A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause.
"An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any nonpublic areas—or areas that are not freely accessible to the public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy—without a valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2]
The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search.
Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients:
1) knowledge of a government proceeding
2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding
It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1).
You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law. They have repeatedly shown contempt for the constitution. They have repeatedly assumed their own supremacy. People responsible for enforcement are out of sync with those responsible for due process and legal interpretation. That is true crisis. These words are simple, but the emotional impact should be chilling. When considering the actions of the ICE agents, it seems very reasonable that aiding or abetting them would be an even greater obstruction of justice if not directly aiding and abetting illegal activity.
America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
If the idea sounds farfetched, imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper. Imagine they decide to become judges to. How would you expect that to pervert justice?
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mrandish3 days ago
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.
ocdtrekkie3 days ago
> The government has to prove intent here
Technically all the government has to do is get her on a plane to El Salvador in the middle of the night.
Which is to say, this arm of government has not followed any semblance of due process so far, and is currently defying a unanimous order of the Supreme Court even in a Republican supermajority, pretending due process is something they "have to" do is very much ignoring where we are.
fc417fc8022 days ago
Notably the examples on the page you linked appear to involve illegal acts (tampering, threatening, etc). Letting someone out a different door (neither party is trespassing) doesn't seem to rise to that bar.
Just as I'm not obligated to call the police to report something I don't see how I can be obligated to force my guest to use a particular door for the convenience of the police. It isn't my responsibility to actively facilitate their actions.
It would never have occurred to me (and doesn't seem reasonable) that obstruction could involve indirect (relative to the government process) actions.
I could understand "aiding and abetting" if I was actively facilitating the commission of a crime but I don't want to live in a country where mere avoidance is considered a crime. "Arrested for resisting arrest" gets mocked for good reason.
ivape3 days ago
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent
She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how.
Frontpage of /r/law:
ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
> government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1)
Dude used a different door so the FBI arrests a judge in a court room? At that point we should be charging ICE agents with kidnapping.
ImPostingOnHN3 days ago
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Gabriel543 days ago
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.
ajross3 days ago
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.
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pyuser5833 days ago
My understanding is that you have an obligation to act lawfully, even if another person is not acting lawfully.
This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”
lolinder3 days ago
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.
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nonethewiser3 days ago
That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz.
The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
s1artibartfast3 days ago
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.
sasmithjr3 days ago
> [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator.
INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal.
If we're going to be technical about this, which one has to be in the eyes of the law, what is the difference between escorting them through the private back door vs escorting them through the front door?
How do you prove intent? That her intent was to obstruct?
They point out in the article that such room (juror room) is never usually used by certain people, but that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
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insane_dreamer3 days ago
If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.
Jensson3 days ago
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.
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downrightmike3 days ago
Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law
lenkite3 days ago
Which law aren't they obeying ?
nonethewiser3 days ago
That is key indeed. She specifically clarified the type of warrant then escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
rufus_foreman3 days ago
>> An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant
False.
os2warpman2 days ago
An ICE warrant is for civil offenses.
Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter.
If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
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kemayo3 days ago
> 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".
mjburgess3 days ago
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.
kemayo3 days ago
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.
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ldoughty3 days ago
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)
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mullingitover3 days ago
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.
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Gabriel543 days ago
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.
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wonderwonder3 days ago
"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
lolinder3 days ago
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.
silisili3 days ago
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.
JumpCrisscross3 days ago
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.)
dylan6043 days ago
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
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southernplaces73 days ago
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.
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mindslight3 days ago
We've got National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason. Just sayin'.
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gosub1003 days ago
Why don't you organize one?
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esbranson3 days ago
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s1artibartfast3 days ago
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.
adolph3 days ago
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? The FBI affidavit says they were waiting in the public hallway outside, let the bailiff know what they were doing and did not enter the courtroom. The judge did not find out until a public defender took pictures of the arrest team and brought it to the attention of the judge. Maybe the FBI lied, but that seems unlikely given the facts would seem eventually verifiable by security video and uninvolved witness statements.
Members of the arrest team reported the following events after Judge DUGAN
learned of their presence and left the bench. Judge DUGAN and Judge A, who
were both wearing judicial robes, approached members of the arrest team in
the public hallway.
> the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
I used to work as a paramedic. We’d frequently be called to the local tribal jail which had a poor reputation. People would play sick to get out of there for a few hours. If the jail staff thought they were faking and they were due for release in the next week or so, they’d “release” them while we were doing an assessment and tell them “you are getting the bill for this not us” (because in custody the jail is responsible for medical care). Patient would duly get in our ambulance and a few minutes down the road and “feel better”, and request to be let out.
The first time this happened my partner was confused. “We need to stop them” - no, we don’t, and legally can’t. “We need to tell the jail so they can come pick them back up” - no, the jail made the choice to release them, they are no longer in custody and free to go.
This caught on very quickly with inmates and for a while was happening a couple of times a day before the jail figured out the deal and stopped releasing people early.
Centigonal3 days ago
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-v3 days ago
It's not related to legal proceedings, so, no.
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
rolph3 days ago
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.
lliamander3 days ago
The right move would have been simply to not help Flores-Ruiz evade ICE.
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dfxm123 days ago
According to ICE? "Comply with whatever we say". It's obvious that the current admin is operating autocratically, outside the law.
marcusverus3 days ago
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.
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eterps3 days ago
My thoughts exactly.
NoMoreNicksLeft3 days ago
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.
spamizbad3 days ago
This to me seems like a completely lawful act on the part of the judge?
ajross3 days ago
> 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.
gazebo643 days ago
> 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.
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tedivm3 days ago
The ICE agents didn't have a warrant, so the judge was under no legal obligation to say anything to them at all.
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....
Jtsummers3 days ago
> 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.
whats_a_quasar3 days ago
To your question - A state judge cannot be required to hold someone on behalf of federal agents. That's federalism 101 and settled law.
> The question is if the judge should have held the man
This is bananas. The judges (or anyone else for that matter) should not be able to hold this man (or any other man) without an arrest warrant.
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jandrese3 days ago
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.
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analog313 days ago
For all the judge could have known, the agents weren't coming back.
s1artibartfast3 days ago
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
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KennyBlanken3 days ago
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.
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armchairhacker3 days ago
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…
EDIT: Although Shelly Joseph wasn’t arrested, only charged.
kemayo3 days ago
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.
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phendrenad23 days ago
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.
phendrenad219 hours ago
Looks like I was wrong. For some reason I wasn't aware the that judge smuggled the subject out through the back door that goes through the judge's chambers, which typically judges avoid allowing the general public into, because it implies improper fraternization between a judge and someone involved in court cases.
euroderf3 days ago
Going from "redirect blame" to "make an arrest" is a significant escalation.
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euroderf3 days ago
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.
rustcleaner3 days ago
>you can't lie to the feds
We really need a court case or law passed that says a stalked animal has the right to run (lie) without further punishment resulting from the act of running (lying). Social Contract™, and "you chose it" gaslighty nonsense aside, the state putting someone in a concrete camp for years, or stealing decades worth of savings, is violence even if blessed-off religiously by a black-robed blesser. Running from and lying to the police to preserve one's or one's family's liberty should be a given fact of the game, not additional "crimes."
We also need to abolish executions except for oath taking elected office holders convicted of treason, redefine a life sentence as 8 years and all sentencing be concurrent across all layers of state, and put a sixteen year post hoc time limit on custodial sentences (murder someone 12 years ago and get a "life sentence" today as a result? -> 4 years max custody). Why? Who is the same person after a presidential administration? What is a 25+ year sentence going to do to restore the victims' losses? If you feel that strongly after 8 years that it should have been 80, go murder the released perp and serve your 8!
The point is to defang government; it has become too powerful in the name of War on _______, and crime has filled the blank really nicely historically.
wonderwonder3 days ago
"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.
timewizard3 days ago
> 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.
dudeinjapan3 days ago
Umm… why didn’t the agents just wait patiently until the proceeding was done?
The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.
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duxup3 days ago
It does seem like they could have gotten what they wanted by just trying to do their job a little more such as, waiting.
ceejayoz3 days ago
I don't think I've ever encountered a CBP employee I'd describe as "patient".
rolph3 days ago
LEOs are trained to "be the one in control"
dlachausse3 days ago
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potato37328423 days ago
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_thibedeau3 days ago
She was convicted for lying, not for the trading.
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kylehotchkiss3 days ago
"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.
jawiggins3 days ago
The AP article [1] has the full complaint linked, the crux of the case seems to be around the judge allowing the defendant to leave through a back entrance ("jury door") when they were aware agents were waiting in the public hallway to make an arrest as they exited.
" 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of the arrest team to the Chief Judge’s office. For example, the courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy’s return to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like “Wait, come with me.” Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door."
I find it extremely doubtful that she told the agents he'd be leaving through a particular door or that she had any legal obligation to make sure the man exited in a particular way.
lurk23 days ago
United States Code, Title 8, § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) (2023)
> (1)(A) Any person who
[…]
> (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
[…]
> shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
What's being alleged is that she deliberately escorted the man out through an exit that is not usually made available to members of the public, instead of allowing him to leave through the regular door that would likely have put him right into the hands of ICE. If that was done with the intent of helping him evade arrest (which, if the story above is accurate, seems likely), it seems very reasonable to charge her with obstruction.
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
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dionian3 days ago
there is usually only one exit to a courtroom, in the back
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xyzzy95633 days ago
It's a crime to harbor or aid illegals in evading federal authorities. So this is a legal obligation of every person.
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bix63 days ago
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?
Miner49er3 days ago
How in the world is this an arrestable offense. Escorting someone out of a room?
lolinder3 days ago
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.
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euroderf3 days ago
There has to be precedents in case law for how to assess this.
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.
kstrauser3 days ago
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.
morkalork3 days ago
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.
FreebasingLLMs3 days ago
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thrance3 days ago
A sane argument against an insane position. Republicans are perfectly fine with unpunished violence against non-citizens. No wonder tourism is sharply declining.
nonethewiser3 days ago
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens?
timewizard3 days ago
> 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.
mulmen3 days ago
> 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.
mrguyorama3 days ago
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.
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Hojojo3 days ago
[flagged]
spacemadness3 days ago
People are quibbling without understanding what kind of warrant it was even. They just read “warrant” or are using it in bad faith. We have a lot of bad faith arguers on HN due to it being a public forum. If you check their post history it’s very apparent.
lliamander3 days ago
[flagged]
km1443 days ago
Your point does not engage with the question raised in the comment you're replying to. Would you like to live in a society where criminal justice is secondary to immigration enforcement? One where we deport people with acute conditions without treatment because they are not authorized to live in this country? Dealing with the "root cause" does not require inflicting unnecessary cruelty upon other human beings.
> it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.
Who is in power? What does our Constitution say? The executive branch is not granted absolute authority over immigration policy and the treatment of humans—citizens or otherwise. That is a Constitutional crisis.
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fzeroracer3 days ago
People in this country have rights, regardless of how they entered. You either believe in the constitution and it's application to all citizens and non-citizens or you're a fascist.
I'm not going to quibble on any other bits of misdirection or failure to read other people's posts. Pick your side.
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cactacea3 days ago
You have completely missed the point of my comment.
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nonethewiser3 days ago
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens? Ones that are being tried for battery no less.
s1artibartfast3 days ago
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.
tmiku3 days ago
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...
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EnPissant3 days ago
Sequence of events according to the criminal complaint[1]:
1. ICE obtained and brought an administrative immigration warrant to arrest Flores-Ruiz after his 8:30 a.m. state-court hearing in Courtroom 615 (Judge Dugan’s court).
2. Agents informed the courtroom deputy of their plan and waited in the public hallway. A public-defender attorney photographed them and alerted Judge Dugan.
3. Judge Dugan left the bench, confronted the agents in the hallway, angrily insisted they needed a judicial warrant, and ordered them to see the Chief Judge. Judge A (another judge) escorted most of the team away. One DEA agent remained unnoticed.
4. Returning to her courtroom, Judge Dugan placed Flores-Ruiz in the jury box, then personally escorted him and his attorney through the locked jury-door into non-public corridors: an exit normally used only for in-custody defendants escorted by deputies.
5. The prosecutor (ADA) handling the case was present, as were the victims of the domestic violence charges. However, the case was never called on the record, and the ADA was never informed of the adjournment.
6. Flores-Ruiz and counsel used a distant elevator, exited on 9th Street, and walked toward the front plaza. Agents who had just left the Chief Judge’s office spotted them. When approached, Flores-Ruiz sprinted away.
7. After a brief foot chase along State Street, agents arrested Flores-Ruiz at 9:05 a.m., about 22 minutes after first seeing him inside.
The arrest itself (not necessarily the charges) is best described as a publicity stunt. If you want to charge a lawyer or judge or anyone unlikely to run of a non-violent crime, you invite them to the station:
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
legitster3 days ago
To clarify - the only time you ever need to "arrest" someone and place them in custody is if you are worried they are either going to commit violent crimes or are going to be a flight risk before they can see a judge.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
Can you imagine being a law enforcement officer bringing a case before a judge that you previously arrested on a flimsy pretext in order to intimidate them? That's going to be awkward.
kasey_junk3 days ago
Federal agents probably don’t worry too much about being in local misdemeanor court.
fencepost3 days ago
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.
giraffe_lady3 days ago
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.
Kapura3 days ago
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.
masklinn3 days ago
> 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.
hypeatei3 days ago
> 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.
whats_a_quasar3 days ago
No, a "publicity stunt" is not the best way to describe this latest escalation in the Trump administration's campaign to destroy the rule of law in America. It may be deliberately flashy, but that phrasing very much undersells the significance of the executive attacking the judiciary.
A good reminder that we need to support local, professional journalism. Otherwise the only information we would be getting right now is official statements or hearsay.
DrillShopper3 days ago
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel now is just a reskin of USA Today[1]. They're not locally owned or controlled.
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.
openasocket3 days ago
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.
pcthrowaway3 days ago
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.
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noemit3 days ago
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.
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trhway3 days ago
> Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. ..... wind up living free in another country
Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time, so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had a DUI deadly crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his lawyers were filing piles of various defenses like for example "statute of limitations" just few month after the crash, etc., and he disappeared later in 2022, with a guy with the same name, age, face, etc. surfacing in Russia as a director of AI at a large Russian bank.
I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
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hypeatei3 days ago
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.
ClumsyPilot3 days ago
> 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.
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anonfordays3 days ago
[flagged]
godelski3 days ago
> 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....
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?
gortok3 days ago
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.
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mmanfrin3 days ago
> 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.
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crote3 days ago
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.
dbspin3 days ago
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).
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ClumsyPilot3 days ago
I am still waiting for a “corporations are people” to get death penalty
timewizard3 days ago
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.
kristjansson3 days ago
> 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.
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hackable_sand3 days ago
Immigration isn't a crime though...
rufus_foreman3 days ago
>> 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.
trhway3 days ago
>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.
mint23 days ago
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?
thuanao3 days ago
I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal" people is tyrannical and inhumane.
onetimeusename3 days ago
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.
kstrauser3 days ago
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.
godelski3 days ago
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.
tintor3 days ago
[flagged]
andrewstuart23 days ago
In an ideal world, maybe that's how it would work. In reality, that's not how it works or likely ever will work. So the comment you're replying to is a pragmatic approach to "how do we make the world we actually live in, not some idealized fantasy, safer?"
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trhway3 days ago
>It is not fair to all other documented immigrants.
As a properly documented immigrant i have no such feelings.
I've got great education, good job. Most of those poor illegals didn't have such luck, so if anything, the life is not fair to them, not to me.
goatlover3 days ago
You ever consider what's fair to the undocumented, given the likelihood they're fleeing bad conditions in their home country? I'd be fine with providing them documentation without fear of deportation since they're already here. But I don't think that's what one political party currently in power wants to do.
billy99k3 days ago
[flagged]
bdelmas3 days ago
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...)
nemomarx3 days ago
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?
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jmull3 days ago
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?
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trhway3 days ago
>What happens when life will be tough later
are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they came here?
SimbaOnSteroids3 days ago
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.
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eterps3 days ago
> The New York Times observes that Kash Patel has now deleted his tweet (for unknown reasons) and adds that the charging documents are still not available.
Kash Patel tweeting in real-time indicates that he aware of it and at some-level involved with the arrest. It also shows that he sees this as a totally reasonable action and response - and wants the public to know about it.
This is a much, much more informative source. Thanks!
openasocket3 days ago
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?
kemayo3 days ago
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...
sixothree3 days ago
Are these the agents that were recorded last week not wearing uniforms and not presenting identification?
dmix3 days ago
That still sounds pretty vague.
openasocket3 days ago
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?
NoMoreNicksLeft3 days ago
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.
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bloopernova3 days ago
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ericras3 days ago
No one is above the law.
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cmurf3 days ago
The President of the United States of America is at war with the Constitution and the rule of law. - J. Michael Luttig, former Fourth Circuit judge, April 14, 2025.
This — the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s arrest today of a sitting judge — against the backdrop that the President of the United States is, at this same moment, defying an April 10 Order of the Supreme Court of the United States ... - April 25, 2025
To read the Criminal Complaint and attached FBI Affidavit that gave rise to Wisconsin State Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal criminal arrest today for obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest is at once to know to a certainty that neither the state courts nor the federal courts could ever even hope to administer justice if the spectacle that took place in Judge Dugan’s courthouse last Friday April 18 took place in the courthouses across the country. - April 25, 2025
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.
staticman23 days ago
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!"
zepton3 days ago
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".
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toast03 days ago
> 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?
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tyre3 days ago
I believe there is a space for bribery income
whats_a_quasar3 days ago
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.
zdragnar3 days ago
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.
perihelions3 days ago
- "They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you,"
Do you know if an arrest warrant was issued? I don’t think ICE works on warrants
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sanderjd3 days ago
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.
zzrrt3 days ago
> 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.
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.
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kallistisoft3 days ago
> The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens...
The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.
As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]
This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!
This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection
[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.
[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections
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HeatrayEnjoyer3 days ago
>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.
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jibal3 days ago
Your comment has no connection at all with this case.
chews3 days ago
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.
lupusreal3 days ago
> 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.
There's now been more information in this case. Apparently the judge smuggled the defendant out of the court through a back door in her chambers. I don't know why that information wasn't provided initially, and it's kind of annoying, because all of the other comments here are moot.
exiguus3 days ago
How often does it happen in the us that a judge get arrested?
disqard3 days ago
Multiple people in this thread are painfully obviously trying to look the other way, marshaling all their logic for this purpose, yet you waltz in here and say the quiet part out loud. Tsk tsk!
underseacables3 days ago
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.
jldugger3 days ago
> 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.
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dlachausse3 days ago
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TrapLord_Rhodo2 days ago
ICE is there to arrest a known fugative. The judge said you don't have the right to stop proceedings. They back down and say we'll just arrest him afterwards.
>[Afterwards] Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Seems like “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents to me.
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...
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esbranson3 days ago
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empath753 days ago
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.
xpe3 days ago
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.
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kcatskcolbdi3 days ago
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.
macinjosh3 days ago
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.
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firesteelrain3 days ago
Based on the alleged facts, the Judge is guilty of obstruction not harboring. I don’t know why he would hide an illegal from ICE. Especially someone breaking the law which a judge is sworn to uphold.
lantry3 days ago
"the law, which a judge is sworn to uphold" includes due process. The president and everyone in the executive branch has also sworn to uphold this.
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nonethewiser3 days ago
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...
sarlalian3 days ago
I'll correct my previous statement, it does appear in the legal brief about the judge being arrested that he was here illegally.
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.
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FireBeyond3 days ago
> 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.
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Sammi3 days ago
If I was a judge in the US right now then I would feel very strongly that there is a metaphorical bus I need to go sit in right now.
_DeadFred_3 days ago
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.
neilpointer3 days ago
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.
nis0s3 days ago
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.
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like_any_other3 days ago
> Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X, which he deleted moments after posting. The post accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century [1]. Personally I find the law itself repellent, and more often than not it is used to manufacture crimes out of thin air. But if the article is accurate, then nothing has changed - the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
The thing that has changed is that 6 months ago, directing federal agents away from an illegal immigrant couldn't be rationalized by one's oath to the Constitution committing one to a belief like "I don't think anyone should be blackbagged and sent to foreign torture prisons for the rest of their lives without due process."
Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that nothing has changed.
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JKCalhoun3 days ago
> Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century
At the risk of being pedantic, all laws are used to manufacture crimes.
kemayo3 days ago
> 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.
jwsteigerwalt3 days ago
Still waiting for better information about whether the judge was uncooperative or lied/misled the agents.
KittenInABox3 days ago
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.
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robblbobbl3 days ago
Concerning
tptacek3 days ago
This happened in the last Trump administration, too.
pvg3 days ago
I don't think they started with an arrest then, right?
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whats_a_quasar3 days ago
Source?
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killthegaffots3 days ago
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lobotomizer3 days ago
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mmooss3 days ago
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!)
slaw3 days ago
No, the issue is:
"Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
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.
bonif3 days ago
It’s heartbreaking to see the United States, once a symbol of strength and freedom, reduced to a complete joke.
CamperBob23 days ago
Well, you see, some dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much, so it was inevitable, really.
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Aeolun3 days ago
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.
trelane3 days ago
This is not a new development. We'be been laughed at for as long as I can remember.
whoknowsidont3 days ago
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.
kevin_thibedeau3 days ago
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.
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kansface3 days ago
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.
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kjkjadksj3 days ago
You are asking for an armed standoff. Last time that happened in this country, college students were slaughtered by government forces.
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hexis3 days ago
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dlachausse3 days ago
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.
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hidingfearful3 days ago
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.
rchaud3 days ago
I imagine they'll soon be putting a spin on George W Bush-era legal arguments about the applicability of Geneva Conventions on "non-uniformed combatants". In this case, if the ICE agents weren't uniformed at the time of arrest, they can't be considered agents of the federal government, and thus can't be subject to legal redress.
Why are the people of Wisconsin taking this without a fight? Sit ins in local FBI branch offices and police stations are in order. Groups of protestors stand in front of police car parking lots—if the piggies can’t leave their sty, they can’t destroy our democracy.
jibal2 days ago
What makes you think people aren't doing that? They are. You're wrong about that last bit, though.
readhistory3 days ago
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Supermancho3 days ago
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".
alistairSH3 days ago
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).
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crote3 days ago
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"?
dylan6043 days ago
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
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Y_Y3 days ago
Is this qhy everyone is worried about illegal immigrants comitting crimes? Because they have a get-out-of-jail-free?
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seivan3 days ago
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daheza3 days ago
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.
paganel3 days ago
> 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.
frumplestlatz3 days ago
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DrillShopper3 days ago
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seivan3 days ago
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josefritzishere3 days ago
This is feeling increasingly like Germany circa 1936.
indiansdontwipe3 days ago
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throwaway57523 days ago
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.
derektank3 days ago
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."
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trelane3 days ago
I used to think that about ex presidents. The times seem to have changed.
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savagej3 days ago
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death2treason3 days ago
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Aeolun3 days ago
This thread is especially bad though. So much flagged and dead. I feel like some true extremists descended on this one, writing both inflammatory messages as well as flagging everything they don’t like.
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anonfordays2 days ago
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anonym293 days ago
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?
patrickmay3 days ago
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.
sylens3 days ago
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?
GuinansEyebrows3 days ago
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.
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JKCalhoun3 days ago
Maybe you're a fan of "Texit".
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rchaud3 days ago
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
etchalon3 days ago
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tmpz223 days ago
If the facts come out that the charge is flimsy or legally unsound AND protocol and precedent was breached, such as it being very atypical to haul a nonviolent offender (the judge) from a courthouse, would you change your mind?
Will you follow up on the facts of this case or do you already know everything you need to know?
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jmclnx3 days ago
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esbranson3 days ago
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
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.
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jmull3 days ago
What does this have to do with this situation though?
Der_Einzige3 days ago
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exe343 days ago
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grafmax3 days ago
One person’s crime doesn’t define a whole group. Most undocumented immigrants follow the law. Justice demands that we hold individuals accountable without using isolated cases to justify broad prejudice.
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jjulius3 days ago
Sorry to hear that about your mom, that really sucks.
Are you suggesting that all legal citizens maintain insurance, don't steal cars and don't flee crime scenes?
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scottyg663 days ago
How did you know he was an illegal alien if he fled the scene and wasn't caught?
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neilpointer3 days ago
I think it's because our legal system is predicated on "innocent until proven guilty" for really, really good reasons. One such reason is assuming people should not be protected by the law without proving allegations against them in a court.
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insane_dreamer3 days ago
Because the man was in court for his alleged crime, the judicial system working as intended.
But ICE showed up without a legal warrant and attempted to subvert the judicial system by whisking him away, and then arrested a judge.
Accused of a crime? Go to court, be found guilt or innocent, and serve your sentence if convicted.
If we don't hold up the rule of law we become a dictatorship.
chimeracoder3 days ago
> Why are some people so obsessed with protecting people with no regard for our laws
This is a wild statement for someone to write in defense of people who just broke the law while arresting a federal judge who was herself attempting to enforce the law.
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huitzitziltzin3 days ago
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.
rgreeko423 days ago
The copper that connects the alarm lever to the alarm system was sold for scrap 25 years ago
guywithahat2 days ago
Generally speaking, if you lie to cops or other federal agents you can be arrested on a number of grounds, including obstruction of justice, interfering with an arrest, or concealment.
The dumb part about this is the judge sends people to jail ever year for doing exactly this. She knew what he was doing was illegal, she just didn't care.
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guywithahat3 days ago
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.
Gabriel543 days ago
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.
mempko3 days ago
Because the judge appears to have basic morals
cosmicgadget3 days ago
Her career might get more difficult if witnesses stop showing up to court because they fear deportation that skips due process.
thrance3 days ago
You're right, she should have let ICE illegally send the guy straight to an El Salvador dark site with no due process.
Calling an illegal act heroic doesn't hold up in court though, we will hear what they say in court later.
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ConspiracyFact3 days ago
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.
maximinus_thrax3 days ago
I'm fairly certain that a sitting judge who's a former president of the bar association knows the law better than you or me or Crack Patel and is more aware of the legal ramifications than random armchair lawyers.
From my personal armchair, this will go nowhere, the accusation has no basis. Something similar happened before and the charges were dropped. This was just an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. I hope the SCOTUS is happy with the monster they created.
DrillShopper3 days ago
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.
ericras3 days ago
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chmorgan_3 days ago
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.
cosmicgadget3 days ago
> they disagree with them
All I see on the rationale is:
> if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Did I miss an alternative explanation from the judge?
A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause. "An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any nonpublic areas—or areas that are not freely accessible to the public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy—without a valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2]
The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search.
[1] https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
[2] https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Subpoen...
Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients:
1) knowledge of a government proceeding
2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding
It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
This is the constitutional crisis.
You are taking ICE's/the administration's perspective and assuming it is cogent which leads you to conclusion that doesn't support justice and instead supports the end of constitutional rule in the US.
The administration is in open violation of supreme court rulings and the law. They have repeatedly shown contempt for the constitution. They have repeatedly assumed their own supremacy. People responsible for enforcement are out of sync with those responsible for due process and legal interpretation. That is true crisis. These words are simple, but the emotional impact should be chilling. When considering the actions of the ICE agents, it seems very reasonable that aiding or abetting them would be an even greater obstruction of justice if not directly aiding and abetting illegal activity.
America is being confronted with a very serious problem. What happens when those responsible for enforcing the law break it or start enforcing "alternative" law? If the police are breaking the law, then there is no law, there is only power. Law is just words on paper without enforcement.
If the idea sounds farfetched, imagine if KKK members deciding to become police officers and how that changes the subjective experience of law by citizens compared to what law says on paper. Imagine they decide to become judges to. How would you expect that to pervert justice?
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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.
> The government has to prove intent here
Technically all the government has to do is get her on a plane to El Salvador in the middle of the night.
Which is to say, this arm of government has not followed any semblance of due process so far, and is currently defying a unanimous order of the Supreme Court even in a Republican supermajority, pretending due process is something they "have to" do is very much ignoring where we are.
Notably the examples on the page you linked appear to involve illegal acts (tampering, threatening, etc). Letting someone out a different door (neither party is trespassing) doesn't seem to rise to that bar.
Just as I'm not obligated to call the police to report something I don't see how I can be obligated to force my guest to use a particular door for the convenience of the police. It isn't my responsibility to actively facilitate their actions.
It would never have occurred to me (and doesn't seem reasonable) that obstruction could involve indirect (relative to the government process) actions.
I could understand "aiding and abetting" if I was actively facilitating the commission of a crime but I don't want to live in a country where mere avoidance is considered a crime. "Arrested for resisting arrest" gets mocked for good reason.
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent
She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how.
Frontpage of /r/law:
ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says
https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without...
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> 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.
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There is no suggestion that the agents conducted a search or entered a non-public area. And this has nothing to do with the claim that the judge actively obstructed their efforts.
It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it?
No, this is a disaster. Hyperbole aside, this is indeed how democracy dies. Eventually this escalates to arresting more senior political enemies. And eventually the arbiter of whoever has the power to make and enforce those arrests ends up resting not with the elected government but in the law enforcement and military apparatus with the physical power to do so.
Once your regime is based on the use of force, you end up beholden to the users of force. Every time. We used to be special. We aren't now.
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My understanding is that you have an obligation to act lawfully, even if another person is not acting lawfully.
This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”
The claim is that the judge, upon finding out that they were there to make an arrest, deliberately led the man out a back door which would under almost no circumstances be available to his use (the jury door), allowing him to bypass the officers attempting to make the arrest.
If true, that's pretty clearly a deliberate attempt to obstruct their efforts. The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction, but I don't have any specific reason to believe it wouldn't be.
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That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz.
The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area.
The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
Edit: directed, not escorted.
> [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest.
According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator.
INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal.
[0]: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b74...
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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.
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If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.
They didn't need to search, they just needed to wait outside to arrest. That would have worked if the defendant didn't use the backdoor.
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Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law
Which law aren't they obeying ?
That is key indeed. She specifically clarified the type of warrant then escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
>> An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant
False.
An ICE warrant is for civil offenses.
Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter.
If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
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> He accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
There are some pretty broad laws about "you can't lie to the feds", but I think the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target. (They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation -- someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
EDIT: since I wrote that 15 minutes ago, the article has been updated with more details about what the judge did:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
EDIT 2: the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article says:
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Which is an escalation above the former "didn't stop them", admittedly, but I'm not sure how it gets to "misdirection".
1. It isnt clear ICE agents have any legal authority to demand a judge tell them anything. 2. It is highly likely this is an official act, since it would be taken on behalf of court, so the immigrant can give, eg. testimony in a case.
A "private act" here would be the judge lying in order to prevent their deportation because they as a private person wanted to do so. It seems highly unlikely that this is the case.
I updated my post with new information from the updated article, and in the context of that I think you're pretty much right. It sounds like the judge basically said "you need permission to arrest someone in the middle of my hearing, go get it" and then didn't change anything about the process of their hearing while that permission was being obtained.
This was definitely not them being helpful, but I'm incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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"when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor"
This is a private act and involved a private hallway
What's being alleged is that she escorted the person out a rear entrance that is only used by juries and defendants who are in custody, not defense attorneys or free defendants. It is alleged that she interrupted the defendant on their way out the regular customary door and guided them through the rear door instead.
If those allegations are true (which is a big if at this stage), it's not hard to see how that could be construed to be a private act taken outside the course of her normal duties to deliberately help the defendant evade arrest.
That doesn't make what she did morally wrong, of course, but there is a world of difference between the kind of abuse of power that many people here are assuming and someone getting arrested for civil disobedience—intentionally breaking a law because they felt it was the right choice.
This leaves out a couple important things, at least from the complaint -
1 - ICE never entered the courtroom or interrupted. They stayed outside the room, which is public, but the judge didn't like this and sent them away.
2 - The judge, having learned the person in her courtroom was the target, instructed him to leave through a private, jury door.
These are from the complaint, so cannot be taken as fact, either.
Under any occasion, it was inappropriate to arrest a judge like this.
We’re honestly at the point where I’d be comfortable with armed militias defending state and local institutions from federal police. If only to force someone to think twice about something like this. (To be clear, I’m not happy we’re here. But we are.)
why do you think the people willing to be a part of the armed militias you mention are NOT on the same way of thinking as what ICE is attempting to do. that's just how the militia types tend to lean, so I don't think this would have the effect you're looking for
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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.
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We've got National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason. Just sayin'.
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The charge seems colorable to me, and I think most people would agree the judge was obstructing justice if you strip out the polarizing nature of ICE detentions.
If you take the charges at face value, Law enforcement was there to perform an arrest and the judge acted outside their official capacity to obstruct.
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Do you have any evidence of this claim? The FBI affidavit says they were waiting in the public hallway outside, let the bailiff know what they were doing and did not enter the courtroom. The judge did not find out until a public defender took pictures of the arrest team and brought it to the attention of the judge. Maybe the FBI lied, but that seems unlikely given the facts would seem eventually verifiable by security video and uninvolved witness statements.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...[flagged]
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> 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.
What would have been the right move for Dugan here, according to ICE?
Can a judge legally detain a defendant after a pre-trial hearing on the basis of "there are some agents asking about you for unrelated reasons?"
It's not related to legal proceedings, so, no.
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
you need a warrant and established PC, and you need to request administrative recess of court in session. You cant stay in the framework of US law while walking into court and expect a judge to transfer custody of a defendant because you say so.
The right move would have been simply to not help Flores-Ruiz evade ICE.
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According to ICE? "Comply with whatever we say". It's obvious that the current admin is operating autocratically, outside the law.
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.
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My thoughts exactly.
Judges have what most people would consider insane levels of legitimate power while sitting on the bench itself inside the courtroom. Just outside the door, those powers are not quite so intense, but he can have you thrown in a cage just for not doing what he says, and he can command nearly anything. He could certainly demand that someone not leave the courtroom if he felt like doing so, and there would be no real remedy even if he did so for illegitimate reasons. Perhaps a censure months later.
This to me seems like a completely lawful act on the part of the judge?
> It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
No, that is the excuse. They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her. Needless to say people don't get tried on this kind of "look the other way" "obstruction" as a general rule. This case is extremely special.
It is abundantly clear that this arrest was made for political reasons, as part of a big and very obvious public policy push.
> They found a technicality on which they could arrest her, so they arrested her because they wanted to arrest her
If by technicality you mean correctly identifying that the judge intentionally adjourned the suspect's court proceedings and directed them through a non-public exit in order to evade a lawful deportation of a domestic abuser who had already been deported once, yes, it was a "technicality". The short form would be to acknowledge the judge intentionally interfered with a lawful deportation, which is a crime, thus the arrest.
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The ICE agents didn't have a warrant, so the judge was under no legal obligation to say anything to them at all.
according to this story, they had a warrant: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice-...
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Doesn't seem to make sense that ICE should be able to interrupt a preceding at will.
And the fact that they left and came back and someone they wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
> I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
Since there were multiple agents (the reports and Patel's post all say "agents" plural) they could have left one at the courtroom, or outside, rather than all going away. Then there'd have been no chase and no issue.
The question is if the judge should have held the man or not for the agents who chose to leave no one behind to take him into custody after the proceeding finished.
To your question - A state judge cannot be required to hold someone on behalf of federal agents. That's federalism 101 and settled law.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
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> 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.
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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.
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For all the judge could have known, the agents weren't coming back.
The claim is different. Agents with an arrest warrant waited in the public hallway, as asked and required by the judges.
The judge skipped the hearing for the target and [directed] them out a private back door in an attempt to prevent arrest, leading to a foot chase before apprehension.
Edit: directed, not escorted
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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.
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This sounds like a case in Trump’s first term. I don’t condone the arrest, but to provide context:
> In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/shelley-joseph-immigra... (https://archive.ph/gByeV)
EDIT: Although Shelly Joseph wasn’t arrested, only charged.
I don't think we've got enough information to say how similar it is. That one sounds like it hung on Joseph actively helping the immigrant to take an unusual route out. If this judge just sent the agents off for their permission then wrapped things up normally and didn't get involved beyond that, I can't see this going anywhere.
There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.
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Sounds like some lower-level ICE agents screwed up, and let the subject get away, and they're trying to redirect blame to the judge. I doubt this will stick, barring any new info on what happened.
Looks like I was wrong. For some reason I wasn't aware the that judge smuggled the subject out through the back door that goes through the judge's chambers, which typically judges avoid allowing the general public into, because it implies improper fraternization between a judge and someone involved in court cases.
Going from "redirect blame" to "make an arrest" is a significant escalation.
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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.
>you can't lie to the feds
We really need a court case or law passed that says a stalked animal has the right to run (lie) without further punishment resulting from the act of running (lying). Social Contract™, and "you chose it" gaslighty nonsense aside, the state putting someone in a concrete camp for years, or stealing decades worth of savings, is violence even if blessed-off religiously by a black-robed blesser. Running from and lying to the police to preserve one's or one's family's liberty should be a given fact of the game, not additional "crimes."
We also need to abolish executions except for oath taking elected office holders convicted of treason, redefine a life sentence as 8 years and all sentencing be concurrent across all layers of state, and put a sixteen year post hoc time limit on custodial sentences (murder someone 12 years ago and get a "life sentence" today as a result? -> 4 years max custody). Why? Who is the same person after a presidential administration? What is a 25+ year sentence going to do to restore the victims' losses? If you feel that strongly after 8 years that it should have been 80, go murder the released perp and serve your 8!
The point is to defang government; it has become too powerful in the name of War on _______, and crime has filled the blank really nicely historically.
"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.
> 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.
Umm… why didn’t the agents just wait patiently until the proceeding was done?
They did, read the complaint: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.
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It does seem like they could have gotten what they wanted by just trying to do their job a little more such as, waiting.
I don't think I've ever encountered a CBP employee I'd describe as "patient".
LEOs are trained to "be the one in control"
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the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target.
This is a pissing match between authorities. ICE has their panties in a knot that the judge didn't "respect muh authoriah" and do more than the bare leglal minimum for them (which resulted in the guy getting away). On the plus side, one hopes judge will have a pretty good record going forward when it comes to matters of local authorities using the process to abuse people.
>(They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation --
Something that HN frequently trots out as a good thing and the system working as intended. Where are those people now? Why are they so quiet?
>someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
And for every Al there's a dozen Marthas, people who actually didn't do it but the feds never go away empty handed.
She was convicted for lying, not for the trading.
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"respect muh authoriah"
ICE officers seem like the ones that couldn't make it through police academy and had no other career prospects. Much like the average HOA, these are people who relish in undeserved power they didn't have to earn.
As a society, we owe it to ourselves to make sure people whom we give a lot of power to actually work and earn it.
The AP article [1] has the full complaint linked, the crux of the case seems to be around the judge allowing the defendant to leave through a back entrance ("jury door") when they were aware agents were waiting in the public hallway to make an arrest as they exited.
" 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of the arrest team to the Chief Judge’s office. For example, the courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy’s return to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like “Wait, come with me.” Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door."
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-arrested-799718...
Thanks - I've changed the URL to that article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/25/... above.
I find it extremely doubtful that she told the agents he'd be leaving through a particular door or that she had any legal obligation to make sure the man exited in a particular way.
United States Code, Title 8, § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii) (2023)
> (1)(A) Any person who
[…]
> (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
[…]
> shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title8/html/...
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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.
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there is usually only one exit to a courtroom, in the back
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It's a crime to harbor or aid illegals in evading federal authorities. So this is a legal obligation of every person.
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From reading the affidavit it’s clear to me there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion around these situations. Clearly the judges are upset with ICE making arrests in the public spaces within the court hall while ICE views it as the perfect place since the defendant will be unarmed. This was an administrative warrant and IANAL but doesn’t that not require local cooperation e.g the judge is in her right to not help or comply with the warrant?
How in the world is this an arrestable offense. Escorting someone out of a room?
If it can be proven that she deliberately escorted the person through the non-public exit to the courtroom with the intent of helping them evade arrest by officers with a warrant who were waiting outside at the other entrance, how would that not be an arrestable offence?
We're extremely light on facts right now, so I'm not taking the above quoted story at face value, but if one were to take it at face value it seems pretty clear cut.
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There has to be precedents in case law for how to assess this.
You might want to read this https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
See also section D that says "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest" in https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11... labeled "Case 2:25-mj-00397-SCD Filed 04/24/25" (13 pages)
ICE has absolutely no business in state courthouses. The federal interest in enforcing immigration law should not be placed above the state's interest in enforcing equal protection under the law. Consider the case of a undocumented rape victim. Do they not deserve justice? Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported? I think not and I do not want to live in that society.
Nailed it. Keep that stuff away from:
* Police interactions, unless you want people refusing to cooperate with police.
* Hospitals, unless you want people refusing to seek medical care for communicable diseases.
* Courtrooms, unless you want people to skip court or refuse to testify as witnesses.
My wife likes watching murder investigation TV shows. Sometimes the homicide detectives will talk to petty criminals like street-level drug dealers, prostitutes, and the like. The first thing the detectives do is assure them that they're there about a murder and couldn't care less about the other minor stuff. They're not going to arrest some guy selling weed when they want to hear his story about something he witnessed.
Well, same thing here but on a bigger stage.
Except that's TV and police often nail petty criminals for petty crimes in the process of larger investigations and they wonder why they get so little public support and cooperation.
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A sane argument against an insane position. Republicans are perfectly fine with unpunished violence against non-citizens. No wonder tourism is sharply declining.
State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens?
> Are we better off letting a rapist go free when their victim cannot testify against them because they were deported?
That's not an actual outcome that would occur. Cases can proceed if the victim is unavailable. Do we let a rapist off because their victim had an untimely death? Obviously not.
In the case of a deportee, if we have a sworn statement from them, or can remotely depose them, then their testimony would be included in the trial.
> In the case of a deportee, if we have a sworn statement from them, or can remotely depose them, then their testimony would be included in the trial.
In a world where we deport people without due process to subcontracted megaprisons in El Salvador “if” is doing a lot of work.
In the real world, cases die all the time because the victim refuses to cooperate with the police.
This is the point of things like immunity, and laws against witness tampering, and why the Mafia spent so much effort ensuring you knew you would die if you took the stand.
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People are quibbling without understanding what kind of warrant it was even. They just read “warrant” or are using it in bad faith. We have a lot of bad faith arguers on HN due to it being a public forum. If you check their post history it’s very apparent.
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Your point does not engage with the question raised in the comment you're replying to. Would you like to live in a society where criminal justice is secondary to immigration enforcement? One where we deport people with acute conditions without treatment because they are not authorized to live in this country? Dealing with the "root cause" does not require inflicting unnecessary cruelty upon other human beings.
> it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.
Who is in power? What does our Constitution say? The executive branch is not granted absolute authority over immigration policy and the treatment of humans—citizens or otherwise. That is a Constitutional crisis.
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People in this country have rights, regardless of how they entered. You either believe in the constitution and it's application to all citizens and non-citizens or you're a fascist.
I'm not going to quibble on any other bits of misdirection or failure to read other people's posts. Pick your side.
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You have completely missed the point of my comment.
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State court houses are public. They arrested him in public. Why are state courthouses trying to protect illegal aliens? Ones that are being tried for battery no less.
Consider the case of an arrest warrant for a rapist. Can it not be served at a courthouse? What if a judge smuggled them out a private door after being informed of the arrest warrant.
Edit: the charge isn't for refusing to enforce. It's for smuggling someone out in attempt to actively impede their arrest.
You're missing the point - a rapist would have a criminal arrest warrant, which would absolutely be the courthouse's responsibility to enforce. The ICE agents attempted to disrupt a criminal proceeding to enforce a civil immigration warrant not signed by a judge. More on that distinction here: https://www.fletc.gov/ice-administrative-removal-warrants-mp...
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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-...
The arrest itself (not necessarily the charges) is best described as a publicity stunt. If you want to charge a lawyer or judge or anyone unlikely to run of a non-violent crime, you invite them to the station:
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
To clarify - the only time you ever need to "arrest" someone and place them in custody is if you are worried they are either going to commit violent crimes or are going to be a flight risk before they can see a judge.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
Kash Patel's since-deleted tweet: https://www.threads.com/@pstomlinson/post/DI3-hnfuDvL
> Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he's been in custody since, ...
I feel like I'm watching reality TV. Which makes sense, we have a reality TV star for president and his cabinet is full of Fox news hosts.
The judges impeding ICE scenarios has been portrayed on fictional TV too https://thegoodwife.fandom.com/wiki/Day_485
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Can you imagine being a law enforcement officer bringing a case before a judge that you previously arrested on a flimsy pretext in order to intimidate them? That's going to be awkward.
Federal agents probably don’t worry too much about being in local misdemeanor court.
I'd also call it a publicity stunt because DOJ leadership would have to prove themselves [even more?] utterly idiotic to let this go to a jury trial.
I can't imagine this ending in any way other than dropped charges, though they may draw it out to make it as painful as possible prior to that.
Public displays of executive power and disregard for political and legal norms is slightly more than a publicity stunt. They are related ideas but come on. Like describing a cross burning as a publicity stunt. This is a threat.
It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence. A judge is not an agent of ICE or the feds; they have undergone study and election and put in a position where their discretion has the weight of law. It's frankly disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
> It is a statement that the current regime wants to discourage judicial independence.
That’s not exactly new, I was recently reminded that during the governor’s meeting when Trump singled Maine out for ignoring an EO the governor replied that they’d be following the law, and Trump’s rejoinder was that they (his administration) are the law.
That was two months ago, late February.
> disgusting to see how little separation of powers means to Republicans.
It's just like "states rights" where it only matters so long as you stay in their good graces. Very reflective of how they operate internally today: worship Trump or you're out.
No, a "publicity stunt" is not the best way to describe this latest escalation in the Trump administration's campaign to destroy the rule of law in America. It may be deliberately flashy, but that phrasing very much undersells the significance of the executive attacking the judiciary.
Milwaukee journal is providing great coverage: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
The AP article someone else linked is much better: it includes both:
- a PDF of the criminal complaint (court filing), and
- details of what specifically the complaint alleges (that the judge encouraged the person to escape out of a 'jury door' to evade arrest).
The phrase 'jury door' doesn't appear in the JS article.
Thanks, affidavit is worth the read. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-arrested-799718...
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A good reminder that we need to support local, professional journalism. Otherwise the only information we would be getting right now is official statements or hearsay.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel now is just a reskin of USA Today[1]. They're not locally owned or controlled.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...
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Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK calling 911.
Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer.
Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue.
In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.
There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability.
Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.
Undocumented immigrants who are charged with murder should not be deported without a trial first. If found guilty they would typically serve their sentence before facing deportation (though perhaps this is different now)
Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence... taxpayers would then be paying the bill for both their incarceration and their deportation.
But I also think incarceration should primarily be focused on rehabilitation, which it's currently not designed for, so what do I know.
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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.
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> 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...
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.
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This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens.
Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
> bill of rights only applies to citizens.
I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens.
But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure.
That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
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The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money.EDIT:
Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case....[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826
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What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?
This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness.
The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues.
Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws.
Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
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> 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.
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Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch?
Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
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I am still waiting for a “corporations are people” to get death penalty
Replace illegal immigration with any other crime.
What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime.
In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
> we don't ignore their crime
And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
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Immigration isn't a crime though...
>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue
From the criminal complaint in this case:
"I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court."
So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse:
"The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual."
Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
>and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court.
Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal" people is tyrannical and inhumane.
That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.
Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that.
I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country.
I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations.
There's a few points I think people are missing:
1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another.
2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy.
A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0].
Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things.
There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears...
[0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
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In an ideal world, maybe that's how it would work. In reality, that's not how it works or likely ever will work. So the comment you're replying to is a pragmatic approach to "how do we make the world we actually live in, not some idealized fantasy, safer?"
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>It is not fair to all other documented immigrants.
As a properly documented immigrant i have no such feelings.
I've got great education, good job. Most of those poor illegals didn't have such luck, so if anything, the life is not fair to them, not to me.
You ever consider what's fair to the undocumented, given the likelihood they're fleeing bad conditions in their home country? I'd be fine with providing them documentation without fear of deportation since they're already here. But I don't think that's what one political party currently in power wants to do.
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I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law.
Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens
but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?
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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?
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>What happens when life will be tough later
are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they came here?
Calling it a crime vastly overstates what the offense is. Entering in the country illegally is a misdemeanor, when you call them criminals you rhetorically frame it as a serious offense like a felony. Its disingenuous.
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> The New York Times observes that Kash Patel has now deleted his tweet (for unknown reasons) and adds that the charging documents are still not available.
https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lnnj...
Kash Patel tweeting in real-time indicates that he aware of it and at some-level involved with the arrest. It also shows that he sees this as a totally reasonable action and response - and wants the public to know about it.
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Source: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw...
This is a much, much more informative source. Thanks!
At the moment we don't have a lot of the facts. All we seem to have at this moment is a (since deleted?) post from the head of the FBI. There's a ton of context that is missing. Like what does "intentionally misdirecting" mean? Does that mean saying "he went that way" when he really went in the opposite direction? Does it mean not answering questions about this person, or being obtuse? I'd also like to know more of the circumstances here. Did ICE agents literally walk into court and question the judge while sitting on the bench?
Article has been updated with more context in recent minutes:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
So, yeah, sounds like they literally walked into court and interrupted a hearing. Given the average temperament of judges, I think the least immigrant-friendly ones out there would become obstructionists in that situation...
Are these the agents that were recorded last week not wearing uniforms and not presenting identification?
That still sounds pretty vague.
Devil is always in the details. But judges have a ton of discretionary power, and in fact obligations to, maintain order in their courtroom. Someone who disrupts a hearing can be forcibly removed by the bailiffs, can be fined, and can even be found in contempt and summarily jailed.
I mean, what’s next? If a judge doesn’t sign off on a warrant because they don’t find probable cause, is that obstructing justice?
Or they walked into the hearing, sat in the back, and didn't interrupt it. These proceedings are almost always public, and theoretically you or I could walk in and sit quietly without violating any rules. Without knowing more, they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left.
In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.
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No one is above the law.
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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...
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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
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https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnzb...
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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
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https://bsky.app/profile/judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnxq...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Michael_Luttig
This will be interesting for the 5th amendment. They cannot arrest you for putting "drug dealer" on your tax forms as your job since you are compelled to answer that question honestly. The defendant was compelled to appear in court which means he couldn't protect his own privacy by being elsewhere - are these the same thing?
I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
I'm not sure if this is intended to be a hypothetical but there is no IRS form where "Drug Dealer" is the correct answer.
Drug dealing income would be disclosed as "Other income".
If you volunteer "drug dealer" my guess is they could use it against you. Similar to showing up at FBI headquarters and shouting "I'm a drug dealer!"
Schedule C to Form 1040 (self-employment income) asks for your "Principal business or profession, including product or service". It's pretty clear that the only correct answer for some people would be something like "drug dealer".
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> 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?
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I believe there is a space for bribery income
This doesn't really have any fifth amendment implications. The prohibition against self incrimination reads "no person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
That doesn't relate to being compelled to attend a proceeding in person where another federal agency can arrest you. If the government can legally arrest you, it does not matter if they determine your location based on another proceeding.
They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you, but if there is a warrant for your arrest, they can arrest you wherever they find you. If there's a warrant for my arrest on suspicion of murder and I show up to court to argue a traffic ticket, of course they'll take me in on the murder charge too.
- "They cannot use your tax forms as evidence against you,"
That's no longer true (in practice),
https://apnews.com/article/irs-ice-immigration-enforcement-t... ("IRS acting commissioner is resigning over deal to send immigrants’ tax data to ICE, AP sources say")
Do you know if an arrest warrant was issued? I don’t think ICE works on warrants
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The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens, or the stronger form, that they are invaders and thus enemy combatants.
The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully. And then the populace is going to have to make sure that the president doesn't conclude that he can ignore that ruling if he doesn't like it.
> The Supreme Court is going to have to clarify the existence or non-existence of constitutional rights for people living here unlawfully.
I'm not a lawyer, but... they already have for decades or centuries, and not in the direction that MAGA wants.
> “Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School. “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”
> Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.” Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.
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> 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...
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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.
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> The thesis is that immigrants have no constitutional rights because they aren't citizens...
The constitution is quite clear on this issue and it has been affirmed repeatedly over the last 100+ years by the high courts. Anyone and everyone in the world who is on US soil and subject to US jurisdiction is considered a "US Person". This status is regardless of their nationality/nation of origin, the manner by which they arrived on US soil, or any other circumstance.
As a 'US Person' they are protected by the US Constitution with only minimal exceptions; the right to bear arms[1], ability to run for public office, or vote in federal elections[2]
This is by intent and design and is a necessary cornerstone of US democracy!
This is laid out in - Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 "Aliens in the United States"
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
> The Court reasoned that aliens physically present in the United States, regardless of their legal status, are recognized as persons guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the Court determined, even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary, or transitory is entitled to that constitutional protection
[1] Only citizens and permanent residents are allowed unrestricted access to firearms.
[2] Some districts allow pr visa holders to vote in local and state elections
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>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.
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Your comment has no connection at all with this case.
There are two types of warrants being talked about here, traditional judge signed warrants and "administrative"/"ICE" warrants. The first one carries the ability to perform a search and possible detainment subject to the 4th amendment protections, the latter allows for discretion under the 4th amendment (this may be an viewed as an unconstitutional search) the Judge exercised their discretion with respect for constitutional rights.
It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
> It's a sad day in America when people do actually enforce the rules get trapped by other rules.
The people who enforce the rules being bound by the rules is precisely the way it is meant to work. Of course, it remains to be seen if any laws were actually broken.
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If you want a primary source, I recommend reading https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
Not necessarily to avoid his arrest, only the fact they went through a jury door is indicated for now.
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I hope Judge Dugan will be trialed as a regular citizen.
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https://archive.is/QyBBU
There's now been more information in this case. Apparently the judge smuggled the defendant out of the court through a back door in her chambers. I don't know why that information wasn't provided initially, and it's kind of annoying, because all of the other comments here are moot.
How often does it happen in the us that a judge get arrested?
Multiple people in this thread are painfully obviously trying to look the other way, marshaling all their logic for this purpose, yet you waltz in here and say the quiet part out loud. Tsk tsk!
This seems lite on facts. Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider arrest. The only thing I can think of… Is, if the judge swore under oath, affidavit, or something like that, that she did not do something when in fact that she did. But even then…
If Patel does not come back with some thing on that level or better, then this was a horrible farce.
> Even if I wanted to arrest a sitting judge, it would have to be an act of gross malfeasance to motivate me to even consider arrest.
This logic projects rationality onto an administration that does not merit such assumptions.
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ICE is there to arrest a known fugative. The judge said you don't have the right to stop proceedings. They back down and say we'll just arrest him afterwards.
>[Afterwards] Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Seems like “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents to me.
Ok looks like the PACER documents dropped.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
If this complaint is true (my understanding is a complaint is always only one side of the story and the evidence presented may not end up being admissible, obviously IANAL and so forth), then seems quite similar to the MA case from several years ago: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/12/04/judge-shel...
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This is part of a broader pattern of the incompetent thugs at ICE taking advantage of other, actual functioning and useful parts of government to help them do their work for them. It's not just courts, it's citizenship hearings, it's the IRS, it's schools. They're trying to send a message not to push back or get in their way. It's not about this particular judge, they are sending a message that they will go after school teachers or anybody else.
Generally, I share these concerns. At the same time, this story is very new. In any case, looking at the primary sources is important. See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-.... I'm not a lawyer, but the criminal complaint does appear to be, more or less, within the realm of normal.
Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such an arrest is only done if the suspect is a flight risk.
It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
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This seems bad in a sea of events that seem bad.
I have no deep admiration for judges, but the motivation for this seems deeply ideological, and I don't see a bright future where judges are arrested by the Gestapo based on ideological differences.
A judge literally helped a suspect hide from federal law enforcement. How can you be serious? Judges are supposed to up hold the law not find loopholes for people they like.
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Based on the alleged facts, the Judge is guilty of obstruction not harboring. I don’t know why he would hide an illegal from ICE. Especially someone breaking the law which a judge is sworn to uphold.
"the law, which a judge is sworn to uphold" includes due process. The president and everyone in the executive branch has also sworn to uphold this.
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This would be pretty sad if she did help him evade ICE. He was in court for battery charges and in the country illegally. ICE arresting him does not interfere with any due process. Which he 100% needs to get (but arresting him is still part of that).
What is left here thats worth protecting? Not someone we want in the country and the agents had a warrant for his arrest (court comes after that). I feel like this is a serious own-goal by the people opposing this. Read the complaint corroborated by witnesses - she clearly did help him evade arrest: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
I'll correct my previous statement, it does appear in the legal brief about the judge being arrested that he was here illegally.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
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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.
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> 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.
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If I was a judge in the US right now then I would feel very strongly that there is a metaphorical bus I need to go sit in right now.
If they are arresting judges for any appearance of helping immigrants, imagine all the arrests ICE is making of employers of undocumented immigrants right now.
I 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.
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.
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> Patel announced the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan in a post on the social media platform X, which he deleted moments after posting. The post accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century [1]. Personally I find the law itself repellent, and more often than not it is used to manufacture crimes out of thin air. But if the article is accurate, then nothing has changed - the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements
The thing that has changed is that 6 months ago, directing federal agents away from an illegal immigrant couldn't be rationalized by one's oath to the Constitution committing one to a belief like "I don't think anyone should be blackbagged and sent to foreign torture prisons for the rest of their lives without due process."
Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that nothing has changed.
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> Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century
Using it on judges?
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The FBI Director's post was not deleted
https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626
At the risk of being pedantic, all laws are used to manufacture crimes.
> the law is simply being applied evenly, and judges are not above the law.
We obviously don't know the details yet, but this case does sound like it's on the more frivolous end of such charges. If they actually wanted to prosecute on it, they'd need to convince another judge/jury that this judge didn't just make a mistake about where the targeted person was supposed to be right then. This kind of prosecution normally involves comparatively more concrete things -- say, someone claiming to have no idea about a transaction and then the feds pulling out their signature on a receipt.
Of course, this could be a case where the judge knew the person was in a waiting room because they'd just talked to them there on camera, and then deliberately told the ICE agents they were on the other side of the courthouse while they were recording everything.
Still waiting for better information about whether the judge was uncooperative or lied/misled the agents.
This is immensely frustrating as someone who also genuinely cares about justice being done and the rule of law being followed. I want arrests to be made when there's reasonable information that this judge lied to federal agents, but frankly I can't see the federal government taking appropriate care to ensure they aren't arresting arbitrarily and then dodging accountability for trying to make right their wrongs. The federal government can claim anyone has done a crime and arrest them, but then if they ruin a person's life over this claim what is the arrestee's recourse for justice?
It just seems so in violation of my desire to wait for proof in court: what do we do when the proof is wrong-- how do we make right as a people? This persons was arrested at their workplace publicly and lost their freedoms for however long it takes to sort it out in a court of law. In the meantime the prosecutors who are taking away those freedoms sacrifice nothing while they, too, wait to prove their case in court.
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This happened in the last Trump administration, too.
I don't think they started with an arrest then, right?
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The issue here is not the facts of this incident. The issue is an attempted expansion of power and reduction in the liberty to dissent.
The Trump administration have been talking for weeks, maybe months, of finding ways for US attorneys to prosecute local officials who do not support Trump's immigration policy. Note that they also are threatening punishment through budget and policy.
Also, realize that immigration is just the first step:
* It's the first step in legitimizing mass prejudice - including stereotypes, in this case of non-wealthy immigrants - and hatred, and legitimizing that as a basis for denying people their humanity, dignity, and rights.
* It's a first step to legitimizing government terror as a policy tool.
* It's a first step in expanding the executive branch's power - I suspect chosen because the executive branch already has a lot of power in that domain. Note their claim to deny any check on their power by Congress (through the laws, which are made by Congress, and funding, which is appropriated by Congress) and the courts.
* It's a first step to expanding federal power vis-a-vis the states.
The next steps will be to use those now-legitimate tools on other groups, other forms of power, etc.
Part of the way it works is corruption: people make an exception or support it because it's following the herd, because opposing it is harder and sometimes scary, because they don't like this particular group and it seems legitimate in some way ....
Then when they turn these weapons on you, what standing do you have to disagree? I think in particular of politically vulnerable communities who are going along with these things or saying, 'not our problem' - you're next. That's where "First they came for the socialists ..." etc. comes from. (And you'll note that, not coincidentally, they are also coming for some socialists now and laying the groundwork for more, but most people don't like the socialists anyway so that's fine!)
No, the issue is:
"Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
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Now think about the other way: what if this judge is super right wing?
I’m getting concerned that our judicial branch is becoming more and more political. And believe me there are many right wing judges.
It’s heartbreaking to see the United States, once a symbol of strength and freedom, reduced to a complete joke.
Well, you see, some dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much, so it was inevitable, really.
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I mean, it did always seem pretty close to the surface. Like the US was one misstep away from this happening. The balance of power in a two party system seems almost comically skewed.
This is not a new development. We'be been laughed at for as long as I can remember.
Democratic states really need to start disallowing federal agents to operate within their borders and band together.
Activate their respective national guards and make it happen.
Yes, that means defying federal law. Yes that means exactly the consequences you want to draw from those actions.
There is no other option at this point. The law is dead in the U.S.
Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution. Willfully ignoring that oath whenever it suits them is not a faithful commission of their duties. While trampling on civil rights is a problem so is harboring known, convicted felons.
If Wisteguens Charles had been deported in 2022, some of his future crimes wouldn't have happened. Instead we have people falling over themselves to have sympathy for the worst elements of society and ignoring the oath they made to uphold the law. That doesn't justify twisting the law into a tool for cruelty but is no better to arbitrarily ignore it either.
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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.
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You are asking for an armed standoff. Last time that happened in this country, college students were slaughtered by government forces.
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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.
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a federal agency that doesn't follow the law should lose the protection of the law. Charge the ICE agents with attempted kidnapping of the immigrant and actual kidnapping of the judge.
I imagine they'll soon be putting a spin on George W Bush-era legal arguments about the applicability of Geneva Conventions on "non-uniformed combatants". In this case, if the ICE agents weren't uniformed at the time of arrest, they can't be considered agents of the federal government, and thus can't be subject to legal redress.
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Um, I sense you're being ironic.
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https://archive.is/QyBBU
Why are the people of Wisconsin taking this without a fight? Sit ins in local FBI branch offices and police stations are in order. Groups of protestors stand in front of police car parking lots—if the piggies can’t leave their sty, they can’t destroy our democracy.
What makes you think people aren't doing that? They are. You're wrong about that last bit, though.
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AFAICT, the summary:
Judge (or the courthouse in some regard) assured immigrants-of-interest^ would not be detained in courthouse, to speed up legal proceedings and to try to ensure equitable justice was being served.
An immigrant was identified by ICE and the judge directed ICE somewhere and when the immigrant was not apprehended (maybe appeared in court for his 3 BATTERY misdemeanors), the FBI was called in to arrest the judge at the courthouse for obstruction. Immigrant of interest was apprehended.
That sound about right? Bueller? Bueller?
^ The immigrants of interest are of varied legal status, so I'll just say "of interest".
We don't know if that's correct because, unless it's surfaced in the last hour, we haven't seen anybody's account of what happened before the arrest (other than some high-level appointees tweeting).
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I'm not very familiar with US laws, but why wouldn't the FBI agents likewise be arrested for interfering with the judge's court case?
Let's say I murder someone. I definitely did it, and there's plenty of evidence. What's stopping my hypothetical ICE buddy from showing up at my first court appearance, arresting me, and deporting me to a country without extradition by claiming that I am an "illegal immigrant"?
FBI != ICE. It was ICE that showed up to the courtroom. The FBI was only involved in the arrest after ICE was butt hurt and complained to daddy about the situation. ICE does not have authority to arrest citizens. That is why the FBI was involved to be able to make the arrest of a citizen
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Is this qhy everyone is worried about illegal immigrants comitting crimes? Because they have a get-out-of-jail-free?
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Since the Judiciary seem to be the only ones pushing back against the Federal overreach it makes sense to them go after them first.
I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies.
This is America now, the land of the lawless and unjust. Prepare accordingly people, if they do not like what you are doing they will use their full power to stop you.
> I don't expect Congress to start getting arrested until or if they ever do any significant pushback against Trump and his cronies
They won't, or they would have done so already. Granted, I'm not an American so I might be seeing things the wrong way from the other side of the planet, but it has been 3 months already, enough time for Congress to at least be seen as doing something, anything.
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This is feeling increasingly like Germany circa 1936.
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Executive branch arrests of members of judiciary are not to be taken lightly. There are many ways to deal with these situations and this is extraordinarily far from normal. All you can do is diversify your US-based investments and get travel visas while you still can.
If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
One need not think this is good, just, or even lawful behavior by the FBI director, nor think this is in any way comparable to the behavior of Democratic administrations, to think it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you still can."
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I used to think that about ex presidents. The times seem to have changed.
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This thread is especially bad though. So much flagged and dead. I feel like some true extremists descended on this one, writing both inflammatory messages as well as flagging everything they don’t like.
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Would it not be better to have a peaceful, civil, lawful, separation of the two different Americas than for us to rigidly cling to an idea of a "United" States that no longer represents reality?
We're clearly living in two different realities already, brought about the partisan media (on both sides) willfully and deliberately misrepresenting reality to serve the interests of their shadowy trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates, amplified by the digital echo chambers brought about other secretive, manipulative trillion-dollar corporate conglomerates.
Is it seriously better to let the entire federal government collapse, leaving a power void in it's wake, than to have two Americas with freedom of movement, free trade, etc?
There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I voted for Oliver.
The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease the size and scope of government, particularly at the national level, and there's a lot less to argue about.
How would you pull this off when the split seems pretty divided between city/suburban and more rural areas? Does everybody have to airlift their goods everywhere?
There's no way to gerrymander a border that splits America into two geographically distinct countries with strong majority representation of whatever binary you think exists. By that I mean, there are communists in Kentucky and Proud Boys in Hawaii. If we seriously tried to split in two, it'd be like post-colonial India and Pakistan with worse weapons.
regardless, this idea is a distraction from the problem of wealth accumulation and the erosion of representative politics through private funding.
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Maybe you're a fan of "Texit".
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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
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If the facts come out that the charge is flimsy or legally unsound AND protocol and precedent was breached, such as it being very atypical to haul a nonviolent offender (the judge) from a courthouse, would you change your mind?
Will you follow up on the facts of this case or do you already know everything you need to know?
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Intentionally misdirecting a federal investigation is a crime.[1][2] Pretty straightforward accusation.
"Our legal system provides methods for challenging the Government's right to ask questions—lying is not one of them." — Justice Harlan
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements [2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
Ok looks like they're 18 USC 1505 (obstruction) and 18 USC 1071 (harboring) charges.[1] Less straightforward.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
There was no "misdirecting" here. The judge truthfully told the agents they wouldn't be allowed to detain someone in the middle of a hearing without exceptional permission, at which point they all left, apparently didn't even bother to watch the courthouse doors, and upon their return had the judge arrested for not detaining a man it wasn't her job or legal authority to detain.
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What does this have to do with this situation though?
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One person’s crime doesn’t define a whole group. Most undocumented immigrants follow the law. Justice demands that we hold individuals accountable without using isolated cases to justify broad prejudice.
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Sorry to hear that about your mom, that really sucks.
Are you suggesting that all legal citizens maintain insurance, don't steal cars and don't flee crime scenes?
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How did you know he was an illegal alien if he fled the scene and wasn't caught?
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I think it's because our legal system is predicated on "innocent until proven guilty" for really, really good reasons. One such reason is assuming people should not be protected by the law without proving allegations against them in a court.
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Because the man was in court for his alleged crime, the judicial system working as intended.
But ICE showed up without a legal warrant and attempted to subvert the judicial system by whisking him away, and then arrested a judge.
Accused of a crime? Go to court, be found guilt or innocent, and serve your sentence if convicted.
If we don't hold up the rule of law we become a dictatorship.
> Why are some people so obsessed with protecting people with no regard for our laws
This is a wild statement for someone to write in defense of people who just broke the law while arresting a federal judge who was herself attempting to enforce the law.
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This feels like a “break glass in case of emergency” kind of moment. Sure there are no details yet, but I’m trying to imagine details which would make me think “that arrest makes sense.” If I were in Milwaukee I’d be in the streets.
The copper that connects the alarm lever to the alarm system was sold for scrap 25 years ago
Generally speaking, if you lie to cops or other federal agents you can be arrested on a number of grounds, including obstruction of justice, interfering with an arrest, or concealment.
The dumb part about this is the judge sends people to jail ever year for doing exactly this. She knew what he was doing was illegal, she just didn't care.
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Lying to cops (and FBI) is a crime. This judge knew it was illegal but did it anyways to let criminals get away.
This isn't controversial.
People are arrested in court every day. Why a judge would risk their career to prevent ICE from executing a warrant for someone's arrest confounds me.
Because the judge appears to have basic morals
Her career might get more difficult if witnesses stop showing up to court because they fear deportation that skips due process.
You're right, she should have let ICE illegally send the guy straight to an El Salvador dark site with no due process.
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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796024.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How so?
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Calling an illegal act heroic doesn't hold up in court though, we will hear what they say in court later.
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I just read the complaint. What’s the problem? Was the administrative warrant invalid? According to the complaint, the agents didn’t enter the courtroom, but rather waited in the hall, where they were approached by the judge. If the judge directed the defendant to a back door never used by defendants not in custody, that’s clearly obstruction.
I'm fairly certain that a sitting judge who's a former president of the bar association knows the law better than you or me or Crack Patel and is more aware of the legal ramifications than random armchair lawyers.
From my personal armchair, this will go nowhere, the accusation has no basis. Something similar happened before and the charges were dropped. This was just an attempt to intimidate the judiciary. I hope the SCOTUS is happy with the monster they created.
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.
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The irony that the judge would likely have held you in contempt if you didn't obey one of their orders but seems to think it's ok to help people pursued by other law enforcement to skip out. The judge should know that even they aren't above the law and they can't override other judicial and administrative rulings just because they disagree with them.
> they disagree with them
All I see on the rationale is:
> if any attorney or other court official “knows or believes that a person feels unsafe coming to the courthouse to courtroom 615,” they should notify the clerk and request an appearance via Zoom.
Did I miss an alternative explanation from the judge?
What judge gave ICE the warrant?