and the general
| public.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| lurk2 wrote:
| United States Code, Title 8, SS 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) (2023)
|
| > (1)(A) Any person who
|
| [...]
|
| > (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an
| alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States
| in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from
| detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from
| detection, such alien in any place, including any building or
| any means of transportation;
|
| [...]
|
| > shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
|
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title8/html/.
| ..
| ein0p wrote:
| A case study on media narrative peddling:
| https://www.koat.com/article/las-cruces-former-judge-
| allegat...
|
| Original title: "Former New Mexico judge and wife arrested
| by ICE". It's as though he wasn't an active judge while
| harboring an alleged Tren De Aragua gang member.
|
| Protip: believe absolutely nothing you read in mainstream
| news sources on any even remotely political topic. Read
| between the lines, sort of like people used to read Pravda
| in the Soviet Union.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Read between the lines, sort of like people used to
| read Pravda in the Soviet Union.
|
| To be fair, you're not far off at this point.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| So, based on the affidavit and the facts presented in the
| article, we know this doesn't apply to the Judge.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is
| accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her
| courtroom through the jury door last week after learning
| that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest.
|
| Perhaps you're a lawyer with greater insight into this
| issue than I have. The actions described in the article
| satisfy the plain reading of the terms "conceal, harbor,
| or shield from detection."
|
| The intuitive reading seems to be further corroborated by
| the case law:
|
| > The word "harbor" [...] means to lodge or to aid or to
| care for one who is secreting himself from the processes
| of the law. The word "conceal" [...] means to hide or to
| secrete or to keep out of sight or to aid in preventing
| the discovery of one who is secreting himself from the
| processes of the law.
|
| > *The statute proscribes acts calculated to obstruct the
| efforts of the authorities to effect arrest of the
| fugitive,* but it does not impose a duty on one who may
| be aware of the whereabouts of the fugitive, although
| having played no part in his flight, to reveal this
| information on pain of criminal prosecution.
|
| Emphasis mine.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-
| manual...
| gosub100 wrote:
| The alien was already "detected", that's why they were at
| the courthouse. She didn't harbor him, she was performing
| her job and the defendant was required to be there. I also
| fail to see how she "concealed" him either. "Aiding and
| abetting" would be a stretch, but still more accurate
| verbs. But those aren't in the law you quoted.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I also fail to see how she "concealed" him either.
|
| Using a special backdoor to avoid agents is "concealing",
| she allegedly did that to prevent him from being seen by
| the agents.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection,
| such alien
|
| Does that cover "Hey, this door is closer to where we are
| going"? It's going to rest on convincing a jury that the
| only possible reason the suspect would go out that door
| would be the judge explicitly trying to help them evade
| arrest.
|
| IMO that should be impossible to prove but we have never
| taken "Beyond a reasonable doubt" seriously.
|
| "knowing or in reckless disregard"
|
| Funny, nobody ever arrests any of the employers choosing
| not to verify the documents of their employees.
| dmix wrote:
| There was a series of other steps in the case before she
| let the guy use a door the public never uses. Including
| rushing his case through after confronting the agents and
| adjourning it without notifying the attorneys present in
| the court room. She instructed him through the door
| before the basic administrative tasks of the case were
| done.
|
| If the details of what their witness (court deputy) says
| is true then it's pretty obvious what happened here.
|
| Whether the government should give State judges that
| leeway is another issue.
| xyzzy9563 wrote:
| It's a crime to harbor or aid illegals in evading federal
| authorities. So this is a legal obligation of every person.
| neilpointer wrote:
| it's also unconstitutional to deny people due process but
| that's clearly been disregarded by the current
| administration. Reap what you sow.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Except that the authorities didn't have a valid warrant,
| signed by a judge, to arrest someone.
|
| (It's not a crime to aid illegals if the authorities don't
| have a valid warrant.)
| Jensson wrote:
| An administrative warrant is still valid for arrest, it
| doesn't need to be signed by a judge. If you think it
| needs to be then laws needs to be changed, but that is
| how laws are right now.
| xpe wrote:
| See also section D that says "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz
| through a "jury door" to avoid his arrest" in
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
| labeled "Case 2:25-mj-00397-SCD Filed 04/24/25" (13 pages)
| Miner49er wrote:
| How in the world is this an arrestable offense. Escorting
| someone out of a room?
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I guess I would hope it takes more then that to rise to the
| level of obstruction.
|
| Additionally, you have to prove intent, and unless the
| judge was careless, I doubt they will ever be able to do
| that. I'd bet the prosecution knows this, I don't think
| they expect the charges to stick. It seems this arrest was
| done to send a message.
|
| More evidence of that is that typically in this kind of
| case they would invite her to show up somewhere to accept
| process, not be arrested like a common criminal.
| AIPedant wrote:
| The part that makes it not so clear cut is that this is
| really a constitutional issue rather than a criminal one.
| It is not credible that the judge was trying to ensure the
| man could keep living in the US undocumented. She was
| defending her court. From a judge's POV, arresting a
| plantiff/defendant in the middle of a trial is a violation
| of their right to a trial and impedes local prosecutors'
| abilities to seek justice.
|
| Ultimately this seems like Trump asserting that the federal
| _executive_ branch has unfettered veto authority over local
| _judicial_ branches. That doesn 't sit well with me.
| lolinder wrote:
| The charges against her are not about her behavior during
| her court, they're about what happened once the court was
| adjourned and the defendant was starting to leave. She
| successfully defended the process within her own
| courtroom and it's alleged that she went a step further
| in securing the defendant from their impending arrest on
| an unrelated charge.
|
| There's definitely a conversation to be had about whether
| people should be safe from immigration law enforcement
| while within a courthouse, but at the moment as I
| understand it that is not a protection that exists.
| AIPedant wrote:
| It doesn't matter if court was adjourned, she was still
| at work and performing her official duties. In particular
| she asked the ICE agents if they had a _judicial_ warrant
| and was told no, it was _administrative._ A federal
| judicial warrant clearly outranks a local judge and it
| would be fine to arrest her if she defied it. It is not
| clear that an order from the executive branch does the
| same. That doesn 't mean local judges are immune from
| federal prosecution (e.g. corruption charges if someone
| takes money to rule favorably), but there is a fairly
| high bar, I don't think her behavior even comes close to
| probable cause for obstruction of justice or shielding an
| undocumented immigrant.
|
| The reason every other administration besides Trump
| refused to go into local courthouses to deport people
| wasn't about "whether people should be safe from
| immigration enforcement," it was about separation of
| powers.
| bix6 wrote:
| 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?
| dang wrote:
| Thanks - I've changed the URL to that article from
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/25/...
| above.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| This seems bad in a sea of events that seem bad.
|
| I have no deep admiration for judges, but the motivation for this
| seems deeply ideological, and I don't see a bright future where
| judges are arrested by the Gestapo based on ideological
| differences.
| macinjosh wrote:
| A judge literally helped a suspect hide from federal law
| enforcement. How can you be serious? Judges are supposed to up
| hold the law not find loopholes for people they like.
| xpe wrote:
| If you want a primary source, I recommend reading
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
|
| In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a
| "jury door" to avoid his arrest."
| slaw wrote:
| I hope Judge Dugan will be trialed as a regular citizen.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Not necessarily to avoid his arrest, only the fact they went
| through a jury door is indicated for now.
| dionian wrote:
| It would be interesting to hear if there was another valid
| reason for this
| Miner49er wrote:
| There doesn't have to be, it's up to the prosecution to
| prove the reason was to aid him in avoiding arrest. The
| judge doesn't have to provide an alternate reason.
| foldr wrote:
| I'm not trying to defend this arrest, but that's not
| really how it works. If there's an obvious illegal
| motivation for doing X and the person who did X can't
| supply a plausible alternative explanation, then a jury
| may conclude that X was done with the illegal motivation.
|
| Say that I take an item from a store. That's only a crime
| if I did it with the intent of stealing it. But the
| prosecution doesn't really have to "prove" in any
| practical sense that I had that intention. If I don't
| have a plausible story about why else I did it, then I'll
| probably be found guilty.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's a quote from the complaint against her. It hasnt been
| tried yet.
|
| Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-
| Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait
| until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with
| the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's
| request since it was a public space and they didnt have a
| warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of
| the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She
| directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter.
| She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.
|
| All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11.
| ..
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is feeling increasingly like Germany circa 1936.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This would be pretty sad if she did help him evade ICE. He was in
| court for battery charges and in the country illegally. ICE
| arresting him does not interfere with any due process. Which he
| 100% needs to get (but arresting him is still part of that).
|
| What is left here thats worth protecting? Not someone we want in
| the country and the agents had a warrant for his arrest (court
| comes after that). I feel like this is a serious own-goal by the
| people opposing this. Read the complaint corroborated by
| witnesses - she clearly did help him evade arrest:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
| sarlalian wrote:
| There is nothing in any of the articles indicating he was here
| illegally. He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an
| immigrant. Not as illegal or undocumented.
|
| It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal
| immigration status, due to being "charged" with a crime, is a
| seriously slippery slope.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an
| immigrant.
|
| Well that just say everything about the articles you've been
| reading, doesnt it?
|
| >Agents from the United States Department of Homeland
| Security ("DHS"), Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
| Enforcement and Removal Operations ("ICE ERO") identified
| Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the
| United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz's Alien Registration
| File ("A-File") indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and
| citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an
| I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States
| Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-
| Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales,
| Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or
| DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained
| permission to return to the United States
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11.
| ..
|
| I fully support him getting due process. But arresting him is
| part of that.
|
| >It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones
| legal immigration status
|
| Where did that happen?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security
| ("DHS"), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and
| Removal Operations ("ICE ERO") identified Flores-Ruiz as an
| individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A
| review of Flores-Ruiz's Alien Registration File ("A-File")
| indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico
| and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and
| Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol
| Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was
| thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona,
| Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the A-File or DHS
| indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained
| permission to return to the United States.
|
| Sworn affidavit in the complaint against Judge Dugan.
| sarlalian wrote:
| I'll correct my previous statement, it does appear in the legal
| brief about the judge being arrested that he was here
| illegally.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| So the articles you read were.... imprecise, at best.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > He was in court for battery charges
|
| Oh I'm sorry, I misread, I thought you said he had been
| convicted of something.
|
| The law is very important to you when it's a misdemeanor
| immigration offense but that whole innocent till proven guilty
| thing is just an inconvenience.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I dont understand what you mean by your comment. He was
| arrested for being in the country illegally. The way this is
| supposed to work is: 1) you get a warrant, 2) then you make
| the arrest, and 3) the person gets due process in court. We
| finished 2 and we definitely need 3. If we dont we have a
| problem. But what they did so far was correct.
|
| He also was in court for battery. It seems like you're
| implying that since battery is not illegal entry that he
| couldn't be arrested. ??? If anything thats just another good
| reason not to aid his unlawful presence in the country.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| 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?
| dbspin wrote:
| 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).
| petre wrote:
| I hope Trump ends up in prison, that's all I can say.
|
| Arguably South Korea has better democracy, because Yoon Suk
| Yeol is probably going to prison for insurrection.
| gortok wrote:
| 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.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| > Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be
| compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see:
| Printz v. United States).
|
| So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between
| federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am
| certain that this precedent does not give states the right
| to _actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job_
| , that is, to _enforce federal immigration law_.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > does not give states the right to actively obstruct
| federal agents
|
| Who said they had that right and when did this happen?
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that
| she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest
| Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
| sarlalian wrote:
| She probably didn't think it was appropriate for ICE to
| arrest Ruiz at the courthouse. If going to court for a
| case against you becomes a good way to get deported,
| guess what people aren't going to do. We don't have the
| resources to keep everyone who has a case against them in
| jail, so we release people on the promise that they will
| show up for court. If it's dangerous to their freedom and
| living status to show up to court, they won't.
| rolph wrote:
| the feds also have no right to arbitrarily obstruct court
| in session, they have to seek administrative recess, they
| cant just barge in and start belching commands, they dont
| have that authority.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| The agents in this case did no such thing. As far as I am
| aware this has not happened anywhere.
| rolph wrote:
| thats right they did no such thing, presumibly they
| sought recess from a chief justice, and by the time they
| came back, the person of concern was gone.
|
| had they realized they were likely to walk into the
| middle of procedings, the first stop should have been
| authorization to intercede.
| thuanao wrote:
| Considering the constitution only enumerates the power of
| naturalization (NOT residency) to Federal government,
| there is no clear power granted to Feds for things like
| residency visas.
|
| Controlling the border from foreign enemies is a far cry
| from the Federal government asserting the right to
| determine who gets to simply live and work within the
| states.
|
| The Supreme Court makes a mockery of 10th amendment on so
| many issues, whether it's drugs, healthcare, immigration,
| gun control...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be
| compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law
|
| Not just immigration law but federal law generally. It's
| funny that this never reached the point of beign a decision
| rule in a case and thus binding precedent until the 1990s,
| as you see it in dicta in Supreme Court cases decided on
| other bases back to shortly before the Civil War
| (specifically, in cases around the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| Might it be because the federal government simply did not
| need to exercise much authority over the states? As a
| non-expert I am curious. I am continually amazed by how
| much authority is delegated to the states and local
| jurisdictions in the United States (e.g. matters of
| marriage, property, voting, etc.). As I understand even
| citizenship was handled by local courts up until very
| recently.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Might it be because the federal government simply did
| not need to exercise much authority over the states?
|
| Yeah, it is absolutely because the federal government was
| simply not trying to commandeer state authorities to
| enforce federal law; the interesting part (to me) is that
| the courts were anticipating the problem well before it
| materialized.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| > 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.
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11
| million undocumented people in the United States, or about
| 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11
| million people without documentation so they can be
| exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper
| health care and labor rights.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under
| ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who
| can hold this status over their head.
|
| People who have productively worked in the country and
| either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some
| years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at
| least work visas and real legal protection.
| Me1000 wrote:
| Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment
| on the people being taken advantage of, and not the
| employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are
| breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure
| that the business owner who is exploiting any number of
| workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented
| person whose only crime was not having the proper
| paperwork?
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same
| thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and
| influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would
| prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor
| rights exist in this country, and this is simply
| impossible in an environment in which employers are free
| to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I
| think both political parties in the US are terrible, and
| all of this debate serves the interests of the employers
| that benefit from this situation.
| ivape wrote:
| Because it would hurt our little elitist exceptionalist
| hearts if we gave an H1B to a construction worker. There
| are low wage industries that could use such a program,
| but our little hearts can't take it because "its not the
| best and brightest".
| godelski wrote:
| Is the number really that crazy if we consider the
| context?
|
| - America is a land of opportunities. It is BY FAR the
| country with the largest number of _legal_ immigrants[0].
| There are ~51M in the US and the second is Germany with
| ~16M. I think it makes sense that given the extremely
| high demand to come to the US, it is unsurprising that
| many do so illegally. Especially when the costs of
| staying in your own country are so high.
|
| - How would you even go about documenting them,
| determining status, and then following due process[1].
| Tricky situation. It's does not only create a dystopian
| authoritarian hellscape to constantly check everyone's
| status, but it is also really expensive to do so! Random
| stops interfere with average citizens and violates _our_
| constitutional rights. Rights created explicitly because
| the people founding this country were experienced with
| such situations...
|
| I mean I also agree with your point that they are being
| exploited and that there's been this silent quid pro quo
| (even if one party is getting the shit end of the deal).
| But also I think people really need to consider what it
| actually takes to get the things they want. Certainly we
| can do better and certainly we shouldn't exploit them.
| But importantly, which is more important: the rights of a
| citizen or punishing illegal immigrants? There has to be
| a balance because these are coupled. For one, I'm with
| Jefferson, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than a
| single innocent be stripped of their freedom. You can't
| pick and choose. The rules have to apply to everyone or
| they apply to no one. There are always costs, and the
| most deadly costs are those that are hard to see.
|
| [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/immigrati...
|
| [1] I cannot stress enough how critical due process is.
| If we aren't going to have due process, then we don't
| have any laws. Full stop. If we don't have due process,
| then the only law is your second amendment right, and
| that's not what anyone wants.
| godelski wrote:
| > A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of
| the rules.
|
| No rule can be so well written that it covers all possible
| exceptions. Programmers of all people should be abundantly
| aware of this fact. We deal with it every single day. But I
| do mean fact, it is mathematically rigorous.
|
| So even without a direct expansion of rights and the
| natural progression of societies to change over time, we
| have to at minimum recognize that there is a distinction
| between "what the rule says" and "what the intended rule
| is". This is like alignment 101.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am still waiting for a "corporations are people" to get
| death penalty
| crote wrote:
| 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.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> 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.
| mint2 wrote:
| 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?
| trhway wrote:
| >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.
| bdelmas wrote:
| 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...)
| nemomarx wrote:
| Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal
| pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens
|
| but cities have no ability to control that, while they can
| impact some things locally, so it's different groups of
| people doing both of these?
| bdelmas wrote:
| To be honest, for me personally having cities that have
| that much power is weird to me. It should be something at
| the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if
| this is not monkey patching, why not create a full
| sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me.
|
| We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because
| it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing
| visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented
| persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!),
| people are fine with how things are now and also can
| justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is
| also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be
| taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their
| managers want to...
|
| Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a
| very bad idea for everyone.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 94% of Californians live in cities. It's not that a
| "city" has so much power, as that large populations of
| people living near each other decided how they wanted to
| handle their business. Because they have a large
| proportion of the state's legislative representation, as
| is appropriate, that legislature tends to vote in ways
| that the cities' residents want them to.
| trhway wrote:
| >What happens when life will be tough later
|
| are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they
| came here?
| SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Being in the country illegally is a misdemeanor
|
| No, its not.
|
| Entering the country illegally is at least a misdemeanor
| (can be a felony depending on specific details), but being
| in the country illegally is not, itself, a crime, and it is
| possible to be in the country illegally without entering
| illegally.
| SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
| ah my mistake, regardless calling people here illegally
| criminals is disingenuous given the potential offense
| committed.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Is your argument really "misdemeanors aren't crimes"?
|
| Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily
| injury to you or with criminal negligence the person
| causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon".
|
| Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in
| that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a
| misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)
| goatlover wrote:
| Smoking a joint can be misdemeanor. Many people don't
| think it should be criminal at all. It really depends on
| who passes and enforces said laws. Similar to smoking a
| joint, crossing a border illegally is a victimless
| infraction. Depending on who you ask, it's not a big deal
| and possibly even a positive for the US, or it's the end
| of America, when it's the POTUS posting on his social
| media account.
| openasocket wrote:
| The act of being in the country without a valid visa is
| not a crime, it is a civil infraction. Entering the
| country illegally (i.e. sneaking through the border) can
| be a crime, but around 50% of undocumented immigrants
| entered the country legally (e.g. entering on a student
| visa and not leaving when it expired). And very often,
| unless border patrol catches you on your way in, you
| aren't going to be prosecuted for illegal entry.
|
| And the difference between a misdemeanor and a civil
| infraction is not a matter of splitting hairs. Here's
| some differences:
|
| 1. In a criminal case, you need to be found guilty beyond
| a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the standard is
| simply a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more
| likely than not. If there is a 51% you are here illegally
| and a 49% chance you aren't, you get deported.
|
| 2. In a criminal case if you can't afford a lawyer one
| may be appointed to you. In a civil case you have to
| either pay for a lawyer yourself or represent yourself.
| This has serious consequences for people. If a child ends
| up in immigration court and their families can't afford
| to hire an attorney, they have to represent themselves.
| Even if they are 4 years old:
| https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-
| kid...
|
| 3. You might assume that immigration judges are just like
| any other judge and are part of the judicial branch, a
| so-called "Article III Court" (referring to Article III
| of the Constitution). But immigration judges are not
| Article III courts. They report to the head of the
| Department of Justice, who has hiring and firing powers
| over them. Meaning the prosecutor arguing for your
| deportation and the judge deciding your case both report
| to the US Attorney General
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Labeling Theory[1] suggests that referring to people as
| criminals increases the chance of them committing crimes.
| When people's existence is referred to as criminal (or
| when they're referred to as criminals for having
| committed other crimes, many of which are not dangerous
| to society or others, such as using drugs) their social
| and economic prospects are harmed and according to this
| theory, they then become more likely to engage in other
| activities which (in addition to violating laws) are
| actually more detrimental to society.
|
| So I think there's a strong argument that we should be
| much more conservative with the application of labels
| like "criminal" to people.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory#The_%2
| 2crimina...
| SimbaOnSteroids wrote:
| No my argument is stop using the word criminal because it
| makes the yokels think you're talking about some sicario
| or some jobless person living on the government doll.
|
| You can tell this because when you poll americans what
| they think about deporting undocumented immigrants that
| belong to specific subgroups, their overwhelmingly
| against it. The kicker is that the subgroups listed cover
| nearly all undocumented immigrants.
|
| > The survey also asked about whether other groups of
| immigrants in the country illegally should be deported.
| Relatively few Americans support deporting these
| immigrants if they have a job (15%), are parents of
| children born in the U.S. (14%), came to the U.S. as
| children (9%) or are married to a U.S. citizen (5%).
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-
| ethnicity/2025/03/26/vi...
| bdelmas wrote:
| Let's be real, are we talking about that one guy on
| vacation who missed his flight and is now staying longer
| than his visa and being de facto an undocumented person
| too? Or another type of profile? Like someone who did it
| knowingly and actively wanting to stay unlawfully? Yes
| there are different cases that encompass the definition but
| I think we can agree that we are not talking about cases
| like the guy on vacation.
| belorn wrote:
| That is technical correct use of the legal term. A crime is
| an illegal act for which the punishment include prison. A
| person who lack permission to stay in a country faces
| deportation and ban/restriction on future visa
| applications, but not prison. Thus it is not a crime.
| jmull wrote:
| 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?
| lostmsu wrote:
| Of the options you mentioned the law only prescribes taking
| away driver licenses AFAIK. And you could, see no problem
| with that.
| jmull wrote:
| The point is, people are breaking the law all the time,
| that law is rarely enforced, yet no one seems to be
| calling for a widespread crackdown on speeding.
|
| The previous poster calls on us to be concerned about
| crimes and criminals leading to more crimes, but we
| already live in a country where very large numbers of
| "criminals" are driving around all over the place, yet it
| doesn't seem to be a problem.
|
| You might ask yourself why it's supposed to be a big
| problem for one kind of law but not for another.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > You might ask yourself why it's supposed to be a big
| problem for one kind of law but not for another.
|
| It is not a hard question. Speeding has already been
| determined to be of lesser harm and therefore the law
| calls for lesser punishment for violations.
| bdelmas wrote:
| Oh yes you are right for monkey patch, I don't why it means
| something else where I am from.
|
| On the topic, sure. But maybe next time you go to another
| country, try to think how you would stay and break the law.
| Later, you will need a car, a bank account (by stealing a
| social security number or other solutions). Like how you
| are getting yourself ready to live a life of breaking the
| law just to go by in life. That's a series of life-changing
| events you have to be ready to go through. And yes you can
| go to prison because yo go too fast on a highway but to me
| it's really something else.
| jmull wrote:
| You're saying sanctuary cities lead to more people buying
| cars and opening bank accounts... that's the bad thing?
| bdelmas wrote:
| Cars that can be stolen and/or with no insurance, people
| who flee the scene in case of accidents, bank accounts
| that have been opened by identity thieves, etc...
|
| Are you saying that criminals are a good thing if they
| help the overall economy? If not what was the point?
| jmull wrote:
| I'm suggesting it may be a bad idea to criminalize
| ordinary and even positive behavior.
|
| I think you're making a better argument in favor of
| sanctuary cities than against. All the bad things you
| describe are the result of fear of immigration
| enforcement, and which suppresses positive things like
| buying cars and opening bank accounts.
| hypeatei wrote:
| 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.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > bill of rights only applies to citizens.
|
| I could argue that it's inhumane, contradicts all the values
| US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to
| harass citizens.
|
| But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be
| a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve
| currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that
| is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and
| employees have to feel secure.
|
| That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take
| their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not
| guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I think some are missing the sarcasm. I enjoyed your
| comment at least.
| godelski wrote:
| > if you consider illegal immigrants as people
|
| Actually, I disagree[0].
|
| 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....
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| This is full of flaws.
|
| After due process via courts, deportation is justified. So
| you need a big "if" before all of that.
|
| ICE is not the police.
|
| _There should be no (broad) if-clause to grant rights._
|
| Unknown citizenship is not something you need to check for
| constantly, as you hinted.
| godelski wrote:
| > After due process via courts, deportation is justified.
|
| Yes? >> if (person.citizenStatus ==
| illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
| deport(person, police)
|
| After due process citizen status is in police knowledge,
| right? So they're illegal, ICE knows it, and our flow
| chart says... deport.
|
| Which condition do you believe is not satisfied? Do you
| believe the status of the person is not "illegal"? If so,
| why would we deport them? Or do you believe that the
| police are not aware of the person's citizenship status?
| If so _how_ could we deport them? > ICE
| is not the police. Police (noun) [0] 1
| a: the department of government concerned primarily with
| maintenance of public order, safety, and health and
| enforcement of laws and possessing executive, judicial,
| and legislative powers b: the department of
| government charged with prevention, detection, and
| prosecution of public nuisances and crimes
| United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka
| ICE) [1] a federal law enforcement agency under the
| U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
|
| ICE is a LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, they are de facto
| "police." I think you are confusing the fact that
| "police" is a broad term and because it is less common to
| deal with federal law enforcement you have a higher
| frequency of hearing local law enforcement being referred
| to as "the police". But they both are. "Police" == "Law
| Enforcement"
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/police
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Cu
| stoms_E...
| crote wrote:
| You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from
| an infallible oracle, and that the code is being executed
| by a fully trustworthy party. This isn't the case in
| practice.
|
| You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing, with
| the person being targeted being able to trigger an
| exception and force a re-evaluation at _any_ point. _That
| 's_ what the basic human rights are for - placing those
| deep inside a nested if-statement is going to mean your
| code will horribly crash and burn, without there being
| any way to recover gracefully.
| openasocket wrote:
| 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.
| noemit wrote:
| 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.
| sarlalian wrote:
| That is a very simple explanation to an obviously more
| complex issue.
| jrflowers wrote:
| And is entirely correct.
| einszwei wrote:
| You cannot discard the role of US Immigration &
| Deportation policy in the rise of MS13 gang.
|
| Please read some books on the matter if you disagree. My
| recommendation is "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family,
| Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas"
| trhway wrote:
| > Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious
| crime, like murder. ..... wind up living free in another
| country
|
| Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time,
| so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had a DUI deadly
| crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his
| lawyers were filing piles of various defenses like for
| example "statute of limitations" just few month after the
| crash, etc., and he disappeared later in 2022, with a guy
| with the same name, age, face, etc. surfacing in Russia as a
| director of AI at a large Russian bank.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/one-dead-driver-
| ar...
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| Has it? -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
|
| Are you guessing or are you positive?
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I just can't even talk to people on the internet anymore.
|
| I am speaking in general. Banishment was applied to
| commoners since forever. Did they crime in the area
| anymore? No, they aren't there anymore.
|
| Is there a special case for banishing political leaders,
| where the dynamics are different? Sure, probably. Does
| that apply here? No, obviously not.
| godelski wrote:
| Except this isn't entirely accurate. While I did show
| prominent cases to make the point clearer, there are
| still plenty of times more common people were exiled and
| came back creating more harm. It's just that these
| stories, as well as success (I'm not denying that) are
| neither recorded as well nor is that information as
| widely distributed[0]. But there are also more well known
| cases where larger deportations/exiles/banishment occur
| and the acts create whole new societies! In most cases
| those societies are not very friendly with the ones who
| caused their banishment in the first place[1].
|
| The distinction is that we're trying to be intelligent
| creatures with foresight. You're absolutely right that
| effectively there is no distinction when the crimes no
| longer occur. But what _also_ matters is if these actions
| are prelude to greater turmoil down the line. If it is,
| you haven 't solved the problem, you just kicked the can
| down the road. And we all know when that happens, the
| interest compounds.
|
| This isn't to say to not use banishment at all, but to
| recognize that it isn't so cut and dry as you claimed.
| And there is specific concern because we have seen how US
| deportations over the last few decades has created and
| empowered many cartels in Latin America. It is worth
| considering alternative solutions, as we're already
| affected by this result.
|
| [0] Although this is an exceptionally common plot in many
| stories. Ones told throughout the centuries...
|
| [1] Some examples may be the Israelites in the bible
| (fact or fiction), you could argue the Vandals or the
| Goths and recognize many countries formed through people
| being pushed out of one place or another and being unable
| to find a place to settle take up arms. It is true for
| the Normans and the Comanches. It includes the Puritans
| who fled to America. It includes the Irish Diaspora.
| There are plenty of instances where groups of people were
| pressured out of a region and came back to fight and
| create more bloodshed.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Well, at least Shunkan did not return in the end:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunkan But he did became
| famous and kinda imortalized in Japanese culture thanks
| to that.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| 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.
| mulmen wrote:
| So you are in favor of rehabilitation but you want to
| gatekeep it?
|
| Undocumented immigrants _are_ taxpayers.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| No, I'm in favour of rehabilitation and setting people up
| for success, and also not deporting people who have
| undergone a rehabilitation process.
|
| If we _are_ going to incarcerate people under the current
| system (which doesn 't serve to rehabilitate, and thus
| only serves to remove people from the general public who
| may be a danger to said public), then I think we
| shouldn't bother for people who are going to get deported
| anyway, though I think those people should still receive
| a trial by jury before deportation.
|
| I think incarceration only has limited effectiveness as a
| deterrent, and the cost to society of incarcerating
| people who are going to be deported after outweighs any
| benefit in deterrence from doing so.
|
| To be clear, I think the cost of incarceration in the
| current system outweighs the benefit more generally, so
| I'd strongly favour overall prison reform and an end of
| for-profit prisons. But people being deported will incur
| additional costs, and deportation itself serves as a
| deterrent already.
| godelski wrote:
| If someone can be rehabilitated, they should be.
|
| If someone can't be rehabilitated, they should be
| contained[0]
|
| | If they need to be contained, we have additional
| concerns with deportation.
|
| | | If they are being deported freely to another country
| (i.e. _not_ through extradition), then we are doing (at
| least) similar harm to another as to what harm would be
| if we just let them go in our own country. Personal
| ethics aside, this creates disorder and enemies. It is
| one thing if extradition is attempted and this is the
| result after failure, but it is another if the process
| doesn 't happen. This is analogous to capturing all the
| rattlesnakes in my backyard and throwing them into yours.
| "Not my problem" isn't so accurate when I piss you off
| and now I have a new problem which is you being pissed at
| me and seeking your own form of justice. In the short
| term, being an asshole is an optimal strategy, but in the
| long term is really is not.
|
| | | If they are being extradited to another country and
| that country is _known_ to torture or do things that we
| do not believe are humane to their inmates, then I
| similarly agree we should not extradite and it is better
| to contain here. The blood is still on your hands, as
| they say.
|
| Extradition (distinct from deportation) is the right move
| when it is believed the criminal will face the rule of
| law, fairly and in accordance to our own ethics (how we
| would treat our own).
|
| I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation
| (or extradition!) is the right course of action. It is
| also critical to recognize that mistakes happen. Even if
| cumbersome, the judicial process reduces the chance for
| mistakes. It's also worth noting that, by design, the
| judicial system is biased such that when mistakes occur
| there is a strong preference that a criminal is left
| unpunished rather than an innocent be prosecuted (an
| either or situation). We want to maximize justice, I
| doubt there is many who do not. But when it comes down to
| it, there is a binary decision at the end of the day
| "guilty or not guilty." We engineer failure into the
| judicial system just like we do in engineering. You do
| not design a building to fail, but you do design a
| building such that when it does fail, it is most likely
| to fail in a predictable manner which causes the least
| harm. And if you don't want to take my word on it, you
| can go consult Blackstone, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,
| and many others. Because at the end of the day, I'm not
| the one who created this system, but I do agree with
| their reasoning.
|
| [0] Not killed, because if we are wrong about the
| inability the rehabilitate then the cost is higher than
| the cost of custodianship.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > Though I personally don't see the point in making people
| who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence
|
| Because 'come here, do crime, get a free flight home' sets
| up a very bad incentive structure for bad actors? Because
| deportation is not a punishment?
| godelski wrote:
| It is also critical in how we define justice. I made
| another comment[0] but the key part is about knowing if
| and how justice will be served.
|
| I think people are conflating deportation and
| extradition. Deporting is the act of sending them
| somewhere else. Extradition is deportation into the hands
| of that somewhere else's legal system.
|
| I think it is critical to recognize the distinction. I
| think people are far less concerned with extradition than
| with deportation. Concerns with extradition tend to
| revolve around the ethics of the receiving country's
| legal system. "There is still blood on your hands" as one
| might say. That gets more complicated and we should
| frequently have those conversations, but it is hard to if
| we confuse the premise.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43798954
| godelski wrote:
| 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.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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_.
| timewizard wrote:
| Replace illegal immigration with any other crime.
|
| What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we
| let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their
| testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer
| the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation
| but we don't ignore their crime.
|
| In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any
| paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then
| they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal
| protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more
| severe crime.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > we don't ignore their crime
|
| And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their
| duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying
| that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant
| authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the
| apparatus of government function with and for undocumented
| people.
| thuanao wrote:
| I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal"
| people is tyrannical and inhumane.
| EnPissant wrote:
| Sequence of events according to the criminal complaint[1]:
|
| 1. ICE obtained and brought an administrative immigration warrant
| to arrest Flores-Ruiz after his 8:30 a.m. state-court hearing in
| Courtroom 615 (Judge Dugan's court).
|
| 2. Agents informed the courtroom deputy of their plan and waited
| in the public hallway. A public-defender attorney photographed
| them and alerted Judge Dugan.
|
| 3. Judge Dugan left the bench, confronted the agents in the
| hallway, angrily insisted they needed a judicial warrant, and
| ordered them to see the Chief Judge. Judge A (another judge)
| escorted most of the team away. One DEA agent remained unnoticed.
|
| 4. Returning to her courtroom, Judge Dugan placed Flores-Ruiz in
| the jury box, then personally escorted him and his attorney
| through the locked jury-door into non-public corridors: an exit
| normally used only for in-custody defendants escorted by
| deputies.
|
| 5. The prosecutor (ADA) handling the case was present, as were
| the victims of the domestic violence charges. However, the case
| was never called on the record, and the ADA was never informed of
| the adjournment.
|
| 6. Flores-Ruiz and counsel used a distant elevator, exited on 9th
| Street, and walked toward the front plaza. Agents who had just
| left the Chief Judge's office spotted them. When approached,
| Flores-Ruiz sprinted away.
|
| 7. After a brief foot chase along State Street, agents arrested
| Flores-Ruiz at 9:05 a.m., about 22 minutes after first seeing him
| inside.
|
| [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-
| states-...
| cactacea wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nailed it. Keep that stuff away from:
|
| * Police interactions, unless you want people refusing to
| cooperate with police.
|
| * Hospitals, unless you want people refusing to seek medical
| care for communicable diseases.
|
| * Courtrooms, unless you want people to skip court or refuse to
| testify as witnesses.
|
| My wife likes watching murder investigation TV shows. Sometimes
| the homicide detectives will talk to petty criminals like
| street-level drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like. The first
| thing the detectives do is assure them that they're there about
| a murder and couldn't care less about the other minor stuff.
| They're not going to arrest some guy selling weed when they
| want to hear his story about something he witnessed.
|
| Well, same thing here but on a bigger stage.
| morkalork wrote:
| 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.
| thrance wrote:
| A sane argument against an insane position. Republicans are
| perfectly fine with unpunished violence against non-citizens.
| No wonder tourism is sharply declining.
| timewizard wrote:
| > 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.
| mulmen wrote:
| > 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.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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.
| timewizard wrote:
| > the victim refuses to cooperate
|
| You're describing an entirely different situation. Unless
| you're saying that deporting someone makes them wholly
| unable to participate in the process which is what I'm
| precisely disagreeing with. Cooperating can include things
| like simply filling out an affidavit or participating in
| remote depositions.
|
| > and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew
| you would die if you took the stand.
|
| Removing someone from the country does not kill them.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| 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.
| tmiku wrote:
| 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...
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| People are arrested in court every day. Why a judge would risk
| their career to prevent ICE from executing a warrant for
| someone's arrest confounds me.
| thrance wrote:
| You're right, she should have let ICE illegally send the guy
| straight to an El Salvador dark site with no due process.
| mempko wrote:
| Because the judge appears to have basic morals
| exiguus wrote:
| How often does it happen in the us that a judge get arrested?
| robblbobbl wrote:
| Concerning
| mmooss wrote:
| The issue here is not the facts of this incident. The issue is an
| attempted expansion of power and reduction in the liberty to
| dissent.
|
| The Trump administration have been talking for weeks, maybe
| months, of finding ways for US attorneys to prosecute local
| officials who do not support Trump's immigration policy. Note
| that they also are threatening punishment through budget and
| policy.
|
| Also, realize that immigration is just the first step:
|
| * It's the first step in legitimizing mass prejudice - including
| stereotypes, in this case of non-wealthy immigrants - and hatred,
| and legitimizing that as a basis for denying people their
| humanity, dignity, and rights.
|
| * It's a first step to legitimizing government terror as a policy
| tool.
|
| * It's a first step in expanding the executive branch's power - I
| suspect chosen because the executive branch already has a lot of
| power in that domain. Note their claim to deny any check on their
| power by Congress (through the laws, which are made by Congress,
| and funding, which is appropriated by Congress) and the courts.
|
| * It's a first step to expanding federal power vis-a-vis the
| states.
|
| The next steps will be to use those now-legitimate tools on other
| groups, other forms of power, etc.
|
| Part of the way it works is corruption: people make an exception
| or support it because it's following the herd, because opposing
| it is harder and sometimes scary, because they don't like this
| particular group and it seems legitimate in some way ....
|
| Then when they turn these weapons on you, what standing do you
| have to disagree? I think in particular of politically vulnerable
| communities who are going along with these things or saying, 'not
| our problem' - you're next. That's where "First they came for the
| socialists ..." etc. comes from. (And you'll note that, not
| coincidentally, they are also coming for some socialists now and
| laying the groundwork for more, but most people don't like the
| socialists anyway so that's fine!)
| slaw wrote:
| No, the issue is:
|
| "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a "jury door" to avoid
| his arrest."
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| except that they didn't have valid warrant for his arrest, so
| no.
| Animats wrote:
| A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents,
| is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An "ICE
| warrant" is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or
| any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause.
| "An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any
| nonpublic areas--or areas that are not freely accessible to the
| public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy--without a
| valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2]
|
| The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not
| authorize a search.
|
| [1] https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-
| your-r...
|
| [2] https://www.nilc.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Subpoen...
| Gabriel54 wrote:
| 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.
| ajross wrote:
| 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.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| As it turns out, hyperbole is not aside.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| Immigration law is wildly different from what people
| expect. But it is the law and it has been held up in
| countless court cases. This weirdness is not new.
|
| I think most of the weirdness comes from the fact that
| entering the country illegally, or remaining in the country
| illegally can be crimes, but they can also be civil
| offenses. "Civil" means no jail time, but people still get
| deported without going to criminal court.
|
| "Civil" also means "doesn't have to be proven beyond a
| reasonable doubt," and "no constitutional right to a public
| defender." Immigration law tries to provide limited forms
| of some of those ideas. There's a kind of bail system, and
| people have a right to be represented by attorneys, but no
| right for those attorneys to be paid by the government.
| There is somebody referred to as an immigration judge, and
| they have a federal job, but they aren't regular federal
| judges.
|
| It's possible to appeal an immigration court's decision to
| a federal district court to get into the legal system we're
| more familiar with.
|
| * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11536
|
| * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158
|
| * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559
|
| * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362
| exe34 wrote:
| apparently immigration law infringement only goes to
| court if you're trying to stop them now - if they want to
| send you to a concentration camp, there's no right to due
| process.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| The Alien Enemy Act is actually an incredibly old law
| (i.e., it's not a new development). What is new is
| attempting to use it based on a declaration that there's
| been a non-military invasion (
| https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11269 ). I think
| it's pretty clear that the Supreme Court is going to
| eventually strike that down, but the courts can only act
| in response to the cases they get, and only answer
| specific legal questions at different phases of those
| cases.
|
| But about a month ago, the Court did rule people who the
| government wanted to send to El Salvador have a due
| process right to challenge that decision in regular
| federal court as a habeas corpus proceeding ( https://www
| .supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf ). They
| later issued an order that the people covered by the
| original ruling cannot be deported based on the Alien
| Enemy Act until further notice ( https://www.supremecourt
| .gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18... ).
| exe34 wrote:
| yes, the courts have been ruling, but the executive has
| been ignoring.
| Jensson wrote:
| > It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't
| empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
|
| The allegation is that she obstructed an arrest by changing
| standard procedure, she wasn't arrested for obstructing
| search that part was fine.
|
| The ICE agents were legally allowed to wait outside and
| arrest the man as he stepped out, the judge leading the man
| out the backdoor after she learned ICE agents were waiting
| at the front is very hard to defend as anything but
| obstruction of arrest.
| ajross wrote:
| > obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure
|
| Which sounds awfully novel to me. You really want to tear
| down the structure of democracy over this kind of
| nitpicking on "procedure"?
|
| I remain horrified that people I really thought were
| normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so
| they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's
| office.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I remain horrified that people I really thought were
| normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so
| they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's
| office.
|
| Calling people who are against illegal immigration
| "racist" just makes it worse.
|
| A majority of people are fine with legal migration, a
| supermajority of people think illegal immigrants should
| get deported. So no, the issue most see isn't that they
| don't like Spanish, the issue is that they are here
| illegally.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| As far as the Republican Party, statistics don't back up
| the idea they are okay with legal immigration.
|
| https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-
| survey/rep...
|
| In Florida, Desantis is so against legal migration he is
| trying to relax child labor laws.
|
| Even now there is a share of Republicans especially in
| southern states who are still against interracial
| marriages.
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/interracial-
| marri...
| Jensson wrote:
| > As far as the Republican Party, statistics don't back
| up the idea they are okay with legal immigration.
|
| I said majority of people, not majority of republicans.
| That means there are still many republicans that like
| legal immigration, wealthy people like when labor is
| allowed to immigrate, Elon Musk is one such person among
| many others.
|
| If Trump said he would deport all the legal immigrants he
| would likely not have won the election, that they are
| illegal is core to his support.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| This is a complicated issue because Republicans spent
| decades sabotaging the immigration system. If you're an
| immigrant trying to cross the border legally, you could
| spend years waiting for your hearing. Part of the reason
| illegal immigration is so high is because they make legal
| immigration near impossible.
| jfengel wrote:
| Or we could just let more people be here legally. All
| we'd have to do is raise the quota.
|
| Do that, and I'd have zero problems rounding up all of
| the remaining illegal immigrants and driving 'em into the
| ocean, if that's what you want. Instead, I'm suspicious
| that "the only issue is that they're here illegally" is
| just deflection.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I'm pro-legal immigration but this isn't as simple as
| "make number go up." Resources like houses and jobs are
| in finite supply and allowing more legal immigration
| without ensuring the needs of your citizens is a good way
| to increase anti-immigrant sentiment. The facts don't
| matter that immigrants do the jobs that Americans don't
| want.
| jshen wrote:
| Reducing illegal and legal immigration actually hurts
| "your citizens" in many ways as it stands today in
| America. The immigrants pay taxes into things like social
| security without getting the benefits. They also work on
| farms and if they go away prices will go up.
|
| The only solution to housing is building more housing.
| mrandish wrote:
| > I remain horrified that people I really thought were
| normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so
| they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's
| office.
|
| The GP (or GGP, I forget) was discussing very specific
| legal technical details surrounding the judge's actions,
| the nature of the warrant and permissible locations for
| serving the warrant. I was pretty interested in that
| discussion - even though I probably generally agree with
| your macro views on immigration policy. You chose to
| focus on something completely different, the overall
| aggregate outcomes of national political policies and
| jumped immediately to rhetoric like "tear down the
| structure of democracy".
|
| IMHO, an important part of "the structure of democracy"
| is the rule of law. Ideally, that means equal, impartial,
| consistent enforcement of the laws as written. If the
| circumstances were changed to this being 1962 Alabama and
| the defendant being the Grand Wizard of the local KKK and
| the judge snuck him out the back door because RFK had
| sent FBI agents from Washington to serve a warrant
| arresting the KKK Grand Wizard - would you think those
| discussing whether that judge might have technically
| obstructed justice were equally "tearing down the
| structure of democracy?"
| ty6853 wrote:
| Rule of law and its "equal, impartial, consistent
| enforcement" is totally a discretionary thing and very
| much by democratic support. The federal government has
| stopped enforcing low-level marijuana possession pretty
| much whole-sale, unless of course you show up at the
| wrong protests (see Timothy Teagan). Most people seem to
| think this is just dandy.
|
| I would say you would actually destroy "democracy" if you
| enforced the rule of law.
| dmix wrote:
| > and very much by democratic support
|
| Immigration was consistently polled as the most important
| issue to voters in the last US election.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/immigration-americans-
| top-p...
| switch007 wrote:
| > We used to be special.
|
| Oh. Do expand.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| > The only question is whether obstructing ICE is
| classified as the legal offense of obstruction
|
| There's other questions tbh. I don't know the answers, but
| I think it is critical to point out.
|
| An important one is "does ICE have the authority to operate
| in the location they were operating in?" If the answer is
| no, then Dugan's actions cannot be interpreted as
| interfering with ICE's _official_ operations. You cannot
| interfere with official operations when the operations are
| not official or legal. An extreme example of this would be
| like police arresting somebody, and in a formal
| interrogation they admit to murder, but the person was not
| read their Miranda rights. These statements would likely be
| inadmissible in a court. But subtle details matter, like if
| the person wasn 't arrested or if they weren't being
| interrogated (i.e. they just blabbed).
|
| This matters because the warrant. In the affidavit it says
| Dugan asked if the officer had a _judicial_ warrant and
| were told they had an _administrative_ warrant.[0] That
| linked article suggests that an administrative warrant can
| only be executed in an area where there is no expectation
| of privacy. This is distinct from _public_. There are many
| public places where you do have a reasonable expectation of
| privacy. A common example being a public restroom (same law
| means people can 't take photos of you going to the
| bathroom). So is there a reasonable expectation of privacy
| here? I don't know.
|
| I think it is worth reading the affidavit. Certainly it
| justifies probable cause (at least from my naive
| understanding). But the legal code is similar to
| programming code in that subtle details are often critical
| to the output. That's why I'm saying it isn't "the only
| question", because we'd need to not only know the answers
| to the above but answers to more subtle details that likely
| are only known to domain experts (i.e. lawyers, judges,
| LEO, etc)
|
| [0] https://www.motionlaw.com/the-difference-between-
| judicial-an...
| vimax wrote:
| It's worth adding the director of the FBI posted publicly
| showing a clear politically motivated bias in an ongoing
| case. So outside the immediate facts of the case there
| are questions around presumption of innocence, due
| process, and a fair trial, as well as prosecutorial
| misconduct.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a
| public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call
| with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area.
|
| The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They
| allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them
| through a private back door to avoid arrest.
|
| Edit: directed, not escorted.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| If it can be credibly demonstrated that she cancelled the
| hearing and escorted the defendant out a back door within
| seconds of sending the officers away, that she had every
| intent of proceeding with the hearing before meeting with
| the officers, and that she and her peers did not usually
| use that door for defendants, then I would consider that to
| be proof beyond reasonable doubt that she intended to
| obstruct the arrest.
|
| It's not a given, but it doesn't seem like an
| insurmountable burden of proof either.
| Jensson wrote:
| > that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
|
| If the only reason to use the backdoor is to avoid arrest,
| then that proves her intent. If there was another reason to
| use it then that will come up in court.
| sasmithjr wrote:
| > [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back
| door to avoid arrest.
|
| According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still
| ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the
| agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use
| the elevator.
|
| INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different
| door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be
| illegal.
|
| [0]: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d02
| 2b74...
| lolinder wrote:
| The outcomes are immaterial to the legal question of
| obstruction, the only factors are knowledge of the warrant
| and intent to help him escape. If he successfully avoided
| arrest but it cannot be proven that the judge intended that
| outcome, then she is not guilty of obstruction. If he got
| caught anyway but the judge intended to help him escape,
| that's still obstruction.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or
| arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.
| Jensson wrote:
| They didn't need to search, they just needed to wait outside
| to arrest. That would have worked if the defendant didn't use
| the backdoor.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| But they didn't have a valid warrant for arrest. Therefore
| him going out the back door was not "escaping arrest".
| Jensson wrote:
| They did have a valid warrant for arrest, they just
| didn't have a warrant to search the courtroom but they
| had a warrant to arrest the guy as soon as he stepped
| outside.
| rolph wrote:
| FBI should review thier fieldwork, alternate
| entrance/exits, must be secured or under watch, before the
| approach.
| Jensson wrote:
| They did catch the guy so they did do their job.
| rolph wrote:
| yeah they did thier job, but operationally speaking, they
| need a review.
| lolinder wrote:
| Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of
| obstruction of justice requires two ingredients:
|
| 1) knowledge of a government proceeding
|
| 2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding
|
| It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was
| entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged
| for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is
| that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the
| hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not
| customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of
| helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest
| him.
|
| The government has to prove intent here, which as some have
| noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news
| stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be
| overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took
| action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1).
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
| ivape wrote:
| _The government has to prove intent here, which as some have
| noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news
| stories are all true it doesn 't seem that it would be
| overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took
| action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent_
|
| She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if
| it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration
| advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of
| how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is
| inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-
| immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only
| way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do
| that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go
| "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how.
|
| Frontpage of /r/law:
|
| ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for
| Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
|
| https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-
| without...
| lolinder wrote:
| > ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for
| Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
|
| This headline is deliberately inaccurate, as acknowledged
| within the article. It intentionally implies that any
| migrants are enough to qualify, but the memo is actually
| targeting a very specific gang:
|
| > The gang in question is Tren de Aragua, a group the Trump
| administration recently labeled a foreign terrorist
| organization. But legal experts say this is no
| justification for shredding the Constitution.
|
| They're correct that this is still extremely problematic,
| but that's no justification for shredding journalistic
| integrity.
|
| I'm not arguing that any of this we're discussing is _good_
| or even _not absolutely terrible_ , but there's a strong
| tendency in the current climate to overstate how bad things
| are. This is entirely unnecessary and actively
| counterproductive. Things are plenty bad as it is, we do
| not need to go around exaggerating the offenses committed
| by the Trump administration. Reporting things exactly as
| they are is plenty damning, and lying and exaggerating will
| just burn political and social capital totally
| unnecessarily.
| ivape wrote:
| The headline did not appear inaccurate to me, but I'll
| confess I'm not as great of a reader as some of you. The
| article seems to indicate the headline is correct from my
| reading comprehension. I always scored well on reading
| comprehension tests so I don't know, did I get dumber?
| Someone else read the article and settle it between me
| and the GP so we can get a conclusive answer.
|
| With that said, do you believe the Patriot Act was used
| only for terrorists?
|
| Great little scene from The Departed:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKPWaJPR0Y
|
| Gangs and Terrorists are bad, but I believe we as a
| country went through this once already and you cannot
| create these precedents because they stick around.
| They're literally reusing Guantanamo Bay.
| jshen wrote:
| What's the lie? Who is lying?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| You know who else tasked government police with hunting down
| minorities and legally punished those who helped said
| minorities escape persecution?
| Jensson wrote:
| Almost every single country on earth? Illegal immigrants
| are hunted down and deported everywhere and it is illegal
| to hide illegal immigrants.
|
| USA is an exception here where local authorities doesn't
| govern immigration laws so you get "sanctuary cities", in
| almost every other country this sort of thing doesn't
| happen so illegal immigrants just get arrested and
| deported.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| I said minorities, not "illegal immigrants"
|
| many minorities otherwise here legally are also being
| persecuted
| Jensson wrote:
| > many minorities otherwise here legally are also being
| persecuted
|
| Can you name one minority group that is being persecuted
| and have to hide? If you mean people critical of Trump
| then that is not a minority group, at least not in this
| context. It is wrong to deport them for that, but that
| isn't the same as "hunting down minorities".
| mrandish wrote:
| 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.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| This is the constitutional crisis.
|
| You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and
| assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that
| doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of
| constitutional rule in the US.
|
| The administration is in open violation of supreme court
| rulings and the law. They have repeatedly shown contempt for
| the constitution. They have repeatedly assumed their own
| supremacy. People responsible for enforcement are out of sync
| with those responsible for due process and legal
| interpretation. That is true crisis. These words are simple,
| but the emotional impact should be chilling. When considering
| the actions of the ICE agents, it seems very reasonable that
| aiding or abetting them would be an even greater obstruction
| of justice if not directly aiding and abetting illegal
| activity.
|
| America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What
| happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it
| or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are
| breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power.
| Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
|
| If the idea sounds farfetched, imagine if KKK members
| deciding to become police officers and how that changes the
| subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law
| says on paper. Imagine they decide to become judges to. How
| would you expect that to pervert justice?
| lolinder wrote:
| > You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and
| assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that
| doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of
| constitutional rule in the US.
|
| No I'm not. I'm taking the facts as they're presented by
| the AP (which is famously _not_ sympathetic to this
| administration) and saying that nothing in the facts that I
| 'm seeing here in this specific case serves as evidence of
| a constitutional crisis. This is a straightforward case of
| obstruction: either she did the things that are alleged or
| she didn't. If she did, it's obstruction regardless of who
| is in the White House, and we have no reason to believe at
| this time that she didn't!
|
| We have better litmus tests, better evidence of wrongdoing
| by the administration, and better cases to get up in arms
| about. If we choose our martyrs carelessly we're wasting
| political capital that could be spent showing those still
| on the fence the many _actual, straightforward_ cases of
| overreach.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| > we have no reason to believe at this time that she
| didn't!
|
| this is not the standard of guilt and i think you know
| that
|
| i also think you know that this is merely the latest
| incident in an extended, obvious campaign to override the
| judiciary.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's not about the standard of guilt in court, it's about
| political capital and effective rhetoric.
|
| There are _so many_ cases where the Trump administration
| has flagrantly violated rule of law. Why would we waste
| time fighting them in the court of public opinion on a
| case where things currently appear to be open and shut in
| the other direction?
|
| When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about
| something where to all appearances the "victim" actually
| did break the law and is being given due process, we lose
| credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many
| many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's
| harder for them to tune us out.
|
| In ux design this is called alert fatigue, and it matters
| in politics too.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| > When those on the fence see us getting up in arms about
| something where to all appearances the "victim" actually
| did break the law and is being given due process, we lose
| credibility. If we instead save our breath for the many
| many cases that actually have compelling facts, it's
| harder for them to tune us out.
|
| those cases are the least important to the defense of due
| process rights. but i'll concede that you're likely
| correct at the level of the broader populace given that
| our civic education is an embarrassment and has been for
| decades.
| frognumber wrote:
| The truth is somewhere in the middle.
|
| There was a similar case in Massachusetts many years
| back. It never went to trial, and legal analysis could go
| both ways. The bargain struct was it would go into
| secretive judicial oversight channels.
|
| There is a strong case to be made for obstruction of
| justice, and an equally strong case to be made about her
| making an error in her professional capacity as a judge
| and a government employee (which grants a level of
| immunity). Police officers, judges, soldiers, etc. make
| mistakes, but they generally don't go to jail for them
| because (even corruption aside) everyone makes mistakes.
| In some jobs, mistakes can and do have severe
| consequences up to and including people dying. If that
| led to prison, no one sane would take those jobs.
|
| In any sane universe, it'd be fair to say she screwed up,
| and then the FBI also screwed up arresting her. I think
| the FBI screwed up more, since their mistake was
| premeditated, whereas she was put on the spot.
|
| I do agree with your fundamental point of fatigue. This
| is not something anyone has a moral high ground to hang
| their flag on without looking bad.
| Jensson wrote:
| Then don't fight these battles where they are in the right,
| fight them where they are in the wrong. Taking this fight
| here just gives all the advantage to Trump and his regime,
| fight them where it is easy to win.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Salami slicing is the first page of the present day
| authoritarian play book.
|
| Here's an excerpt from _They Thought They Were Free_ , a
| book about the mindset of ordinary Germans experiencing
| the rise of the Nazi Government:
|
| _Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but
| only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
| You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that
| others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in
| resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk
| alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make
| trouble." Why not?--Well, you are not in the habit of
| doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing
| alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine
| uncertainty.
|
| Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of
| decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the
| streets, in the general community, "everyone" is happy.
| One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak
| privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel
| as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so
| bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."
|
| And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must
| lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the
| beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you
| don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise,
| the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the
| regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your
| colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.
| You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally,
| people who have always thought as you have.
|
| ...
|
| But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or
| hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes.
| That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the
| whole regime had come immediately after the first and
| smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been
| sufficiently shocked--if, let us say, the gassing of the
| Jews in '43 had come immediately after the "German Firm"
| stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But
| of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come
| all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them
| imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be
| shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than
| Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why
| should you at Step C? And so on to Step D._
| Jensson wrote:
| And you guys are playing right into it, by over reacting
| to these small slices you turn people against you and
| help expand their influence.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Just wait until you get to the part of the They Thought
| They Were Free where it mentions over-reacting. That
| strategy doesn't work.
|
| There is no moment of egregious violation. It never
| comes. Even when the state is clearly totalitarian there
| were Germans holding out hope that Germany would lose the
| war. As if that was their final straw.
|
| The salami is purposefully sliced thin enough that one
| slice on it's own will never provoke enough outrage. How
| do you hope to oppose that?
| Jensson wrote:
| So did the over-reactions work? If they didn't then why
| double down on a losing strategy?
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Infighting is how liberalism loses. While we sit and
| deliberate on whether this is the slice that merits
| actions, they are making plans to arrest more judges.
|
| The point of that excerpt is that there is not and likely
| will never be one single unifying objectionable action
| that provokes people into acting and we will slow walk
| our way into atrocity through inaction.
|
| The argument being made is that it will continually get
| worse every single day. Every action will slowly become
| more egregious. A judge arrested politically, but for
| cause, today will be a judge arrested without cause
| tomorrow, but we will have adapted to see judges being
| arrested for blatantly political reasons as a new norm.
|
| The facts and nuance will change faster than we can adapt
| and while we pontificate on whether this is the one
| that's worth it, the next bad thing will have already
| happened. More power will have been consolidated.
|
| Taking in the truth requires action, so anything that
| lets people stay in denial or bury their heads is clung
| to in order to protect mental health. Eventually it will
| be too late, and you will wonder when you should have
| acted knowing you are no longer able to.
| c_exclu wrote:
| > This is the constitutional crisis.
|
| > They have repeatedly shown contempt for the constitution.
|
| > These words are simple, but the emotional impact should
| be chilling.
|
| hayst4ck could you share what you think and how you feel
| about the previous time this happened in the late 1800s?
|
| ---
|
| > This is the problem with legal fundamentalism or
| believing in the raw meaning of words without context or
| critically thinking.
|
| > It is important to think about some paradoxical questions
|
| > If someone is in violation of the law, can they expect
| the protection of the law?
|
| > Is it right to perform an action that enforces the law,
| even if it violates the law?
|
| > What happens when the law itself is unjust?
|
| > What happens when unjust law is used to consolidate the
| power of those who act unjustly?
|
| > Will strict adherence to the law create justice?
|
| > Can you protect Rule of Law while strictly following the
| law as written?
|
| > This country was founded as a deeply liberal country
| based on the philosophy of the father of liberalism
| himself, John Locke. There are some pretty hard questions
| he had develop a framework to overcome, and the core idea
| that founds that framework is consent.
|
| What would John Locke have said about the acts of Denis
| Kearney, John Bigler, the 1858 California Legislature, John
| Harlan, Horace Page, Aaron Sargent, John Miller, Thomas
| Geary, Samuel Gompers, William Hearst, John Cable, and the
| 1876 California State Senate?
|
| ---
|
| > We are currently in a state of lawlessness. Law is
| inconsistent with itself and enforcement is inconsistent
| with the orders of the judiciary.
|
| > This is the crisis. We expect law to function as a
| consistent system, but right now it is not. One thing we
| know for a fact is that an inconsistent system can justify
| anything by holding it's inconsistent axioms as true.
|
| > Due process is not to protect those who receive it. Due
| process exists to protect the integrity of the judiciary
| against those who have been blessed with the legitimate use
| of state power.
|
| What would you have said about Denis Kearney, John Bigler,
| the 1858 California Legislature, John Harlan, Horace Page,
| Aaron Sargent, John Miller, Thomas Geary, Samuel Gompers,
| William Hearst, John Cable, and the 1876 California State
| Senate?
| belorn wrote:
| > America is being confronted with a very serious problem.
| What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law
| break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the
| police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is
| only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
|
| The world has a concept that fits that description and it
| is a civil war. People pick up arms, a lot of people get
| killed, several generations end up in cycles of violence,
| children and old people dies first, and those that can will
| emigrate away from the conflict.
|
| That is what happen if everyone agree that there is no law,
| only power, and act on that belief.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| chmorgan_ wrote:
| The irony that the judge would likely have held you in contempt
| if you didn't obey one of their orders but seems to think it's ok
| to help people pursued by other law enforcement to skip out. The
| judge should know that even they aren't above the law and they
| can't override other judicial and administrative rulings just
| because they disagree with them.
| exegete wrote:
| What judge gave ICE the warrant?
| neilpointer wrote:
| I think the judge understands the law more deeply than ICE
| agents. Very unlikely that the judge will be found guilty of the
| crime charged by FBI, but that's not the point. The point is for
| Trump and his cronies to scare the judiciary into submission.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| I just read the complaint. What's the problem? Was the
| administrative warrant invalid? According to the complaint, the
| agents didn't enter the courtroom, but rather waited in the hall,
| where they were approached by the judge. If the judge directed
| the defendant to a back door never used by defendants not in
| custody, that's clearly obstruction.
| cmurf wrote:
| _The President of the United States of America is at war with the
| Constitution and the rule of law._ - J. Michael Luttig, former
| Fourth Circuit judge, April 14, 2025.
|
| https://abovethelaw.com/2025/04/conservative-judge-doesnt-pu...
|
| ---
|
| _This -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation's arrest today of a
| sitting judge -- against the backdrop that the President of the
| United States is, at this same moment, defying an April 10 Order
| of the Supreme Court of the United States ..._ - April 25, 2025
|
| (thread continues)
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnzb...
|
| ---
|
| _To read the Criminal Complaint and attached FBI Affidavit that
| gave rise to Wisconsin State Judge Hannah Dugan's federal
| criminal arrest today for obstructing or impeding a proceeding
| before a department or agency of the United States and concealing
| an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest is at once to
| know to a certainty that neither the state courts nor the federal
| courts could ever even hope to administer justice if the
| spectacle that took place in Judge Dugan's courthouse last Friday
| April 18 took place in the courthouses across the country._ -
| April 25, 2025
|
| (thread continues)
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnxq...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Luttig
| guywithahat wrote:
| Lying to cops (and FBI) is a crime. This judge knew it was
| illegal but did it anyways to let criminals get away.
|
| This isn't controversial.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| If they are arresting judges for any appearance of helping
| immigrants, imagine all the arrests ICE is making of employers of
| undocumented immigrants right now.
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