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Comment by mjburgess | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The violation is not that the judge _did not assist_, but that the judge took additional actions to ensure the defendant could access restricted areas they otherwise would have no right to be in so that they could get out of the building unseen.

The judge was aware of the warrant and ensured the defendant remained in private areas so they could get out of the building.

The FBI's argument is that her actions were unusual (a defendant being allowed into juror's corridors is highly unusual) and were only being taken explicitly to assist in evading ICE.

As we've heard from many lawyers recently regarding ICE... You are not required to participate and assist. However, you can't take additional actions to directly interfere. Even loudly shouting "WHY IS ICE HERE?" is dangerous (you probably should shout a more generic police concern, like 'hey, police, is there a criminal nearby? should i hide?'

Given that, it'll be interested to see how guidance on courthouse security on whether to let ICE in with administrative warrants is updated.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071

That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.

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.

I keep hearing over and over the ICE warrants aren't real.

If they are arresting people using them and judges are recognizing them, they are real and the people demanding an arrest warrant are the sovereign citizen-tier people screaming at the sky wishing there was a different reality.

There are multiple types of warrants. All types are "real", but they convey different authority and different requirements upon both the arrestee and the arresters.

It is both rational and legal to insist that law enforcement stay within the bounds of the authority the specific type warrant they obtained. ICE civil warrants grant different authority than every-day federal arrest warrants. That ICE is abusing that authority is no reason to capitulate to it.

There are two different warrants. Ones issued by judges, which are "real" and ones signed by ICE supervisors which are little more than legal authorisation that this agent can go out and investigate a person -- even if they nevertheless attempt to arrest them.

ICE administrative warrants are essentially "I can do what I want" written in crayon.

Their only real purpose is fooling the gullible into confusing them for real warrants.

That's irrelevant.

Interfering with an ICE apprehension is illegal. That's what this judge did, which is why the FBI arrested her.

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