> He accused Dugan of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents who arrived at the courthouse to detain an immigrant who was set to appear before her in an unrelated proceeding.
It sounds like the arrest isn't because of any official act of the judge, but rather over them either not telling the ICE agents where the person was or giving them the wrong information about their location.
There are some pretty broad laws about "you can't lie to the feds", but I think the unusual thing here is that they're using them against a reasonably politically-connected person who's not their main target. (They're normally akin to the "we got Al Capone for tax evasion" situation -- someone they were going after, where they couldn't prove the main crime, but they could prove that they lied about other details.)
EDIT: since I wrote that 15 minutes ago, the article has been updated with more details about what the judge did:
> ICE agents arrived in the judge’s courtroom last Friday during a pre-trial hearing for Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican national who is facing misdemeanor battery charges in Wisconsin.
> Dugan asked the agents to leave and speak to the circuit court’s chief judge, the Journal Sentinel reported. By the time they returned, Flores Ruiz had left.
I.e. the ICE agents showed up in the middle of a court proceeding, and the judge said they'd need to get permission from the chief judge before they could interrupt proceedings. The judge then didn't stop the defendant from leaving once the proceeding was done.
EDIT 2: the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article says:
> Sources say Dugan didn't hide the defendant and his attorney in a jury deliberation room, as other media have said. Rather, sources said, when ICE officials left to talk with the chief judge on the same floor, Dugan took the pair to a side door in the courtroom, directed them down a private hallway and into the public area on the 6th floor.
Which is an escalation above the former "didn't stop them", admittedly, but I'm not sure how it gets to "misdirection".
mjburgess 1 hours 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.
kemayo 1 hours 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.
pjc50 1 hours ago [-]
> incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted for this.
But they can be successfully arrested. You can beat the rap but not the ride, etc.
The US is not yet at the level of dysfunction where jurisdiction is settled with gunfire, but ICE seem to be determined to move that closer.
fnordpiglet 35 minutes ago [-]
The fact the FBI participated in this arrest is chilling. ICE being a proto secret police seems to be perceived already. The FBI now? There’s question whether the ICE agents even had legal grounds to demand arrest regardless, whether they had a warrant, etc - and the facts established are pretty clearly not prosecutable. So this is pure intimidation, going after the judicial in what will likely be a flagrantly abusive way, yet doing it proudly and across the media - this is a shot across the bow telling judges at all levels they are next. And if there’s anyone that knows being arrested changes your life forever, it’s judges.
I am not alarmist or hyperbolic by nature, and I don’t say this lightly, but this is the next level and the escalation event that leads to the end game. The separation of powers is unraveling, and this is America’s Sulla moment where the republic cracks. The question remains did the anti federalists bake enough stability into the constitution to ensure our first Sulla doesn’t lead to Julius Caesar.
EgregiousCube 26 minutes ago [-]
The accused is accused of violating federal law, so it's normal that a federal agency would make the arrest. FBI seems to make more sense than DEA or ATF, no?
fnordpiglet 19 minutes ago [-]
It’s not that the agency is wrong; it’s that the agency would do it. This is the agency that since J Edgar Hoover has very carefully rebuilt its reputation and is very guarded in it. This act is entirely reminiscent of the political corruption of the FBI of old. That regression, that fast, is frightening.
ICE being shady is by many people accepted, the DEA, ATF even. But the FBI has built itself a pretty strong reputation of integrity and professionalism, and resistance to political pressure and corruption. In some ways I at least viewed it as a firewall in law enforcement against this sort of stuff.
Now who watches the watchers?
scoofy 10 minutes ago [-]
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You can't just arrest someone for nothing. You need probable cause. The question is whether a judge going about their day, doing nothing illegal, is probable cause. It's very likely not.
ty6853 5 minutes ago [-]
PC is decided by the judge at arraignment or when issuing the arrest warrant. A cop is not an officer of the court, he doesn't even have the ability to argue there is PC.
exe34 47 seconds ago [-]
> ICE being a proto secret police
people think the Musk administration is dumb and incompetent, but this is incredibly clever. ICE is the prefect cover for a new unaccountable secret police.
anybody can be disappeared under the excuse of illegal immigration. if there's no due process, they can come for you and you have no recourse.
plenty of MAGAs are so ready to shout "but they're criminals" - and they still don't understand that it could be them next.
epistasis 16 minutes ago [-]
This is certainly not the first autocratic act of the FBI under Patel. They have been thoroughly compromised and lost integrity even before this arrest.
gitfan86 21 minutes ago [-]
Your understanding of the constitution is backwards. The people have the power and they voted for someone who said he would prioritize deporting violent illegals. He won so now the feds are doing that.
The judge took an oath to uphold the constitution. The judge should not have let the person accused of being a violent illegal leave the courtroom.it is obstructing the executive branch.
Hikikomori 12 minutes ago [-]
Did he also say he would deport people without a criminal record, that are here legally, and without due process?
boroboro4 7 minutes ago [-]
You would be surprised but our constitution is not "We vote for a king every 4 years and do whatever kind desires" in fact.
epistasis 15 minutes ago [-]
The executive must also uphold the constitution, not matter what vague campaign promises were made.
rob74 22 minutes ago [-]
Plus they obviously want to set an example: if you get in our way, bad things will happen to you.
whats_a_quasar 51 minutes ago [-]
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is phrased like the judge actually did anything wrong. That seems very doubtful. This administration has shown they are not entitled to the presumption that they are acting in good faith.
QuercusMax 48 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it implies the judge did anything wrong. If you're arrested, you're going to experience whatever the cops want to do to you, regardless of whether they can convict you of it.
"You can beat the rap but not the ride" is an indictment of the cops, not the arrestee.
prepend 35 minutes ago [-]
I don’t know. It seems pretty unusual.
Imagine that someone is being charged with shoplifting and literally at trial. Some other law enforcement agency shows up to the trial and wants to arrest them for jaywalking.
It seems dysfunctional that the court would release them when they know a different law enforcement agency is literally in the building and wanting to arrest them.
Is this how it works when the FBI comes to a county court looking for someone the county cops have in custody?
epistasis 30 minutes ago [-]
Talk to the cops, not the judge who is in a proceeding? Go talk to the chief justice?
The idea that the judge did anything wrong here, based on the description given by the FBI themselves, is absolutely beyond the pale. There's zero reason for ICE agents to barge into court and demand to take somebody.
They didn't even leave one of the multiple agents in the courtroom to wait for the proceedings to end. To blame the judge at all in this requires making multiple logical and factual jumps that even the FBI did not put forward.
Edit: the Trump administration has also been attacking the Catholic Charities of Milwaukee, which this judge used to run:
> Before she was a judge, Dugan worked as a poverty attorney and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
It seems pretty clear that this is a highly politically motivated arrest that has zero justification.
hackinthebochs 38 minutes ago [-]
"You can't beat the ride" is saying that cops can punish you regardless of whether what you did was illegal.
pc86 17 minutes ago [-]
That's certainly one interpretation of it, and a pretty reasonable one. However, I typically interpret it as "if the police think you've committed a crime, you are going to jail and almost nothing is going to stop that." In that incredibly famous "Don't Talk to the Police" talk[0], the attorney asks the former-cop-turned-law-student if he's every been convinced not to arrest someone based on what the suspect said. Not a single time in his entire law enforcement career.
This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing you can say will convince the police not to arrest you, and things you do say can make things worse, your best bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets to that point.
I think we're all agreeing here. "You can't beat the ride" means that if the cops want to arrest you, lock you up, etc., you can't do anything about it. Doesn't matter if you're guilty, innocent, or just a random bystander, you're not going to stop them from taking you and doing whatever they want in the process.
pc86 26 minutes ago [-]
Can you explain how this action reasonably leads to gunfire?
kelseyfrog 17 minutes ago [-]
GP wasn't saying that one leads to another in a causal sense - simply that there are levels of dysfunction and this step is closer to the dysfunction of gunfire than the previous level.
roughly 43 minutes ago [-]
ICE should’ve been reformed after Trump 1, but at this point we’re going to need to unwind the whole organization when we get that man out of power. They’ve shown themselves to be pretty disinterested in laws, democracy, etc.
californical 1 hours ago [-]
> incredibly doubtful that they could be successfully prosecuted
Strongly agree. But, as I’m sure we both know, some other less-politically-connected people will be a bit more afraid of getting arrested on ridiculous grounds because of this. So, mission accomplished.
alabastervlog 1 hours ago [-]
Successful prosecution isn't needed, the harassment and incurring high legal fees will discourage a dozen other judges who might be less than boot-licklingly helpful to the autocrat.
potato3732842 39 minutes ago [-]
That's the reality less equal animals have had to live under since basically forever.
I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing that state and local authorities would have to view the feds the way we have to view all three because it brings our incentives more in alignment.
dylan604 50 minutes ago [-]
I'm sure there will be plenty of attorneys willing to take on these cases pro bono.
willis936 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bix6 1 hours ago [-]
Considering the ongoing due process deprivations this is the most concerning aspect to me. This is a sitting judge which is a significant escalation against the judiciary.
ivape 39 minutes ago [-]
I was talking to someone earlier about how we in America, today, are not entitled to anything. Just in the last hundred years, people lived under secret police, dictators, state-controlled media, occupation, you name it. Hundreds of millions of people lived their whole life under the KGB or Stasi. Hundreds of millions live in autocracy even today. Some straight up live in a warzone as we speak. The idea that "we" can't be going through this is beyond entitled. Nothing is guaranteed to us. We are being shown how fragile this all is by the universe.
bix6 34 minutes ago [-]
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
I expect America to be a beacon of light and I will fight for it. We all need to fight for it, especially the people who frequent this message board because we are among the most privileged and capable. It’s disappointing to me how many of our tech leaders forget what made them great in the first place and abuse us all in the pursuit of personal wealth.
46 minutes ago [-]
BizarroLand 1 hours ago [-]
For people who don't live in crazy town, this would be considered an oppressive action, arresting a judge for following procedure simply because it inconvenienced you.
1 hours ago [-]
intermerda 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pjc50 1 hours ago [-]
Ah, but: freedom for "me". The libertarian HN posters are in favor of unlimited freedom for themselves and a police state for everyone else, especially non-Americans who dare to exist in America.
bodiekane 46 minutes ago [-]
Libertarian is completely the opposite side of the political spectrum from police state/authoritarianism.
And yet many people calling themselves "Libertarian" signed themselves up for full-throated support of this fascist wannabe dictator. Their apparent interest in "freedom" doesn't extend past their own interest in oppressing others. The dynamic is especially pronounced in the surveillance industry, where digital authoritarianism gets a pass by appealing to the individual desire to create your very own digital authoritarian startup.
signed, an actual libertarian.
dingdongbong 53 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Spivak 1 hours ago [-]
If it turns autocratic then there's no discussion to be had. Judge will waterboarded in Gitmo and Trump is de-facto king. We are no longer a nation of laws, the USA is renamed to Trumpopolis and we all have to get government mandated orange spray tans.
So assuming that doesn't happen, this is an action by a non-autocratic executive meant to have a chilling effect on low level judges who don't want to spend a few days in lockup just because. A knob that the executive is (mostly) allowed to turn but that is considered in poor taste if you wish to remain on good terms with the judiciary. The bar for arrest is really low and the courts decide if she committed a crime which she obviously didn't.
sdenton4 38 minutes ago [-]
Autocracy comes in shades. Arresting judges who do things you don't like is yet another shade darker than we've seen so far... And things were already pretty dark.
trealira 56 minutes ago [-]
You seem to be quite blasé about the possibility of autocracy. But yes, there is a risk that Trump becomes a dictator and we're no longer a nation of laws. It depends on how people like us react to consolidations of power like this, or the illegal impoundment, or cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia's. The law only matters insofar as we and our representatives can enforce it.
Spivak 52 minutes ago [-]
I'm not so much blasé about it, more just nihilistic because I am the last person with any kind of power to stop it. I imagine most of HN falls
into this bucket of people with no real political power or influence. My realistic option if it happens is to move.
adriand 32 minutes ago [-]
Protest! People power is the best way to resist autocracy especially in the early stages when resistance has a chance of success. Don’t ignore the fact that protests are happening. Musk is fleeing Washington because the backlash successfully tanked Tesla. That’s a big win right there!
Consider just how much more inconvenient/shitty/tragic it will be for you and the people you know if you are indeed forced to move, as compared to successfully pushing back right now.
trealira 44 minutes ago [-]
I'm also making plans contingency plans to move, but I may not be able to. Individually, no, we don't have power, but if everyone actually protested, we would - the Ukrainian revolution[1] started out as just mass protests (Euromaidan), for instance. The problem is that not enough of us are doing it, maybe because too many people are apathetic, uninformed, or don't take the possibility of autocracy seriously.
I'm not saying it's good, for sure. But I don't think it's a sign that the push for autocratic authoritarianism is winning, either.
My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive. The judiciary tends to be prickly about its prerogatives, and Trump's far from the point where he can just push stuff through without some cover.
WhitneyLand 46 minutes ago [-]
Dear god wake up before it’s too late.
pesus 39 minutes ago [-]
We are far past the point of any optimistic take like that being realistic.
vuggamie 31 minutes ago [-]
The fact that HN is letting political posts stay on the front page after months of suppression shows that we are past the point of denying the authoritarian road we are on.
alabastervlog 30 minutes ago [-]
We've been heading this direction with hardly a pause, let alone step back, since the '70s.
Authoritarianism was winning for 50+ years. Nobody with power meaningfully tried to stop it, and voters didn't give enough of a shit to elect people who would. Where we're at now, is that it won.
hypeatei 52 minutes ago [-]
> My optimistic take is that this is the sort of stupid overreach that works to turn other arms of government against the executive
This is your take given the blatant corruption and clear constitutional violations of this administration? Sure, let's hope that norms and vibes save us against an executive ignoring due process. Those other branches don't even have a way to enforce anything; the executive are the ones who arrest people.
kemayo 41 minutes ago [-]
The power of the executive is constrained, ultimately, by what people let them do. Including people inside the executive branch -- the people who're doing the arresting, transporting the prisoners, gunning down the protesters, etc. There's a lot of people involved who aren't committed to some authoritarian project, they're just... doing their job. They can be swayed by vibes, and general unpopularity of the regime.
The alternative to this view is either giving up or preparing for armed struggle. It's certainly possible that we could get there, but I don't think it's guaranteed yet.
(I acknowledge that this position is quite the blend of optimism and cynicism.)
Hikikomori 2 minutes ago [-]
Like this judge they're being ousted for the smallest pushback and are being replaced by project 2025 people, they even set up a system that you can apply to do exactly this. Trump (or Vance that is fully in with Thiel) will have full control over all agencies where all low level employees are on board with this Christo fascist takeover and the judiciary will be powerless.
542354234235 14 minutes ago [-]
Trump is calling for the Fed's Jerome Powell to be fired for not lying and saying everything will be fine as a result of tariffs. He pulled the security clearance of former CISA Director Chris Krebs, and anyone associated with him, for not lying about the result of his cyber security investigation of the 2020 election. He also pulled security clearances for political rivals including Biden, Harris, and Cheney as well as the Attorneys General involved in his civil case for fraud, which he lost and was ordered to pay $355 million.
This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will use executive power to destroy you". There is no optimistic view of this.
ldoughty 34 minutes 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)
mjburgess 26 minutes ago [-]
If this is all true, it still requires the judge be under some legal order to facilitate the deportation -- unless they have a warrant of the relevant type, the judge is under no such obligation. With a standard (administrative) warrant, ICE have no authority to demand the arrest.
That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.
mjburgess 40 seconds ago [-]
That applies to warrants for arrest. The standard warrant ICE operate with is a civil warrant, and does not confer any actual authority to arrest an individual.
ivape 21 minutes ago [-]
I'm amazed the immigrant actually even attended the court hearing in a climate like this. The person went to the court hearing in good faith. Anyway, probably less people will be going to court hearings now.
---
Wisconsin is also a major money pit for Elon, for whatever reason it's a battleground for everything that's going on this country:
Musk and his affiliated groups sunk $21 million into flipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
It appears the Right has a thing for Wisconsin judges.
JumpCrisscross 55 minutes 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.)
gosub100 9 minutes ago [-]
Why don't you organize one?
dylan604 45 minutes 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
JumpCrisscross 42 minutes ago [-]
> that's just how the militia types tend to lean
So far. I don’t think you’d have trouble recruiting an educated, well-regulated militia from folks who believe in the rule of law.
totalkikedeath 39 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
kcatskcolbdi 33 minutes ago [-]
and something tells me the side that spent decades demonizing firearm ownership probably can't win an arms race against their ideological opponents.
dylan604 21 minutes ago [-]
didn't think of that salient detail
mindslight 23 minutes ago [-]
We've got National Guards and Air National Guards under the command of state governors for a reason. Just sayin'.
esbranson 12 minutes ago [-]
The Democratic Party and its KKK already tried that. They lost. Hard.
lolinder 1 minutes ago [-]
Party composition changes over time, and the people who made up the KKK switched parties starting when JFK backed the civil rights movement. It's the right wing militia's that are the spiritual successors to the KKK, not the Democratic party.
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.
Centigonal 58 minutes 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-v 53 minutes ago [-]
It's not related to legal proceedings, so, no.
The point of the arrest is to pressure judges into illegally doing it anyway.
rolph 47 minutes 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.
eterps 53 minutes ago [-]
My thoughts exactly.
NoMoreNicksLeft 50 minutes 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.
Jtsummers 1 hours 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_quasar 48 minutes 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.
But judges can be arrested for doing nothing illegal to intimidate and bully them into not acting based on settled law.
45 minutes ago [-]
csomar 51 minutes ago [-]
> The question is if the judge should have held the man
This is bananas. The judges (or anyone else for that matter) should not be able to hold this man (or any other man) without an arrest warrant.
KennyBlanken 48 minutes ago [-]
ICE doesn't issue warrants, because they can't. Immingration matters aren't criminal, and ICE are not law enforcement, though they certainly love to cosplay as some sort of mix between law enforcement and military.
That's why ICE has to "ask" law enforcement to hold on to someone who gets arrested on another matter, and why plenty of police departments tell them to go pound sand.
prepend 27 minutes ago [-]
ICE does issue warrants [0].
Some immigration matters are criminal. There are specific immigration law enforcement officers that execute warrants.
Maybe what you mean is that ICE warrants grant different authorities than an arrest warrant (ie, can’t enter private property to execute).
I wouldn't be surprised if the agents are required to stay together when doing deportation arrests because they don't know when an immigrant might revert to their demon form and incapacitate a lone officer.
dylan604 43 minutes ago [-]
while funny, there is a reason for federals coming in pairs so they can act as a witness for the other with things like lying to a federal officer.
this doesn't sound like the plural just meant 2 here, so it really does come across as Keystone Cops level of falling over themselves to not leave behind someone to keep an eye on their subject.
wat10000 26 minutes ago [-]
I'd bet on malicious compliance so they can show that their good and honest work is being impeded by elitist judges.
analog31 48 minutes ago [-]
For all the judge could have known, the agents weren't coming back.
KennyBlanken 50 minutes 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.
prepend 23 minutes ago [-]
I thought they were misdemeanor crimes [0] punishable by jail time.
So they are crimes, but not huge.
I’m not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but I thought that local law enforcement can certainly hold someone charged with a federal crime. Eg, if someone commits the federal crime of kidnapping, then local cops can detain that person until transferred to FBI.
According to the story you linked, they claim they had a warrant but the judge and other staff say the warrant was never presented.
Further, ICE has a habit of lying about this. They refer to the documents they write as "administrative warrants", which are not real judicial warrants and have no legal standing at all. So when ICE says they presented a warrant it's important to dig in and see if it was one of their fake ones.
note that ICE often attempts to treat administrative warrants as judicial warrants, and it's unclear from this reporting what they actually had
[edit: it was an administrative warrant, not an _actual_ judicial warrant]
spamizbad 53 minutes ago [-]
This to me seems like a completely lawful act on the part of the judge?
9 minutes ago [-]
phendrenad2 1 hours 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.
euroderf 39 minutes ago [-]
Going from "redirect blame" to "make an arrest" is a significant escalation.
ceejayoz 33 minutes ago [-]
That's the main tactic this administration uses, isn't it? Double down, never admit fault, get into a giant trade war with the rest of the world...
duxup 17 minutes ago [-]
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....
euroderf 41 minutes 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.
armchairhacker 1 hours 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.
kemayo 54 minutes 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.
rectang 44 minutes ago [-]
According to a "sources say" quote from a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published two days ago:
> 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.
adolph 8 minutes 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.
rustcleaner 29 minutes 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.
dudeinjapan 49 minutes ago [-]
Umm… why didn’t the agents just wait patiently until the proceeding was done?
ceejayoz 46 minutes ago [-]
I don't think I've ever encountered a CBP employee I'd describe as "patient".
duxup 14 minutes 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.
rolph 43 minutes ago [-]
LEOs are trained to "be the one in control"
potato3732842 47 minutes 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_thibedeau 40 minutes ago [-]
She was convicted for lying, not for the trading.
potato3732842 27 minutes ago [-]
That was exactly what I meant by "the feds don't go away empty handed".
She didn't actually do the thing they went after her for so they found some checkbox to nab her on rather than admit defeat.
kylehotchkiss 22 minutes 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.
dlachausse 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1 hours ago [-]
coldpie 23 minutes ago [-]
Too bad Dems didn't abolish ICE when they had the opportunity, huh? Fucking morons.
jawiggins 43 minutes 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.
lurk2 13 minutes 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.
dionian 21 minutes ago [-]
there is usually only one exit to a courtroom, in the back
bix6 12 minutes 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?
Miner49er 27 minutes ago [-]
How in the world is this an arrestable offense. Escorting someone out of a room?
lolinder 19 minutes 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.
Miner49er 9 minutes ago [-]
I guess I would hope it takes more then that to rise to the level of obstruction.
Additionally, you have to prove intent, and unless the judge was careless, I doubt they will ever be able to do that. I'd bet the prosecution knows this, I don't think they expect the charges to stick. It seems this arrest was done to send a message.
More evidence of that is that typically in this kind of case they would invite her to show up somewhere to accept process, not be arrested like a common criminal.
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.
A good reminder that we need to support local, professional journalism. Otherwise the only information we would be getting right now is official statements or hearsay.
DrillShopper 42 minutes ago [-]
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel now is just a reskin of USA Today[1]. They're not locally owned or controlled.
The important thing is they are still paying for a journalism to do beat coverage in the area.
Everyone acts like independence is the most important aspect of journalism. But an independent blogger in New York rewording press releases is exactly how we got in this misinformation mess, and absolutely not a replacement for someone with a recorder walking around a courthouse asking questions.
41 minutes ago [-]
djoldman 1 hours ago [-]
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.
legitster 54 minutes 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.
> 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.
jandrese 59 minutes ago [-]
Can you imagine being a law enforcement officer bringing a case before a judge that you previously arrested on a flimsy pretext in order to intimidate them? That's going to be awkward.
kasey_junk 46 minutes ago [-]
Federal agents probably don’t worry too much about being in local misdemeanor court.
whats_a_quasar 60 minutes 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.
giraffe_lady 60 minutes 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.
Kapura 59 minutes 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.
masklinn 38 minutes 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.
hypeatei 55 minutes 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.
openasocket 1 hours 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?
kemayo 1 hours 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...
openasocket 45 minutes 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?
sixothree 47 minutes ago [-]
Are these the agents that were recorded last week not wearing uniforms and not presenting identification?
dmix 1 hours ago [-]
That still sounds pretty vague.
NoMoreNicksLeft 46 minutes 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.
JumpCrisscross 43 minutes ago [-]
> they could have just been waiting patiently for the hearing to end, and they would have arrested him outside the courtroom after he had left
Still doesn’t justify arresting a judge in a court house. This is incredibly close to where taking up arms to secure the republic starts to make sense.
NoMoreNicksLeft 41 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
openasocket 27 minutes ago [-]
That would really depend on what the judge did, though. If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge, that sounds like obstruction. If the judge said, “the chief judge wants to talk to you”, and the chief judge really did want to talk to the ICE agents, is that obstruction? In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until after arresting the suspect, or just sent one of their agents to talk to the chief judge and leave the rest in the courtroom.
NoMoreNicksLeft 14 minutes ago [-]
>That would really depend on what the judge did, though.
It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is another incident, they'll use their least generous interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify their least generous interpretations of that incident.
>If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge,
Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.
>In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until a
The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk to him for permission". Ask is courtroom code for "do this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of the courthouse building". There was no "they could have just not gone".
bloopernova 59 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
ericras 54 minutes ago [-]
No one is above the law.
TheOtherHobbes 39 minutes ago [-]
No one poor is above the law.
As autocracy expands, so does the definition of "poor".
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Wilhoit's Law
MyOutfitIsVague 31 minutes ago [-]
How many lawsuits were dropped and people pardoned at the discretion of the sitting president? Wasn't he the target of many legitimate lawsuits that were dropped? Didn't he pardon a bunch of people, including convicted fraudsters who grifted millions of dollars, relatively recently?
Somebody in particular is above the law, as are all his cronies.
pesus 30 minutes ago [-]
Except the ones the Supreme Court says are.
bananapub 53 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorry, have you been in a coma the last 8 - 50 years?
This is a much, much more informative source. Thanks!
eterps 2 hours 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.
In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
Aeolun 23 minutes ago [-]
Not necessarily to avoid his arrest, only the fact they went through a jury door is indicated for now.
nonethewiser 5 minutes ago [-]
That's a quote from the complaint against her. It hasnt been tried yet.
Read the document. The agents showed up to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents complied with the courtroom deputy to wait until after the proceeding and the deputy agreed to help with the arrest. They waited outside the courtroom at the deputy's request since it was a public space and they didnt have a warrent to enter the jury chamber. The judge was alerted of the officers and approached them and told them to leave. She directed them to go meet with another judge about the matter. She personally lead Flores-Ruiz out through the jury room.
All this stuff appears to be corroborated by witnesses.
It would be interesting to hear if there was another valid reason for this
Miner49er 13 minutes ago [-]
There doesn't have to be, it's up to the prosecution to prove the reason was to aid him in avoiding arrest. The judge doesn't have to provide an alternate reason.
slaw 24 minutes ago [-]
I hope Judge Dugan will be trialed as a regular citizen.
bluGill 2 hours ago [-]
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.
sanderjd 32 minutes 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.
Aeolun 18 minutes ago [-]
On that basis tourists have no constitutional rights either. I find it hard to believe anyone would want to visit the US now, but surely that has an even further chilling effect.
sanderjd 10 minutes ago [-]
To be clear, I agree. It's a dangerous thesis, but also just idiotic. They're doing a speed run of turning the US into North Korea, where nobody will want to travel here or trade with us.
staticman2 1 hours 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!"
toast0 1 hours 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?
That field isn't actually used for anything other than determining if you are eligible for tax breaks like the school teacher deductable.
rjbwork 58 minutes ago [-]
Independent Pharmaceutical Sales Consultant
amacbride 19 minutes ago [-]
Import/Export Specialist
jandrese 58 minutes ago [-]
Independent salesman.
criddell 55 minutes ago [-]
Self-employed
zepton 56 minutes 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".
staticman2 46 minutes ago [-]
Unless I'm missing something you choose from a list of principal business Codes and also provide a description.
Unless "drug dealer" is one of those codes it's not an option to select that so that isn't the correct answer for code.
The instructions for the codes state, "Note that most codes
describe more than one type of
activity."
If you must provide a description as well you would provide one that describes more than 1 type of activity, not "drug dealer".
QuercusMax 31 minutes ago [-]
"Independent Entrepreneur"
zdragnar 1 hours 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.
perihelions 1 hours 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
whats_a_quasar 57 minutes 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.
jibal 55 minutes ago [-]
Your comment has no connection at all with this case.
HeatrayEnjoyer 1 hours 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.
nashashmi 1 hours ago [-]
But they wanted to get intel on suspected illegals. They just cannot use the data provided to the IRS as evidence. They have to get separate evidence.
_DeadFred_ 56 minutes ago [-]
This is not normal/acceptable in the US. I remember when parallel construction was thought of as a horrible/unacceptable violation of the Constitution in the US. Now the 'Constitution' party doesn't give AF and loves it. It's crazy how far we let slippery slopes take us. All because of convenience or 'it's not that big of a deal yet'.
saalweachter 60 minutes ago [-]
Separate evidence for ...?
nashashmi 23 minutes ago [-]
Separate evidence of the crime that is not obtained by the compulsion of other circumstances as protected by the 5th amendment.
chews 2 hours 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.
lupusreal 58 minutes 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.
If this complaint is true (my understanding is a complaint is always only one side of the story and the evidence presented may not end up being admissible, obviously IANAL and so forth), then seems quite similar to the MA case from several years ago: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2024/12/04/judge-shel...
esbranson 29 minutes ago [-]
Yes it would appear so.[1] It's a federal felony complaint so I believe it has to go to a grand jury next.
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.
empath75 46 minutes 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.
xpe 26 minutes 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 not done unless the suspect is a flight risk.
More broadly, regarding news of this level of impact, I think it is essential to maintain high standards of intellectual honesty. 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.
underseacables 2 hours 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.
jldugger 2 hours 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.
mbrumlow 1 hours ago [-]
I think it’s more weird that the person being a “sitting judge” is any party of the equation. At the end of the day judges are just people. I would be more worried about a system that proceeded differently because they were a judge.
crooked-v 1 hours ago [-]
A judge who's literally in the middle of an official hearing is absolutely a special case.
MyOutfitIsVague 49 minutes ago [-]
Our system has already proceeded differently based on peoples' statuses. Dozens of lawsuits were canned or dropped due to this election.
whoknowsidont 1 hours ago [-]
This makes absolutely zero sense. She was arrested because of her actions (or rather, alleged inaction) in court, as a judge.
She is not "just a person" in this case.
I'm struggling with the dishonesty on grand display by some of the comments in this thread.
jibal 49 minutes ago [-]
She ... her ... She
whoknowsidont 48 minutes ago [-]
You're right. Bad habits are bad. Thanks!
GuinansEyebrows 1 hours ago [-]
Judges are "just people" that make up the only one of three branches of government that seems interested in maintaining a system of checks and balances.
mring33621 1 hours ago [-]
"I would be more worried about a system that proceeded differently because they were a president"
jibal 47 minutes ago [-]
She would not have been arrested if she wasn't a sitting judge on a case involving an allegedly undocumented person. This is all about the Trump administration's ideology and whipping boy.
mycatisblack 2 hours ago [-]
Psychological projection is a very apt choice, thank you for that. I’ve read a lot of people referring to “sanewashing” when the media tries to explain the mechanism behind the madness but this captures it much better.
jldugger 31 minutes ago [-]
It's a kind of fundamental error we make as humans: we judge the actions of other peoples by the standard of how we would behave, rather than the other person's past conduct or personality. And then we often work backwards from the action we see, guessing at what would have to be true for _us_ to act that way.
dlachausse 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
amanaplanacanal 1 hours ago [-]
Which crime is that exactly? It can't be aiding illegal immigration if the immigrant is already inside the US.
boroboro4 1 hours ago [-]
I thought so too, but turned out I'm wrong:
> Key prohibited actions under 8 U.S.C. § 1324 include:
> Bringing in or Attempting to Bring in Aliens: Assisting a non-citizen to enter or try to enter the U.S. at a place other than an official port of entry.
> Transporting: Moving or attempting to move a non-citizen within the U.S., knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the non-citizen has entered or remains in the U.S. unlawfully, and acting in furtherance of their unlawful presence.
> Harboring or Concealing: Concealing, harboring, or shielding (or attempting to do so) a non-citizen from detection, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the non-citizen has entered or remains in the U.S. unlawfully. "Harboring" generally means providing shelter but can also include other forms of assistance that help the person evade immigration authorities.
> Encouraging or Inducing: Encouraging or inducing a non-citizen to come to, enter, or reside in the U.S., knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such entry or residence is or will be in violation of law.
> Conspiracy or Aiding/Abetting: Engaging in a conspiracy to commit, or aiding or abetting the commission of, any of the above acts.
TBH those are some quite terrible laws =(
dlachausse 1 hours ago [-]
Why are they terrible? I do not understand why people have a right to enter the country illegally and stay without consequences, nor why people should be able to assist them without consequences. What sane argument is there for that? That is just anarchy and madness.
boroboro4 1 hours ago [-]
I don't have issues with (immigration) laws targeting undocumented immigrants. I don't have issues with laws targeting organization of illegal immigration.
I do have issues with laws targeting regular people knowing/not knowing legal status of other people in day to day life. Those laws are vogue and overly broad and constrain my rights as a citizen. I should be able to transport anyone, regardless to my knowledge of their immigration status, and shouldn't be turned into participant of the immigration enforcement. These laws are too similar to "turn every jew you know" to me, and should be forbidden. I come from a country with a history of delation and I think it's wrong.
Demanding this is very distant from anarchy and madness, and I would argue current state is too close to police state.
like_any_other 2 hours 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.
pbhjpbhj 1 hours ago [-]
Or to put it another way, if the enforcement of a law cause an action contrary to the USA Constitution then just as before a judge should block that action; previously - presumably - when applying this law it was being done constitutionally.
A judge aiding unidentified assailants (not bearing any insignia of office and hiding their identity) attempting to abduct a person and send them to a death camp would be supremely objectionable in any democracy.
Spivak 1 hours ago [-]
Or just the simple "they're appearing in my courtroom I have an exclusive lock on them until I'm done."
JKCalhoun 1 hours ago [-]
> Federal agents have been using this to charge people for nearly a century
Using it on judges?
typeofhuman 1 hours ago [-]
Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
JKCalhoun 1 hours ago [-]
But I imagine arresting a judge requires an extra level of discretion. At the very least it's going to be a PR problem if it is found to be unwarranted.
teachrdan 1 hours ago [-]
> Being a judge might just be circumstantial (sensational?). The arrest may be because of the person's personal actions; not their professional actions as a judge.
I'm sure you're an intelligent person, but this response seems almost deliberately obtuse. This is clearly an act by the current administration to intimidate the judiciary. It is impossible to separate the unprecedented act of arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone on behalf of ICE from the administration's illegal (according to the Supreme Court) sending immigrants to a prison in El Salvador without due process.
like_any_other 56 minutes ago [-]
> arresting a sitting judge for failing to arrest someone
If the article is accurate, he was arrested for making false statements in a personal capacity, not for failing to act.
1 hours ago [-]
typeofhuman 1 hours ago [-]
At the risk of being pedantic, all laws are used to manufacture crimes.
kemayo 1 hours 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.
1 hours ago [-]
huitzitziltzin 2 hours 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.
rgreeko42 58 minutes ago [-]
The copper that connects the alarm lever to the alarm system was sold for scrap 25 years ago
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1 hours ago [-]
mbrumlow 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dekhn 1 hours ago [-]
Depends- if the judge directed agents from their subjects for a lawful reason, then no, there is no cause for arrest.
soulofmischief 1 hours ago [-]
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Our federal government is completely compromised by a violent, oligarchical ruling class, and so are many state and local governments. Elected and unelected officials are breaking law and convention left and right.
Generalities help no one here but the oppressors.
sixothree 1 hours ago [-]
He was literally in the courthouse. It's not like he went out the back entrance.
edit: maybe he did go out of the back entrance? But the video I have seen of his arrest definitely looks like it was the inside of a courthouse.
mbrumlow 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
intermerda 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah Schindler should have been arrested too. Too bad a law breaker has been so celebrated in history.
MisterBastahrd 1 hours ago [-]
If that immigrant is there, then they're going to have to show up to the court proceedings. The time to intercept said person is directly after the hearing takes place, but these morons have no problem interrupting a hearing to take someone into custody. This is about the executive trying to walk all over the judicial branch.
mindslight 1 hours ago [-]
Correct. By the article's details, it does not seem that the judge lied to the agents but rather told them some inconvenient step they had to perform per the Court's jurisdiction. Trump's Schutzstaffel can put on their big boy pants and make grownup decisions like whether they all need to run in one direction like Keystone Cops, or whether maybe someone should remain following their target. In the best case it sounds like they were idiots who didn't like the repercussions of their own actions. In the likely case, they deliberately did the stupid thing so they'd have a pretext to attack the judge and push us even further into strongman authoritarianism.
nwienert 1 hours ago [-]
I’d more likely be in the streets if they didn’t do this. They are enforcing the law, finally.
MyOutfitIsVague 47 minutes ago [-]
The J6 pardons make it exceptionally clear that they aren't interested in enforcing any laws. It's abuse of the legal system for their benefit.
kashunstva 49 minutes ago [-]
> They are enforcing the law, finally.
That is far from clear. The facts are emerging slowly; so the sequence described below may ultimately be inaccurate… but, ICE agents interrupted a court hearing. The judge presiding over the hearing asked the agents to leave. When they returned, the subject whom the ICE officers were seeking had already left. Is there a law that compels a judge (or anyone, for that matter) to remand someone sought by ICE to their custody? I genuinely don’t know, but were I put in a similar situation I would not hand anyone over to ICE custody given their terrible human rights history. Laws be damned; they and the administration whom they represent are moral failures.
xpe 17 minutes ago [-]
I think the claim underneath the comment above is that immigration laws have been not been enforced or unevenly been enforced. On principle, advocating for a consistent application of the law seems sensible. This goes along with advocating for the rule of law.
Let's talk about justice, too. Many people believe true justice transcends any particular instantiation of the law at any particular point in time. If so, advocating for the consistent application of all laws can only be truly just if the laws are just.
Look at present circumstances. Reporting has shown that Trump is doing extraordinary rendition: removing people without due process. And not bringing them home after admitting the mistake. Once this reality is factored in, where is the justice in consistently applying a law in order to extrajudicially render a person?
Clearly, the Trump administration has a double standard regarding the rule of law and the role of the judiciary.
Note: this comment surely needs another draft, but I'm running out of time. I welcome all criticism.
P.S. At the risk of surfacing even more complexity, even if a system were to consistently apply one set of criteria, such as ICE's authority to arrest, it is likely that other criteria apply; namely, allocating personnel in a way that best carries out their overall mission. It is my (educated) guess that practical concerns (such as resource limitations) is one of the reasons courts give administrative agencies considerable flexibility in what laws they enforce.
jibal 46 minutes ago [-]
What law are they enforcing?
tptacek 1 hours ago [-]
This happened in the last Trump administration, too.
pvg 58 minutes ago [-]
I don't think they started with an arrest then, right?
tptacek 47 minutes ago [-]
No, they started with a felony indictment. They later dropped the charges, and she got misconduct charges from the MA Commission on Judicial Conduct.
1 hours ago [-]
whats_a_quasar 53 minutes ago [-]
Source?
perihelions 40 minutes ago [-]
There's a parallel comment subthread about that,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43794576#43795264 ("In April [2019], [Shelley Joseph] and a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, were accused of allowing an immigrant to evade detention by arranging for him to sneak out the back door of a courthouse. The federal prosecutor in Boston took the highly unusual step of charging the judge with obstruction of justice…")
1 hours ago [-]
2 hours ago [-]
tlogan 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
bonif 1 hours ago [-]
It’s heartbreaking to see the United States, once a symbol of strength and freedom, reduced to a complete joke.
Aeolun 1 hours 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.
trelane 1 hours ago [-]
This is not a new development. We'be been laughed at for as long as I can remember.
CamperBob2 1 hours ago [-]
Well, you see, some dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much, so it was inevitable, really.
staplers 1 hours ago [-]
It's worse actually. People lived through 2020 and wanted to do it again..
crawsome 46 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, those 19 people's investments are doing great.
1 hours ago [-]
whoknowsidont 2 hours 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_thibedeau 11 minutes 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.
dragonwriter 3 minutes ago [-]
> Every public official in every state has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution.
"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.
whoknowsidont 4 minutes ago [-]
No one was harboring anything. Also, have a quote:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken
kansface 18 minutes 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.
fzeroracer 12 minutes ago [-]
When the federal government is actively hostile towards the states then the only recourse is going to be secession.
> The rule of law does not prohibit bad arrests nor can it. The rule of law provides the opportunity for remedy after the fact.
In a world where you and I could be renditioned to a foreign country and thrown into slave labor by the government simply acting fast enough as to maneuver around the court then there is no rule of law and there is no remedy.
kjkjadksj 2 hours ago [-]
You are asking for an armed standoff. Last time that happened in this country, college students were slaughtered by government forces.
> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
derektank 58 minutes ago [-]
People also died during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, which was an extension of the Bundy standoff. I think it's fair to say that these are kinds of showdowns between federal and state/local forces are fraught with danger for those involved.
whoknowsidont 2 hours ago [-]
I didn't ask or wish for us to get this point. But this is it, right here. Either there are consequences for violating the rule of law or we keep sliding further and further into despotism.
digdugdirk 1 hours ago [-]
... As opposed to the numerous civilians who are currently being killed by government forces without repercussion due to qualified immunity?
Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.
1 hours ago [-]
ihsw 1 hours ago [-]
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hexis 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1 hours ago [-]
baggy_trough 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
whoknowsidont 2 hours ago [-]
Please, list them. And be exceedingly honest, rational, and evidence-based about how effective those courses of actions would be.
nh23423fefe 1 hours ago [-]
Lol, before it was civil war, now its explain yourself point by point.
whoknowsidont 1 hours ago [-]
I stated a position and viewpoint, GP said "no that's not the only option." but didn't elucidate anything.
So yeah, state something affirmative that can be responded to. And again, don't be disingenuous about how effective those options would be, this is not the same America we were in even 4 months ago.
ihsw 1 hours ago [-]
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Der_Einzige 1 hours ago [-]
No it is not. You must force confrontation for Americans to realize the stakes.
dlachausse 1 hours 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.
stouset 1 hours ago [-]
Many of the people currently being stripped of their rights and deported are documented, legal visa and green card holders or documented and legal asylum seekers.
Even illegal immigrants need to be deported through due process. That’s the entire part where the government is supposed to demonstrate that they are here illegally. We are currently skipping that part and essentially granting the executive branch unilateral authority to deport anyone to foreign labor camps as long as the press secretary says the words “illegal immigrant” or “MS-13”.
To make things even worse, these deportations are being overtly politically targeted. If you’re here on a legal visa and speak against this administration, they are making it clear that they will strip you of your visa and disappear you without a second thought and without an opportunity to defend yourself.
You are correct that the law is dead. You are embarrassingly mistaken about who killed it.
alistairSH 1 hours ago [-]
The problem isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
The problem(s) are...
- lack of due process (Constitution doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal residents)
- leading to deportation of legal residents (Garcia case from MD)
- sending illegal immigrants to a jail that's hosted abroad is NOT deportation in the normal sense of the word - it closer to our holding of detainees at Gitmo post-9/11.
stouset 1 hours ago [-]
I wish people would stop trying to argue that the constitution affords due process to both legal and illegal residents like you are doing here. It does, but that’s missing the forest for the trees.
If all the government has to do is say “they’re here illegally” to get a free pass to do whatever they want to someone, then even legal residents don’t have rights. Due process is the entire mechanism behind which the government can establish something like illegal residency. As soon as you say Group A has the right to a trial and Group B doesn’t, calling someone a member of Group B is all it takes to subvert the entire legal process.
alistairSH 1 hours ago [-]
Isn't that what I just said? We already have the legal processes in place (based on the Constitution) to deport illegals in the correct (legal, safe, etc) way. The Trump administration is ignoring that existing process to score political points with their political base.
Couple that with their attempted demonization of the judicial branch and it's a recipe for a "first they came for the socialists..." situation.
stouset 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to necessarily single you out.
I just hear the argument that the constitution gives both illegal and legal residents that right and conservatives simply respond that illegals shouldn’t have rights and that’s that.
It needs to be hammered in that due process is necessary even to establish the legality of their residency in the first place, otherwise the government can disappear whoever they want as long as they invoke the illegal immigrant boogeyman.
unsnap_biceps 1 hours ago [-]
Two wrongs don't make a right. I am for reducing illegal immigration, but I am firmly against how ICE/this admin is doing it and I feel that the states should be pushing back against the attacks on due process.
kashunstva 34 minutes ago [-]
1. It is being done without due process.
2. One high-profile mistake has already been made; and a man is now languishing in a Salvadoran prison.
3. The conditions of detention are often horrendous. I would support upholding their laws if they executed them a shred of human decency and empathy.
whoknowsidont 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone has that position, so not sure what you're responding to.
mola 24 minutes ago [-]
Due process
eli_gottlieb 1 hours ago [-]
Nothing wrong with deporting illegal immigrants through legal channels that allow for due process and follow the rulings of immigration courts.
Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
dlachausse 1 hours ago [-]
> Something very wrong with sending deportation notices or trying to sic immigration enforcement on American citizens.
a federal agency that doesn't follow the law should lose the protection of the law. Charge the ICE agents with attempted kidnapping of the immigrant and actual kidnapping of the judge.
rchaud 1 hours 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.
Aeolun 1 hours ago [-]
Does that mean they’ll just be trespassers that can be shot if they enter your property unannounced like a gang of hooligans?
alistairSH 17 minutes ago [-]
In theory, but how many of them are you going to shoot before they shoot back?
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 23 minutes ago [-]
2nd Amendment and self defense arguments could be argued if you shoot plainclothes officers in fear of your safety.
actionfromafar 30 minutes ago [-]
Not saying anyone should but in that case they are.
1 hours ago [-]
frumplestlatz 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
whoknowsidont 1 hours ago [-]
That statement isn't even close or applicable to any hypothetical actions the judge could have taken here. If the judge did something unlawful there are already lawful mechanisms for dealing with that and NONE of those mechanisms involve ICE detaining the judge.
This is exactly what it looks like, nothing else.
trelane 47 minutes ago [-]
> If the judge did something unlawful there are already lawful mechanisms for dealing with that and NONE of those mechanisms involve ICE detaining the judge.
ICE is not detaining the judge.
> But Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., said Dugan is being charged with two federal felony counts: obstruction and concealing an individual. McCarron also confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
> U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi posted on X: "I can confirm that our @FBI agents just arrested Hannah Dugan – a county judge in Milwaukee – for allegedly helping an illegal alien avoid an arrest by @ICEgov."
AFAICT, this is exactly what that would look like. She's been arrested by FBI/US Marshals, and a court date for her hearing has been set.
whoknowsidont 30 minutes ago [-]
Arrested by the FBI on behalf of claims from ICE. For not detaining someone extra-judicially in her own court room. There was no need to arrest someone here, especially a judge.
kenjackson 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think citizens have a legal obligation to enforce immigration law (generally).
rolph 1 hours ago [-]
a judge doesnt enforce law, they are tasked with providing a neutral recourse to the overarching principal of justice, during the proceedings of the court.
Judge (or the courthouse in some regard) assured immigrants-of-interest^ would not be detained in courthouse, to speed up legal proceedings and to try to ensure equitable justice was being served.
An immigrant was identified by ICE and the judge directed ICE somewhere and when the immigrant was not apprehended (maybe appeared in court for his 3 BATTERY misdemeanors), the FBI was called in to arrest the judge at the courthouse for obstruction. Immigrant of interest was apprehended.
That sound about right? Bueller? Bueller?
^ The immigrants of interest are of varied legal status, so I'll just say "of interest".
alistairSH 15 minutes 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).
2 hours ago [-]
crote 50 minutes 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"?
Y_Y 39 minutes ago [-]
Is this qhy everyone is worried about illegal immigrants comitting crimes? Because they have a get-out-of-jail-free?
dylan604 40 minutes 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
39 minutes ago [-]
indiansdontwipe 28 minutes ago [-]
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daheza 2 hours 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.
paganel 54 minutes 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.
45 minutes ago [-]
DrillShopper 59 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
Aeolun 56 minutes ago [-]
Please learn how to shoot and handle a gun, before you arm yourself.
frumplestlatz 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sorcerer-mar 1 hours ago [-]
It is absolutely federal overreach to send people to foreign torture prisons (or even domestic utopian cuddle farms) without due process, full stop.
frumplestlatz 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sorcerer-mar 1 hours ago [-]
It's applying reality to your abstract question.
Almost no one disagrees with enforcing federal immigration law. The pushback has to do with the illegal manner in which it's happening in reality.
One of the most pernicious memes among the pseudo-intellect crowd is isolating an event from its context and then saying "see, not a problem in isolation!" But these things are not happening in isolation.
With high enough levels of motivated pseudo-intellectual dissection, you can portray a fatal car crash as a series of mundane procedural details and then just say "what bearing does the fatality have on it?"
potsandpans 59 minutes ago [-]
pernicious memes amoung the pseudo-intellect
Wow! I am VERY smart
49 minutes ago [-]
CamperBob2 1 hours ago [-]
If you have reason to believe that someone will be deprived of due process, which the Trump administration has essentially assured us, then it's a serious ethical violation to allow that to happen in your jurisdiction.
And by the way, the reason why due process is important is that it's all that stands between you and me and a permanent vacation in El Salvador, if we do or say something that offends the Trumpists sufficiently.
sorcerer-mar 1 hours ago [-]
Arguably even a violation of one's oath to the US Constitution, in fact.
typeofhuman 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
crooked-v 1 hours ago [-]
It doesn't.
bix6 1 hours ago [-]
The immigration laws that they themselves are breaking by depriving due process? Come on now.
Hikikomori 1 hours ago [-]
Would call it an overreach to turn ICE into their own version of the brownshirts and disappear people without due process.
dekhn 1 hours ago [-]
It depends on the nature of the federal action. If they do illegal things to enforce a law, that would be overreach.
tclancy 1 hours ago [-]
That is begging about four questions.
JKCalhoun 1 hours ago [-]
I already see several in peer comments.
1 hours ago [-]
GuinansEyebrows 1 hours ago [-]
Hey, regardless of your stance on borders and immigration, maybe let's not normalize defending the United State's horrible immigration law enforcement as it stands by doing this weird interrogative gotcha game.
MisterBastahrd 1 hours ago [-]
It's patently anti-American to deny people due process. Refusing to give information to fascists who believe they have no restraint of jurisdiction is the lesser of two evils here.
josefritzishere 29 minutes ago [-]
This is feeling increasingly like Germany circa 1936.
24 minutes ago [-]
jaco6 1 hours ago [-]
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.
readhistory 46 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
oldpersonintx 1 hours ago [-]
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throwaway5752 2 hours 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.
derektank 1 hours 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."
Aeolun 47 minutes ago [-]
> it's irresponsible to advise people to "get travel visas while you still can.“
I’m inclined to think that people won’t get travel visas based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.
throwaway5752 54 minutes ago [-]
I think it is reasonable to be prepared and have options to leave when basic civil rights and rule of law are being systematically tested and weakened on behalf of the most powerful individual in the country, who had sworn to uphold them. I would say it is irresponsible to ignore or minimize the magnitude of changes in the US in the past 100 days.
I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.
trelane 1 hours ago [-]
I used to think that about ex presidents. The times seem to have changed.
Der_Einzige 1 hours ago [-]
I get insta downvoted and flagged for saying basically the same thing in fewer words. This websites addiction to the taste of boots is very strong.
56 minutes ago [-]
Aeolun 49 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
throwaway5752 47 minutes ago [-]
"To be fair, he wasn’t a member of the judiciary"
That is an extremely important distinction. Further, there are legitimate actions by the FBI in the cases of real judges and representatives in their public corruption prosecutions (see Kids for Cash). In this case, though, the charges are intended to intimidate. That is exactly what the director's tweet communicated and why it was deleted.
miltonlost 11 minutes ago [-]
> Didn’t Biden famously try to impeach/arrest Trump for a variety of reasons? I
Oh my god, no, that never happened at all. This is a fever dream. How in the world and constitution Could Biden IMPEACH Trump when he wasn't a member of the House of Reps, which is the body that impeaches Presidents. Actually, Biden also couldn't arrest Trump, as federal arrests would be by the AG. Famously, Merrick Garland took forever to bring cahrges to Trump, and, unlike Trump did with his AGs, Biden never interfered.
Do you have any sources for this "famous" impeachment and arrests?
> I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of so many attempts on the same president.
Because no other President tried to start a violent coup when he lost the election! That is a good reason to arrest someone, which is included in your vague "variety of reasons".
anonym29 1 hours 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?
JKCalhoun 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe you're a fan of "Texit".
anonym29 1 hours ago [-]
Good guess. I'm big on "marketplace of ideas", where each state has far greater control of public policy (which is overwhelmingly federalized right now). If California wants to show the world how good single-payer healthcare and UBI could be, let them. If New York wants to disarm every resident and send police around to confiscate firearms, let them. If Texas wants to ban abortion within the state for residents, let them. Let each state have an opportunity to show the world how good or bad their policy positions are. Diversity of policy + freedom of choice.
My big caveats would be freedom of movement, no criminalizing activity that occurs out of state, free trade, freedom of association (no Alabama, you cannot criminalize trade with Massachusets), etc. If you don't like California, you should be free to leave California (without fear of California retroactively increasing punitive tax enforcement against you), and if you don't like Texas, you should be free to leave Texas (even if just to get an abortion in another state and then come back, without fear of arrest or imprisonment).
We are not one identical set of people with one identical culture, one identical set of values, one identical sense of right and wrong. We're 330,000,000+ unique individuals who cluster together, mainly around people like us.
Good gun laws for rural Montana are not necessarily good gun laws for New York City. We should stop pretending that the people in DC always know best for everyone, everywhere. Local communities know what is best for themselves. The more decentralized, the better.
GuinansEyebrows 1 hours 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.
anonym29 57 minutes ago [-]
I'm all for corporate death penalty or forced divestiture for every company with a $1T+ market cap.
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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Aeolun 53 minutes 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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tmpz22 27 minutes 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?
esbranson 1 hours 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.
esbranson 51 minutes ago [-]
Per the criminal complaint, despite a federal warrant for Flores-Ruiz's arrest, Judge Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz through a non-public jury door to escape arrest.
crooked-v 47 minutes ago [-]
She had no legal obligation to hold the man or have him exit in a particular way. The agents on the scene clearly agreed, or they wouldn't have left!
jmull 1 hours ago [-]
What does this have to do with this situation though?
1 hours ago [-]
DrillShopper 1 hours 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.
ericras 50 minutes ago [-]
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kashunstva 39 minutes ago [-]
> liberals elsewhere
Have you considered the possibility that the objections here may be more related to an apparent attack on the judicial branch rather than the desire to protect a person residing illegally in the United States?
nis0s 47 minutes 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.
jwsteigerwalt 1 hours ago [-]
Still waiting for better information about whether the judge was uncooperative or lied/misled the agents.
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KittenInABox 1 hours 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.
lupusreal 1 hours ago [-]
The government probably has evidence, maybe or maybe not persuasive enough for a conviction. That evidence will be presented in due course, not all up front to the media.
whats_a_quasar 55 minutes ago [-]
Given the circumstances, the government absolutely does have an obligation to present its evidence up front. You cannot use federal agents to arrest officers of a state government unless the charges are rock solid. There is a strong public interest in this case and the current administration has shown that it is owed zero deference or presumption that it is acting in good faith.
Schiendelman 54 minutes ago [-]
Given that recently they have not have evidence in several cases, why are you assuming this?
jibal 51 minutes ago [-]
The government has no evidence. The judge told the ICE agents to go get authority and when they got back the defendant had left. That's it.
KittenInABox 54 minutes ago [-]
That's my problem: while the arrested person is already forced the humiliation of being arrested, having their freedoms stripped from them, they have no remedy and have to wait in the state of being humiliated while the government who prosecutes them isn't also restrained or humiliated during the wait to present evidence.
And additionally, there have been several recent prominent cases where the government has failed to produce any evidence in court while publicly saying to the media that they're arresting criminals-- of course, the government is able to access the media to claim this while the people they've arrested who, again, have had their freedoms restricted while the people who restrict them are under no similar restraint are unable to do the same!
We can see this in action right now: the government gets to claim to the media that the judge is obstructing arrests of illegal immigrants, while the judge can do no such media counterclaim and has to wait in restraints.
nonethewiser 19 minutes 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 did not interfere with any due process.
sarlalian 3 minutes ago [-]
I'll correct my previous statement, it does appear in the legal brief about the judge being arrested that he was here illegally.
So the articles you read were.... imprecise, at best.
sarlalian 10 minutes ago [-]
There is nothing in any of the articles indicating he was here illegally. He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant. Not as illegal or undocumented.
It's also reasonable to point out that removing someones legal immigration status, due to being "charged" with a crime, is a seriously slippery slope.
nonethewiser 3 minutes ago [-]
>He's referred to in all the articles I've read as an immigrant.
Well that just say everything about the articles you've been reading, doesnt it?
>Agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”),
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ICE ERO”)
identified Flores-Ruiz as an individual who was not lawfully in the United States. A review of
Flores-Ruiz’s Alien Registration File (“A-File”) indicated that Flores-Ruiz is a native and citizen
of Mexico and that Flores-Ruiz had been issued an I-860 Notice and Order of Expedited Removal
by United States Border Patrol Agents on January 16, 2013, and that Flores-Ruiz was thereafter
removed to Mexico through the Nogales, Arizona, Port of Entry. There is no evidence in the AFile or DHS indices indicating that Flores-Ruiz sought or obtained permission to return to the
United States
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?
FireBeyond 2 minutes 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.
Rendered at 17:21:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
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.
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?
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.
The judge took an oath to uphold the constitution. The judge should not have let the person accused of being a violent illegal leave the courtroom.it is obstructing the executive branch.
"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.
This is also sort of the crux of the talk - if nothing you can say will convince the police not to arrest you, and things you do say can make things worse, your best bet is to just shut up and talk to an attorney if it gets to that point.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
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.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart
signed, an actual libertarian.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
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.
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 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.)
This is blatant and unambiguous. "If you cross me, I will use executive power to destroy you". There is no optimistic view of this.
Judge Dugan escorted the subject through a "jurors door" to private hallways and exits instead of having the defendant leave via the main doors into the public hallway, where she visually confirmed the agents were waiting for him.
I couldn't tell if the judge knew for certain that ICE was only permitted to detain the defendant in 'public spaces' or not.
Regardless, the judge took specific and highly unusual action to ensure the defendant didn't go out the normal exit into ICE hands -- and that's the basis for the arrest.
I don't necessarily agree with ICE actions, but I also can't refute that the judge took action to attempt to protect the individual. On one side you kind of want immigrants to show up to court when charged with crimes so they can defend themselves... but on the other side, this individual deported in 2013 and returned to the country without permission (as opposed to the permission expiring, or being revoked, so there was no potential 'visa/asylum/permission due process' questions)
That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.
---
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.
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.
https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/why-did-the-d...
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.
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.
Since there were multiple agents (the reports and Patel's post all say "agents" plural) they could have left one at the courtroom, or outside, rather than all going away. Then there'd have been no chase and no issue.
The question is if the judge should have held the man or not for the agents who chose to leave no one behind to take him into custody after the proceeding finished.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/sanctuary--supremacy--h...
This is bananas. The judges (or anyone else for that matter) should not be able to hold this man (or any other man) without an arrest warrant.
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-...
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.
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.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325
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...
[edit: it was an administrative warrant, not an _actual_ judicial warrant]
And the fact that they left and came back and someone they wanted wasn't there, that's on them....
> 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.
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...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.
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.
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.
" 29. Multiple witnesses have described their observations after Judge DUGAN returned to her courtroom after directing members of the arrest team to the Chief Judge’s office. For example, the courtroom deputy recalled that upon the courtroom deputy’s return to the courtroom,defense counsel for Flores-Ruiz was talking to the clerk, and Flores-Ruiz was seated in the jury box, rather than in the gallery. The courtroom deputy believed that counsel and the clerk were having an off-the-record conversation to pick the next court date. Defense counsel and Flores-Ruizthen walked toward each other and toward the public courtroom exit. The courtroom deputy then saw Judge DUGAN get up and heard Judge DUGAN say something like “Wait, come with me.” Despite having been advised of the administrative warrant for the arrest of Flores-Ruiz, Judge DUGAN then escorted Flores-Ruiz and his counsel out of the courtroom through the “jury door,” which leads to a nonpublic area of the courthouse. These events were also unusual for two reasons.First, the courtroom deputy had previously heard Judge DUGAN direct people not to sit in the jury box because it was exclusively for the jury’s use. Second, according to the courtroom deputy, only deputies, juries, court staff, and in-custody defendants being escorted by deputies used the back jury door. Defense attorneys and defendants who were not in custody never used the jury door."
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-judge-arrested-799718...
> (1)(A) Any person who
[…]
> (iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
[…]
> shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title8/html/...
None of that is to say that what she did was morally wrong—often the law and morality are at odds.
We're extremely light on facts right now, so I'm not taking the above quoted story at face value, but if one were to take it at face value it seems pretty clear cut.
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.
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.
- a PDF of the criminal complaint (court filing), and
- details of what specifically the complaint alleges (that the judge encouraged the person to escape out of a 'jury door' to evade arrest).
The phrase 'jury door' doesn't appear in the JS article.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pr/2016/04/11/gannett-co...
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.
> “First and foremost, I know -- as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades – that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel said. “And I'm shocked and surprised that the US Attorney's office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they're going to charge her with a crime.”
> He said that typically someone who is “not on the run,” and facing this type of crime would be called and invited to come in to have their fingerprints taken or to schedule a court appearance.
To arrest a judge in the middle of duties is absolutely the result of someone power tripping.
> Thankfully our agents chased down the perp on foot and he's been in custody since, ...
I feel like I'm watching reality TV. Which makes sense, we have a reality TV star for president and his cabinet is full of Fox news hosts.
That’s not exactly new, I was recently reminded that during the governor’s meeting when Trump singled Maine out for ignoring an EO the governor replied that they’d be following the law, and Trump’s rejoinder was that they (his administration) are the law.
That was two months ago, late February.
It's just like "states rights" where it only matters so long as you stay in their good graces. Very reflective of how they operate internally today: worship Trump or you're out.
> 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...
I mean, what’s next? If a judge doesn’t sign off on a warrant because they don’t find probable cause, is that obstructing justice?
In that case, what the judge did does amount to willful obstruction.
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".
As autocracy expands, so does the definition of "poor".
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Wilhoit's Law
Somebody in particular is above the law, as are all his cronies.
unimaginable wealth has entered the chat...
https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lnnj...
In particular, part D: "Judge DUGAN escorts Flores-Ruiz through a “jury door” to avoid his arrest."
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...
I don't know how courts will see it, but it is an interesting legal question that I hope some lawyers run with.
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.
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".
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")
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 recently forced their way to into IRS records, so that is no longer true either.
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.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-...
[1] https://www.mass.gov/news/commission-on-judicial-conduct-fil...
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.
Now, putting aside that complaint, the decision to arrest Dugan is questionable for sure. My current understanding is that such an arrest is not done unless the suspect is a flight risk.
More broadly, regarding news of this level of impact, I think it is essential to maintain high standards of intellectual honesty. 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.
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.
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.
> Key prohibited actions under 8 U.S.C. § 1324 include:
> Bringing in or Attempting to Bring in Aliens: Assisting a non-citizen to enter or try to enter the U.S. at a place other than an official port of entry.
> Transporting: Moving or attempting to move a non-citizen within the U.S., knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the non-citizen has entered or remains in the U.S. unlawfully, and acting in furtherance of their unlawful presence.
> Harboring or Concealing: Concealing, harboring, or shielding (or attempting to do so) a non-citizen from detection, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that the non-citizen has entered or remains in the U.S. unlawfully. "Harboring" generally means providing shelter but can also include other forms of assistance that help the person evade immigration authorities.
> Encouraging or Inducing: Encouraging or inducing a non-citizen to come to, enter, or reside in the U.S., knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such entry or residence is or will be in violation of law.
> Conspiracy or Aiding/Abetting: Engaging in a conspiracy to commit, or aiding or abetting the commission of, any of the above acts.
TBH those are some quite terrible laws =(
I do have issues with laws targeting regular people knowing/not knowing legal status of other people in day to day life. Those laws are vogue and overly broad and constrain my rights as a citizen. I should be able to transport anyone, regardless to my knowledge of their immigration status, and shouldn't be turned into participant of the immigration enforcement. These laws are too similar to "turn every jew you know" to me, and should be forbidden. I come from a country with a history of delation and I think it's wrong.
Demanding this is very distant from anarchy and madness, and I would argue current state is too close to police state.
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
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?
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.
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.
Generalities help no one here but the oppressors.
edit: maybe he did go out of the back entrance? But the video I have seen of his arrest definitely looks like it was the inside of a courthouse.
That is far from clear. The facts are emerging slowly; so the sequence described below may ultimately be inaccurate… but, ICE agents interrupted a court hearing. The judge presiding over the hearing asked the agents to leave. When they returned, the subject whom the ICE officers were seeking had already left. Is there a law that compels a judge (or anyone, for that matter) to remand someone sought by ICE to their custody? I genuinely don’t know, but were I put in a similar situation I would not hand anyone over to ICE custody given their terrible human rights history. Laws be damned; they and the administration whom they represent are moral failures.
Let's talk about justice, too. Many people believe true justice transcends any particular instantiation of the law at any particular point in time. If so, advocating for the consistent application of all laws can only be truly just if the laws are just.
Look at present circumstances. Reporting has shown that Trump is doing extraordinary rendition: removing people without due process. And not bringing them home after admitting the mistake. Once this reality is factored in, where is the justice in consistently applying a law in order to extrajudicially render a person?
Clearly, the Trump administration has a double standard regarding the rule of law and the role of the judiciary.
Note: this comment surely needs another draft, but I'm running out of time. I welcome all criticism.
P.S. At the risk of surfacing even more complexity, even if a system were to consistently apply one set of criteria, such as ICE's authority to arrest, it is likely that other criteria apply; namely, allocating personnel in a way that best carries out their overall mission. It is my (educated) guess that practical concerns (such as resource limitations) is one of the reasons courts give administrative agencies considerable flexibility in what laws they enforce.
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…")
I’m getting concerned that our judicial branch is becoming more and more political. And believe me there are many right wing judges.
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.
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.
"...against all enemies, foreign and domestic." (I'm quite aware, having taken -- and signed -- that oath many times.) That includes a federal executive that is repeatedly and consistently violating due process, engaging in the slave trade, exceeding Constitutional powers by bad-faith invocation of war powers with no actual war, and violating the first amendment by retaliating against unwelcome political speech in the context of and under the pretext of immigration enforcement.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H.L. Mencken
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.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/20/nx-s1-4966725/a-decade-after-...
> Ten years after staging an armed standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch, Cliven Bundy remains free. As does his son Ammon, despite an active warrant for Ammon from Idaho related to a harassment lawsuit.
Though having said that, I'm not sure if qualified immunity would apply in the same way to ICE officers. If that hasn't been legally determined yet (remember - ICE didn't exist before 9/11, and legal determinations take time), and looking at how ICE is currently operating with impunity in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles... Things will get much worse than Kent State before they get better.
So yeah, state something affirmative that can be responded to. And again, don't be disingenuous about how effective those options would be, this is not the same America we were in even 4 months ago.
The law is dead if states defy it by refusing to allow federal agents to enforce immigration law.
This whole stance is absolute madness.
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.
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...
This is exactly what it looks like, nothing else.
ICE is not detaining the judge.
> But Brady McCarron, spokesman for U.S. Marshals Service in Washington, D.C., said Dugan is being charged with two federal felony counts: obstruction and concealing an individual. McCarron also confirmed Dugan was arrested at about 8 a.m. at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.
> U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi posted on X: "I can confirm that our @FBI agents just arrested Hannah Dugan – a county judge in Milwaukee – for allegedly helping an illegal alien avoid an arrest by @ICEgov."
Source: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/breaking/2025/04/25/milw... (from below)
AFAICT, this is exactly what that would look like. She's been arrested by FBI/US Marshals, and a court date for her hearing has been set.
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".
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"?
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.
Almost no one disagrees with enforcing federal immigration law. The pushback has to do with the illegal manner in which it's happening in reality.
One of the most pernicious memes among the pseudo-intellect crowd is isolating an event from its context and then saying "see, not a problem in isolation!" But these things are not happening in isolation.
With high enough levels of motivated pseudo-intellectual dissection, you can portray a fatal car crash as a series of mundane procedural details and then just say "what bearing does the fatality have on it?"
Wow! I am VERY smart
And by the way, the reason why due process is important is that it's all that stands between you and me and a permanent vacation in El Salvador, if we do or say something that offends the Trumpists sufficiently.
If you are tempted to downvote, you could make a better point by finding comparable examples under any other modern president.
I’m inclined to think that people won’t get travel visas based on the advice of a complete stranger, HN or no.
I didn't say to sell all belongings and move. I said to have a way out if it becomes necessary. The FBI is being weaponized against judges, right now, and this without any modern precedent.
That is an extremely important distinction. Further, there are legitimate actions by the FBI in the cases of real judges and representatives in their public corruption prosecutions (see Kids for Cash). In this case, though, the charges are intended to intimidate. That is exactly what the director's tweet communicated and why it was deleted.
Oh my god, no, that never happened at all. This is a fever dream. How in the world and constitution Could Biden IMPEACH Trump when he wasn't a member of the House of Reps, which is the body that impeaches Presidents. Actually, Biden also couldn't arrest Trump, as federal arrests would be by the AG. Famously, Merrick Garland took forever to bring cahrges to Trump, and, unlike Trump did with his AGs, Biden never interfered.
Do you have any sources for this "famous" impeachment and arrests?
> I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard of so many attempts on the same president.
Because no other President tried to start a violent coup when he lost the election! That is a good reason to arrest someone, which is included in your vague "variety of reasons".
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.
Will you follow up on the facts of this case or do you already know everything you need to know?
"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-...
Have you considered the possibility that the objections here may be more related to an apparent attack on the judicial branch rather than the desire to protect a person residing illegally in the United States?
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.
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.
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://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?
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.