If Patel does not come back with some thing on that level or better, then this was a horrible farce.
This logic projects rationality onto an administration that does not merit such assumptions.
I would like for cops to be more humane in arresting people and stop going to place of work to grab people in front of their coworkers. But this seems like just as rude when they go to a “regular” person’s office in the middle of the day and arrest them.
The argument is that if they notify the accused beforehand they may flee. But I don’t buy this as many people will likely turn themselves in if notified. I’m guessing an ai could predict with 99% accuracy people who will self surrender and save everyone embarrassment (and money).
She is not "just a person" in this case.
I'm struggling with the dishonesty on grand display by some of the comments in this thread.
https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lnnj...
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.
Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx-s1-4966725/a-decade-after-...
> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
The law is dead if states defy it by refusing to allow federal agents to enforce immigration law.
This whole stance is absolute madness.
Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
I must have missed that, when did that happen?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/17/us/lopez-gomez-citizen-detain...
It sounds like there was a language barrier and he misidentified himself as being in the country illegally. That’s very unfortunate that he was detained for that misunderstanding.
You want to shed some light on how that's possible, especially in the context of you commenting on this thread?
Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due process. That’s the entire part where the government is supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are currently skipping that part and essentially granting the executive branch unilateral authority to deport anyone to foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the words “illegal immigrant” or “MS-13”.
To make things even worse, these deportations are being overtly politically targeted. If you’re here on a legal visa and speak against this administration, they are making it clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend yourself.
You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly mistaken about who killed it.
The problem(s) are... - lack of due process (Constitution doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents) - leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from MD) - sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word - it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.
If all the government has to do is say “they’re here illegally” to get a free pass to do whatever they want to someone, then even legal residents don’t have rights. Due process is the entire mechanism behind which the government can establish something like illegal residency. As soon as you say Group A has the right to a trial and Group B doesn’t, calling someone a member of Group B is all it takes to subvert the entire legal process.
Couple that with their attempted demonization of the judicial branch and it's a recipe for a "first they came for the socialists..." situation.
I just hear the argument that the constitution gives both illegal and legal residents that right and conservatives simply respond that illegals shouldn’t have rights and that’s that.
It needs to be hammered in that due process is necessary even to establish the legality of their residency in the first place, otherwise the government can disappear whoever they want as long as they invoke the illegal immigrant boogeyman.
I'll include a quote from the (9-0!) April 10th Supreme Court ruling[1] concerning the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to El Salvador.
> The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.
Without a chance to demonstrate that someone is in the US legally (i.e., Due Process), the defense of this action can be that it's necessary to prevent the rendition of US citizens to El Salvador or elsewhere. That might sound crazy, but we already have an example of a US citizen being held in custody per an ICE request, despite having proof of being born in the US[2]. If both practices continue, we'll ultimately see the intersection at some point.
--- [1] -- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
[2] -- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-u-s-citizen-was-held...
The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
> The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there is no rule of law and there is no remedy.
I think a better remedy is to work within the laws of the country and to elect different federal representatives (president, senator, house representatives).
Secession would definitely be worse for any state attempting it.
Absolutely yes. This needs to stop right here, and the consequences for violating the rule of law, for violating due process, for violating human rights, must be real.
There is no hypothetical here.
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.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken
"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.
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.
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.
Sure, the law is the law, but it's certainly not true that nothing has changed.
A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be supremely objectionable in any democracy.
Using it on judges?
This creates an air of a two-tiered justice system. No one is above the law.
I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but this response seems almost deliberately obtuse. This is clearly an act by the current administration to intimidate the judiciary. It is impossible to separate the unprecedented act of arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone on behalf of ICE from the administration's illegal (according to the Supreme Court) sending immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
If the article is accurate, he was arrested for making false statements in a personal capacity, not for failing to act.
It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
There are some pretty broad laws about "you can't lie to the feds", but I think the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target. (They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation -- someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
EDIT: since I wrote that 15 minutes ago, the article has been updated with more details about what the judge did:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
EDIT 2: the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article says:
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Which is an escalation above the former "didn't stop them", admittedly, but I'm not sure how it gets to "misdirection".
A "private act" here would be the judge lying in order to prevent their deportation because they as a private person wanted to do so. It seems highly unlikely that this is the case.
This was definitely not them being helpful, but I'm incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
I expect America to be a beacon of light and I will fight for it. We all need to fight for it, especially the people who frequent this message board because we are among the most privileged and capable. It’s disappointing to me how many of our tech leaders forget what made them great in the first place and abuse us all in the pursuit of personal wealth.
So assuming that doesn't happen, this is an action by a non-autocratic executive meant to have a chilling effect on low level judges who don't want to spend a few days in lockup just because. A knob that the executive is (mostly) allowed to turn but that is considered in poor taste if you wish to remain on good terms with the judiciary. The bar for arrest is really low and the courts decide if she committed a crime which she obviously didn't.
Consider just how much more inconvenient/shitty/tragic it will be for you and the people you know if you are indeed forced to move, as compared to successfully pushing back right now.
My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive. The judiciary tends to be prickly about its prerogatives, and Trump's far from the point where he can just push stuff through without some cover.
This is your take given the blatant corruption and clear constitutional violations of this administration? Sure, let's hope that norms and vibes save us against an executive ignoring due process. Those other branches don't even have a way to enforce anything; the executive are the ones who arrest people.
The alternative to this view is either giving up or preparing for armed struggle. It's certainly possible that we could get there, but I don't think it's guaranteed yet.
(I acknowledge that this position is quite the blend of optimism and cynicism.)
Authoritarianism was winning for 50+ years. Nobody with power meaningfully tried to stop it, and voters didn't give enough of a shit to elect people who would. Where we're at now, is that it won.
This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will use executive power to destroy you". There is no optimistic view of this.
Strongly agree. But, as I’m sure we both know, some other less-politically-connected people will be a bit more afraid of getting arrested on ridiculous grounds because of this. So, mission accomplished.
But they can be successfully arrested. You can beat the rap but not the ride, etc.
The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be determined to move that closer.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is an indictment of the cops, not the arrestee.
Imagine that someone is being charged with shoplifting and literally at trial. Some other law enforcement agency shows up to the trial and wants to arrest them for jaywalking.
It seems dysfunctional that the court would release them when they know a different law enforcement agency is literally in the building and wanting to arrest them.
Is this how it works when the FBI comes to a county court looking for someone the county cops have in custody?
The idea that the judge did anything wrong here, based on the description given by the FBI themselves, is absolutely beyond the pale. There's zero reason for ICE agents to barge into court and demand to take somebody.
They didn't even leave one of the multiple agents in the courtroom to wait for the proceedings to end. To blame the judge at all in this requires making multiple logical and factual jumps that even the FBI did not put forward.
Edit: the Trump administration has also been attacking the Catholic Charities of Milwaukee, which this judge used to run:
> Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
It seems pretty clear that this is a highly politically motivated arrest that has zero justification.
any one who keeps a hippocratic oath should not be performing procedures because they were "commanded" to, under pain of professional discreditation.
But wouldn’t the bailiff hold the person?
Is it typical for the FBI to lose a suspect in this manner? If so, this seems dysfunctional as if someone is in the court system then jurisdictions need to coordinate to just operate efficiently. It needs fixing so if ICE wants someone and a local courthouse has them in custody that ICE can pick them up.
But arresting judging is not going to help fix this bureaucratic silliness.
I'm not sure why the courthouse should hold someone for ICE, it wasn't even necessary here they still got the person. All they had to do was stay where they were.
I don't think this would be to hold them indefinitely. Just that they would have the suspect sit there and wait for the agents to return.
This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing you can say will convince the police not to arrest you, and things you do say can make things worse, your best bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets to that point.
I am not alarmist or hyperbolic by nature, and I don’t say this lightly, but this is the next level and the escalation event that leads to the end game. The separation of powers is unraveling, and this is America’s Sulla moment where the republic cracks. The question remains did the anti federalists bake enough stability into the constitution to ensure our first Sulla doesn’t lead to Julius Caesar.
ICE being shady is by many people accepted, the DEA, ATF even. But the FBI has built itself a pretty strong reputation of integrity and professionalism, and resistance to political pressure and corruption. In some ways I at least viewed it as a firewall in law enforcement against this sort of stuff.
Now who watches the watchers?
FBI is prestigious because they get the most qualified tyrants, who are smart enough to lie and deceive in ways that are airtight enough that those at ICE take the heat. The surprising thing here isn't the fact that they did it, but that they didn't do the normal way of digging or manufacturing something else to pin on the judge.
You can't just arrest someone for nothing. You need probable cause. The question is whether a judge going about their day, doing nothing illegal, is probable cause. It's very likely not.
people think the Musk administration is dumb and incompetent, but this is incredibly clever. ICE is the prefect cover for a new unaccountable secret police.
anybody can be disappeared under the excuse of illegal immigration. if there's no due process, they can come for you and you have no recourse.
plenty of MAGAs are so ready to shout "but they're criminals" - and they still don't understand that it could be them next.
I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing that state and local authorities would have to view the feds the way we have to view all three because it brings our incentives more in alignment.
This is untrue if the FBI affidavit is believed. The judge adjourned the case without speaking to the prosecuting attorney, which is a change to the process of the hearing regarding three counts of Battery-Domestic Abuse-Infliction of Physical Pain or Injury.
Later that morning, Attorney B realized that FloresRuiz’s case had never
been called and asked the court about it. Attorney B learned that
FloresRuiz’s case had been adjourned. This happened without Attorney B’s
knowledge or participation, even though Attorney B was present in court to
handle Flores-Ruiz’s case on behalf of the state, and even though victims
were present in the courtroom.
A Victim Witness Specialist (VWS) employed by the Milwaukee County District
Attorney’s Office was present in Courtroom 615 on April 18, 2025. The VWS
made contact with the victims in Flores-Ruiz’s criminal case, who were also
in court. The VWS was able to identify Flores-Ruiz based upon the victims’
reactions to his presence in court. The VWS observed Judge DUGAN gesture
towards Flores-Ruiz and an unknown Hispanic woman. [...] The VWS stated that
Judge DUGAN then exited through the jury door with Flores-Ruiz and the
Hispanic woman. The VWS was concerned because Flores-Ruiz’s case had not yet
been called, and the victims were waiting.
The allegation is that the judge got upset that ICE was waiting outside the courtroom, sent the law enforcement officers to the chief judge's office, and then adjourned the hearing without notifying the prosecutor and snuck the man with a warrant out through a non-public door not normally used by defendants.
If those facts are accurate, it sure sounds like obstruction. Judges have to obey the law just like everyone else.
At the same time, it is settled law that a police officer cannot be held liable for not protecting citizens or not arresting someone. So you have more obligations than a police officer yet getting none of the pay or legal protections
Imagine you were a private tutor, in a private school on private land. ICE barges into the class trying to arrest one of the kids, but their paperwork is not in order so they promised to come back in 20 minutes
Do you imagine it will be possible to continue with the lesson as normal after such an event?
It is your discretion, when to start or stop a lesson, you work for yourself.
Do you imagine you should be obligated as a teacher to continue the lesson as if nothing has happened?
And if children want to leave to hold them by force?
why is it your problem That ICE isn’t competent and can’t get their shit right the first time?
And no, you don't have to help ICE, you just can't obstruct them. Sneaking a suspect out a back door while you stall the police is textbook, classic obstruction.
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)
That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.
If they are arresting people using them and judges are recognizing them, they are real and the people demanding an arrest warrant are the sovereign citizen-tier people screaming at the sky wishing there was a different reality.
It is both rational and legal to insist that law enforcement stay within the bounds of the authority the specific type warrant they obtained. ICE civil warrants grant different authority than every-day federal arrest warrants. That ICE is abusing that authority is no reason to capitulate to it.
The judge was aware of the warrant and ensured the defendant remained in private areas so they could get out of the building.
The FBI's argument is that her actions were unusual (a defendant being allowed into juror's corridors is highly unusual) and were only being taken explicitly to assist in evading ICE.
As we've heard from many lawyers recently regarding ICE... You are not required to participate and assist. However, you can't take additional actions to directly interfere. Even loudly shouting "WHY IS ICE HERE?" is dangerous (you probably should shout a more generic police concern, like 'hey, police, is there a criminal nearby? should i hide?'
---
Wisconsin is also a major money pit for Elon, for whatever reason it's a battleground for everything that's going on this country:
Musk and his affiliated groups sunk $21 million into flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk...
Musk gives away two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters in high profile judicial race:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-gives-away-two-1-milli...
It appears the Right has a thing for Wisconsin judges.
If those allegations are true (which is a big if at this stage), it's not hard to see how that could be construed to be a private act taken outside the course of her normal duties to deliberately help the defendant evade arrest.
That doesn't make what she did morally wrong, of course, but there is a world of difference between the kind of abuse of power that many people here are assuming and someone getting arrested for civil disobedience—intentionally breaking a law because they felt it was the right choice.
This is a private act and involved a private hallway
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.
this doesn't sound like the plural just meant 2 here, so it really does come across as Keystone Cops level of falling over themselves to not leave behind someone to keep an eye on their subject.
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.
That's why ICE has to "ask" law enforcement to hold on to someone who gets arrested on another matter, and why plenty of police departments tell them to go pound sand.
Some immigration matters are criminal. There are specific immigration law enforcement officers that execute warrants.
Maybe what you mean is that ICE warrants grant different authorities than an arrest warrant (ie, can’t enter private property to execute).
[0] https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/ice_warra... https://www.ilrc.org/resources/annotated-ice-administrative-...
You cannot be held by law enforcement or the judiciary for being accused of a civil violation.
So they are crimes, but not huge.
I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but I thought that local law enforcement can certainly hold someone charged with a federal crime. Eg, if someone commits the federal crime of kidnapping, then local cops can detain that person until transferred to FBI.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
The judge took the target out a private back door in an attempt to prevent arrest, leading to a foot chase before apprehension.
> In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/us/shelley-joseph-immigra... (https://archive.ph/gByeV)
EDIT: Although Shelly Joseph wasn’t arrested, only charged.
There's a lot of room for details-we-don't-yet-know to change that opinion, of course.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/23/ice-...
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Can a judge legally detain a defendant after a pre-trial hearing on the basis of "there are some agents asking about you for unrelated reasons?"
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
> What would have been the right move for Dugan here, according to ICE?
The right move was to not violate the law by taking steps which were intended to help the defendant evade ICE.
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.)
So far. I don’t think you’d have trouble recruiting an educated, well-regulated militia from folks who believe in the rule of law.
* Very few people demonize gun ownership. They just want some laws preventing criminals from owning guns.
* Guns are very easy to obtain, the "arms race" is a trip to the local sporting goods store. Sure, the weapon may not be super tacti-cool with a bunch of skulls and shit, but I'm pretty sure that even without all the virtue signalling decals it does the primary job just fine.
This just made up militia will be woefully untrained to handle anything. At least those that have their meeting in the woods practice to whatever extent they do, but that would be so much more than this recent trip to the sporting goods store.
Whether you want to quibble over the words demonize, there are a lot of people that do not interpret the constitution to mean that just any ol' body can own a gun to the extent we allow today. The well regulated militia is part of that amendment, and gets left out quite conveniently. The local police departments are closer to the idea of a well regulated militia. The national guard are even closer of a match to me. The guys that run around in the woods believe they are fulfilling that role, but nobody really thinks they are well regulated other than whatever rules they choose to operate.
Personally, I do not think that what we have today with the NRA and what not is what the framers had in mind. So you complain about demonizing being wrong and clearly on one end of the spectrum. I think that the NRA refusing any limits on guns is clearly the other end of that spectrum
I don’t own a gun and I’m a better shot than half those militia types. The purpose of the guns isn’t to shoot them, it’s to deter. By the time it’s WACO, one side’s marksmanship isn’t really relevant.
I haven't owned a gun in 20 years (it's not my style). I go shooting every 3-4 years with some gun nut buddies who have big arsenals and go shooting often. I am a better shot than many of them.
Armies have won wars while being comprised mostly of conscripted people who hadn't held a gun prior to the conflict breaking out.
Point being - effective use of guns does not require deep proficiency nor long term regular training.
When I've discussed training in this thread in other comments, this is what I was considering. Not target practice. Not being able reload a weapon. Specifically about mentally holding it together to not freeze, or even loose your ability to aim at something not a paper target in a gun range.
Criminals - you mean like illegal immigrants and those who aid and abet them?
The important word here is convicted. As we were all taught in elementary school - there is a process required by the constitution in which a person goes to a special meeting (called a trial) where a whole bunch of people examine evidence and ask a lot of questions about that evidence to determine if a person is a criminal. If the decisions is they are a criminal, then they have been convicted. HTH!
You do not need to be convicted, you do not even need to be charged.
Since this is a hot topic, look at Abrego Garcia. His wife filed a restraining order. The initial order was slightly different than the temporary order 3 days later, which added one thing -- surrendering any firearms (this is bog standard, they do this in Maryland even for citizens). No matter that she did not even bother to show up for the adversarial final order, so he had his gun rights taken totally ex-parte without even a criminal charge or a fully adjudicated civil order nor any chance to face his accuser wife. Even david lettermen had his gun rights temporarily revoked because a woman in another state claimed he was harassing through her TV via secret messages in his television program [].
But that's not all, you can totally have gun rights taken away without any civil or criminal process. If you use illegal drugs, you cannot own weapons either, that is established without any due process to decide if you use or not, simply putting down you use marijuana on a 4473 will block a sale as will simply owning a marijuana card whether you use marijuana or not.
Don't gaslight us. Democrats have been pushing civilian disarmament HARD recently.
Restricted magazine sizes, requiring all transfers to go through a FFL, basic features bans, permits to purchase, restricting ammo purchases to FFLs raising prices, and now repeated attempts at semi-auto bans.
This isn't focused on criminals, it's trying to discourage firearm ownership in general. When states ban the federal government marksmanship program from shipping firearms to civilians AFTER they have already been background checked by a federal agency it's clear there is no attempt to stop criminals.
Yes, but that reason is not for rebellion against the federal government, which is why their equipment and training is governed by the federal government and the President can by fiat order them into federal service at which point he is the C-in-C, not the government.
Most states do also have their own non-federal reserve military force in additionto their National Guard, but those tend to be tiny and not organized for independent operations (e.g., the ~900 strength California State [not National] Guard.)
I live in Wyoming. Our courts aren’t being attacked.
I’d absolutely be open to lending material support to anyone looking to lawfully organise something like this in their community, however.
Seriously, listen to some videos of Ammon Bundy actually speak (he is pro immigration rights as well, despite the 'far-right' label). Not what you hear from the media or others or under the influence of a political agenda. Most of what he says is 99% in line with your thought process here.
Invisible enemies are hard to rally against.
Of course, since the purpose being suggested here is literally the purported urgent need to engage in armed rebellion against federal authorities, the concern that organizing a militia for that purpose would be constrained by merely "organizing a militia" being illegal is a bit odd. Waging war against the federal government, or conspiring to do so, is--even if one argues that it is morally justified by the government violating its Constitutional constraints--both clearly illegal and likely to be subject to the absolute maximum sanction. The legality of organizing a militia in general hardly makes a difference, either to the legal or practical risk anyone undertaking such a venture would face.
If you take the charges at face value, Law enforcement was there to perform an arrest and the judge acted outside their official capacity to obstruct.
The judge got upset that they were waiting in the public hallway outside the courtroom.
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 didn't actually do the thing they went after her for so they found some checkbox to nab her on rather than admit defeat.
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.
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.
[edit: it was an administrative warrant, not an _actual_ judicial warrant]
Further, ICE has a habit of lying about this. They refer to the documents they write as "administrative warrants", which are not real judicial warrants and have no legal standing at all. So when ICE says they presented a warrant it's important to dig in and see if it was one of their fake ones.
Here's an article about that last point from the same source you used: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-is...
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.
And the fact that they left and came back and someone they wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
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.
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.
Google it and do your own research
This is clearly facilitating escape and interfering with law enforcement. "Private" is the key word here.
Officers of the court have a higher responsibility to report the truth and cooperate with official processes than regular citizens.
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".
I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
I didn’t know the difference until today when I was reading about the case. I think the difference is the ice warrants are like detention orders and are different than a judge’s arrest warrant that grants a lot more power.
[0] https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2025/04/23/what-is...
> On or about April 17, 2025, an authorized immigration official found probable cause to believe Flores-Ruiz was removable from the United States and issued a warrant for his arrest. The warrant provided, “YOU ARE COMMANDED to arrest and take into custody for removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the above-named alien [Flores-Ruiz identified on warrant].” Upon his arrest, Flores-Ruiz would be given a Notice of Intent/Decision to Reinstate Prior Order. He would then have an opportunity to contest the determination by making a written or oral statement to an immigration officer.
He'd been deported in 2013 and snuck back in some time later. He was in Milwaukee county court that day because he'd been charged with three counts of domestic battery.
1. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
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")
They recently forced their way to into IRS records, so that is no longer true either.
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!"
What else would you put in the Occupation field at the end of the form?
That field isn't actually used for anything other than determining if you are eligible for tax breaks like the school teacher deductable.
Unless "drug dealer" is one of those codes it's not an option to select that so that isn't the correct answer for code.
The instructions for the codes state, "Note that most codes describe more than one type of activity."
If you must provide a description as well you would provide one that describes more than 1 type of activity, not "drug dealer".
* Pharmacies and Drug Retailers: 456110
* Drugs and Druggists' Sundries Merchant Wholesalers: 424210
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.
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.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/20/tourists-us-residents-detai...
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.
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.
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.
If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.
I’m inclined to think that people won’t get travel visas based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.
> 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...
In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.
Still doesn’t justify arresting a judge in a court house. This is incredibly close to where taking up arms to secure the republic starts to make sense.
It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is another incident, they'll use their least generous interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify their least generous interpretations of that incident.
>If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge,
Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
>In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until a
The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk to him for permission". Ask is courtroom code for "do this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of the courthouse building". There was no "they could have just not gone".
In the fact pattern you've given, we're getting dangerously close to prosecuting a judge for official acts taken in their courtroom. The only difference is that, in your fact pattern, the judge is doing this in bad faith, with the express intent of assisting this person evade arrest.
A Judge is required to maintain order in their courtroom and ensure that the docket runs smoothly. A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive. If this defendant saw that or knew that, he would be likely to run. If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom, that would also be disruptive. A judge is well within their rights to remove people from the gallery if they are going to pose a disruption.
Additionally, this is not new. Defendants walk into court with open warrants all the time. Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court. I don't understand why ICE would be special.
Which, if anyone were honest here, most would admit that they suspect that was the intent. You can't cheer on the judges who do this sort of thing as heroes upholding democracy in one thread, and turn around and in another say "well, they weren't even deliberately doing it, they're just following rules".
Can we prove the judge was acting in bad faith? I don't think that's very likely. But I'd be shocked if that wasn't really what was going on.
We're all being manipulated, you know. I still see 3 headlines a day about the "Maryland man", who isn't from Maryland.
>A bunch of ICE agents sitting in the gallery could definitely be interpreted as disruptive.
Sure, some could claim that. But I doubt they were hooting and hollering and pointing at the man, making intimidating gestures.
>If ICE was going to arrest this person in the middle of a courtroom,
Some here would claim that, but this is unlikely. They'd have waited for the proceeding to end, and followed him out the door. It still accomplishes what they want without pissing off a judge that they might need civility from next week or next year. If you're imagining they're causing trouble that won't help them accomplish what they want to accomplish simple for the sake of causing trouble and making Trump look bad... well, then what can I say?
>Police are not allowed to walk in and arrest defendants in the middle of court.
No one needs to do that. Those same police you're talking about wait until it's over, and arrest them in the hallway outside the courtroom. And they are allowed to do that. But then, most judges don't have soft spot for those criminals like they do for illegal immigrants.
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?
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?
My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should be free to leave California (without fear of California retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).
We are not one identical set of people with one identical culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who cluster together, mainly around people like us.
Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local communities know what is best for themselves. The more decentralized, the better.
regardless, this idea is a distraction from the problem of wealth accumulation and the erosion of representative politics through private funding.
Fuck Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, and Berkshire Hathaway.
The more decentralization the better.
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.
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.
In your opinion, but not according to the law.
And additionally, there have been several recent prominent cases where the government has failed to produce any evidence in court while publicly saying to the media that they're arresting criminals-- of course, the government is able to access the media to claim this while the people they've arrested who, again, have had their freedoms restricted while the people who restrict them are under no similar restraint are unable to do the same!
We can see this in action right now: the government gets to claim to the media that the judge is obstructing arrests of illegal immigrants, while the judge can do no such media counterclaim and has to wait in restraints.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ("In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…")
"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...
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
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.
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.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
> Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he's been in custody since, ...
I feel like I'm watching reality TV. Which makes sense, we have a reality TV star for president and his cabinet is full of Fox news hosts.
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.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...
Everyone acts like independence is the most important aspect of journalism. But an independent blogger in New York rewording press releases is exactly how we got in this misinformation mess, and absolutely not a replacement for someone with a recorder walking around a courthouse asking questions.
- 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.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
[1] https://www.mass.gov/news/commission-on-judicial-conduct-fil...
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"?
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.
Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such an arrest is only done if the suspect is a flight risk.
It is probably wise to give this at least a few hours of detailed analysis by legal experts before we jump to conclusions or paint it with a broad brush.
I’m getting concerned that our judicial branch is becoming more and more political. And believe me there are many right wing judges.
" 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...
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
> (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/...
Original title: "Former New Mexico judge and wife arrested by ICE". It's as though he wasn't an active judge while harboring an alleged Tren De Aragua gang member.
Protip: believe absolutely nothing you read in mainstream news sources on any even remotely political topic. Read between the lines, sort of like people used to read Pravda in the Soviet Union.
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.
Additionally, you have to prove intent, and unless the judge was careless, I doubt they will ever be able to do that. I'd bet the prosecution knows this, I don't think they expect the charges to stick. It seems this arrest was done to send a message.
More evidence of that is that typically in this kind of case they would invite her to show up somewhere to accept process, not be arrested like a common criminal.
Ultimately this seems like Trump asserting that the federal executive branch has unfettered veto authority over local judicial branches. That doesn't sit well with me.
There's definitely a conversation to be had about whether people should be safe from immigration law enforcement while within a courthouse, but at the moment as I understand it that is not a protection that exists.
The reason every other administration besides Trump refused to go into local courthouses to deport people wasn't about "whether people should be safe from immigration enforcement," it was about separation of powers.
I 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.
In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
Say that I take an item from a store. That’s only a crime if I did it with the intent of stealing it. But the prosecution doesn’t really have to “prove” in any practical sense that I had that intention. If I don’t have a plausible story about why else I did it, then I’ll probably be found guilty.
Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's request since it was a public space and they didnt have a warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter. She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.
All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
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...
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.
Well that just say everything about the articles you've been reading, doesnt it?
>Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”) identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the United States
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
I fully support him getting due process. But arresting him is part of that.
>It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status
Where did that happen?
Sworn affidavit in the complaint against Judge Dugan.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.11...
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.
He also was in court for battery. It seems like you're implying that since battery is not illegal entry that he couldn't be arrested. ??? If anything thats just another good reason not to aid his unlawful presence in the country.
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.
Arguably South Korea has better democracy, because Yoon Suk Yeol is probably going to prison for insurrection.
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.
So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
Who said they had that right and when did this happen?
Not just immigration law but federal law generally. It's funny that this never reached the point of beign a decision rule in a case and thus binding precedent until the 1990s, as you see it in dicta in Supreme Court cases decided on other bases back to shortly before the Civil War (specifically, in cases around the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Yeah, it is absolutely because the federal government was simply not trying to commandeer state authorities to enforce federal law; the interesting part (to me) is that the courts were anticipating the problem well before it materialized.
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.
People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
- America is a land of opportunities. It is BY FAR the country with the largest number of legal immigrants[0]. There are ~51M in the US and the second is Germany with ~16M. I think it makes sense that given the extremely high demand to come to the US, it is unsurprising that many do so illegally. Especially when the costs of staying in your own country are so high.
- How would you even go about documenting them, determining status, and then following due process[1]. Tricky situation. It's does not only create a dystopian authoritarian hellscape to constantly check everyone's status, but it is also really expensive to do so! Random stops interfere with average citizens and violates our constitutional rights. Rights created explicitly because the people founding this country were experienced with such situations...
I mean I also agree with your point that they are being exploited and that there's been this silent quid pro quo (even if one party is getting the shit end of the deal). But also I think people really need to consider what it actually takes to get the things they want. Certainly we can do better and certainly we shouldn't exploit them. But importantly, which is more important: the rights of a citizen or punishing illegal immigrants? There has to be a balance because these are coupled. For one, I'm with Jefferson, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent be stripped of their freedom. You can't pick and choose. The rules have to apply to everyone or they apply to no one. There are always costs, and the most deadly costs are those that are hard to see.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
[1] I cannot stress enough how critical due process is. If we aren't going to have due process, then we don't have any laws. Full stop. If we don't have due process, then the only law is your second amendment right, and that's not what anyone wants.
> A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
So even without a direct expansion of rights and the natural progression of societies to change over time, we have to at minimum recognize that there is a distinction between "what the rule says" and "what the intended rule is". This is like alignment 101.
From the criminal complaint in this case:
"I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court."
So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse:
"The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual."
Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
So, it seems that "people living in the country illegally" doesn't have to just be a fact of life, if there are federal policy changes that can radically alter the number of people who illegally enter the country.
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.
Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?
We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to...
Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
are you sure that their life wasn't much tougher before they came here?
No, its not.
Entering the country illegally is at least a misdemeanor (can be a felony depending on specific details), but being in the country illegally is not, itself, a crime, and it is possible to be in the country illegally without entering illegally.
Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to you or with criminal negligence the person causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon".
Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)
And the difference between a misdemeanor and a civil infraction is not a matter of splitting hairs. Here's some differences:
1. In a criminal case, you need to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the standard is simply a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. If there is a 51% you are here illegally and a 49% chance you aren't, you get deported.
2. In a criminal case if you can't afford a lawyer one may be appointed to you. In a civil case you have to either pay for a lawyer yourself or represent yourself. This has serious consequences for people. If a child ends up in immigration court and their families can't afford to hire an attorney, they have to represent themselves. Even if they are 4 years old: https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kid...
3. You might assume that immigration judges are just like any other judge and are part of the judicial branch, a so-called "Article III Court" (referring to Article III of the Constitution). But immigration judges are not Article III courts. They report to the head of the Department of Justice, who has hiring and firing powers over them. Meaning the prosecutor arguing for your deportation and the judge deciding your case both report to the US Attorney General
So I think there's a strong argument that we should be much more conservative with the application of labels like "criminal" to people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory#The_%22crimina...
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?
On the topic, sure. But maybe next time you go to another country, try to think how you would stay and break the law. Later, you will need a car, a bank account (by stealing a social security number or other solutions). Like how you are getting yourself ready to live a life of breaking the law just to go by in life. That's a series of life-changing events you have to be ready to go through. And yes you can go to prison because yo go too fast on a highway but to me it's really something else.
Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens.
But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure.
That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
> if you consider illegal immigrants as people
The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant:
_______What do you want to happen here? _________________
if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
deport(person, police)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) {
// What do you want to happen?
// deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them
} else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) {
fullRights(person)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown {
// Also a necessary question to answer
// Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany
} else {
// raise error, we shouldn't be here?
}
EDIT:
> the bill of rights only applies to citizens
After due process via courts, deportation is justified. So you need a big "if" before all of that.
ICE is not the police.
There should be no (broad) if-clause to grant rights.
Unknown citizenship is not something you need to check for constantly, as you hinted.
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.
Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time, so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had DUI deadly crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his lawyers were filing pile 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...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
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.
I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations.
There's a few points I think people are missing:
1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another.
2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy.
A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0].
Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things.
There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears...
[0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime.
In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
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-...
* 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.
It is a tragedy that so many people were allowed - even encouraged - to enter this country without proper authorization. Whatever the motivation for doing so, it has now rendered the fate of all of those people subject to the whims of whomever is in power.
> 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.
And while I would not want to make a generalized rule about how to distinguish between these two, I do think that at least in some cases favoring immigration over criminal justice is the right call so that we don't end up in this situation again.
> 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.
They are granted with the authority to enforce immigration law.
I'm not going to quibble on any other bits of misdirection or failure to read other people's posts. Pick your side.
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.
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!)
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...
bko•3h ago