There is no suggestion that the agents conducted a search or entered a non-public area. And this has nothing to do with the claim that the judge actively obstructed their efforts.
No, this is a disaster. Hyperbole aside, this is indeed how democracy dies. Eventually this escalates to arresting more senior political enemies. And eventually the arbiter of whoever has the power to make and enforce those arrests ends up resting not with the elected government but in the law enforcement and military apparatus with the physical power to do so.
Once your regime is based on the use of force, you end up beholden to the users of force. Every time. We used to be special. We aren't now.
I think most of the weirdness comes from the fact that entering the country illegally, or remaining in the country illegally can be crimes, but they can also be civil offenses. “Civil” means no jail time, but people still get deported without going to criminal court.
“Civil” also means “doesn’t have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” and “no constitutional right to a public defender.” Immigration law tries to provide limited forms of some of those ideas. There’s a kind of bail system, and people have a right to be represented by attorneys, but no right for those attorneys to be paid by the government. There is somebody referred to as an immigration judge, and they have a federal job, but they aren’t regular federal judges.
It’s possible to appeal an immigration court’s decision to a federal district court to get into the legal system we’re more familiar with.
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11536
* https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158
But about a month ago, the Court did rule people who the government wanted to send to El Salvador have a due process right to challenge that decision in regular federal court as a habeas corpus proceeding ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf ). They later issued an order that the people covered by the original ruling cannot be deported based on the Alien Enemy Act until further notice ( https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/041925zr_c18... ).
The allegation is that she obstructed an arrest by changing standard procedure, she wasn't arrested for obstructing search that part was fine.
The ICE agents were legally allowed to wait outside and arrest the man as he stepped out, the judge leading the man out the backdoor after she learned ICE agents were waiting at the front is very hard to defend as anything but obstruction of arrest.
Which sounds awfully novel to me. You really want to tear down the structure of democracy over this kind of nitpicking on "procedure"?
I remain horrified that people I really thought were normal Americans are willing to burn it all down just so they don't have to hear Spanish spoken in their doctor's office.
Calling people who are against illegal immigration "racist" just makes it worse.
A majority of people are fine with legal migration, a supermajority of people think illegal immigrants should get deported. So no, the issue most see isn't that they don't like Spanish, the issue is that they are here illegally.
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/rep...
In Florida, Desantis is so against legal migration he is trying to relax child labor laws.
Even now there is a share of Republicans especially in southern states who are still against interracial marriages.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/interracial-marri...
I said majority of people, not majority of republicans. That means there are still many republicans that like legal immigration, wealthy people like when labor is allowed to immigrate, Elon Musk is one such person among many others.
If Trump said he would deport all the legal immigrants he would likely not have won the election, that they are illegal is core to his support.
This is a far shot from being against legal migration entirely.
Sure, its simply about preferring strong ethnic controls on immigration: while only 50% of Republicans think legal immigration should be decreased, 61% think that immigration "from other cultures" has mainly negative consequences. It's not that Republicans are against legal immigration entirely, its just that they are (in the majority) against any immigration from the places most immigrants come from; they are fine with legal immigration of white Christian conservatives, especially from the rest of the anglosphere.
Do that, and I'd have zero problems rounding up all of the remaining illegal immigrants and driving 'em into the ocean, if that's what you want. Instead, I'm suspicious that "the only issue is that they're here illegally" is just deflection.
The only solution to housing is building more housing.
an alarming number of legal aliens are being detained, deported or disappeared: students who wrote op-eds, Afghan asylees who helped us during the war, college professors and Canadian tourists, even (prospectively) "home-growns."
if most Trump supporters support legal migration, why aren't they pushing back on this?
The GP (or GGP, I forget) was discussing very specific legal technical details surrounding the judge's actions, the nature of the warrant and permissible locations for serving the warrant. I was pretty interested in that discussion - even though I probably generally agree with your macro views on immigration policy. You chose to focus on something completely different, the overall aggregate outcomes of national political policies and jumped immediately to rhetoric like "tear down the structure of democracy".
IMHO, an important part of "the structure of democracy" is the rule of law. Ideally, that means equal, impartial, consistent enforcement of the laws as written. If the circumstances were changed to this being 1962 Alabama and the defendant being the Grand Wizard of the local KKK and the judge snuck him out the back door because RFK had sent FBI agents from Washington to serve a warrant arresting the KKK Grand Wizard - would you think those discussing whether that judge might have technically obstructed justice were equally "tearing down the structure of democracy?"
I would say you would actually destroy "democracy" if you enforced the rule of law.
Immigration was consistently polled as the most important issue to voters in the last US election.
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/immigration-americans-top-p...
>totally a discretionary thing
The example I posted about the KKK Grand Wizard being the judicially smuggled person was intended to demonstrate the grave danger of having enforcement of a law (in this case obstruction of justice) be "totally a discretionary thing." The same people who'd (hopefully) be "horrified" by a judge smuggling a KKK member away from law enforcement (pointy white hat and all), want to selectively give a hall pass to this judge for doing the same thing. Paraphrasing Monty Python and the Holy Grail, that's no basis to form a system of government.
> very much by democratic support.
If you're referring to elections, those are, at most, once every two years. I'm not sure how well cops are going to do their jobs with a two-year latency on "what crimes can we arrest people for today?" If you're referring to anything else, you're either endorsing mob rule (kinda the main reason 'rule of law' was invented back in Holy Grail times) or you're placing a lot of faith in "the current people in political, social and cultural power" always being exactly "the kind of righteous people who agree with me on everything important." Especially in light of recent events, I don't think that's a very solid governance plan either.
As a practical example, I'm kind of a wild-eyed radical on immigration. If I was anointed "King of the Land", I'd almost throw open the borders entirely to any and all comers (not quite, but pretty close). Of course, I'd also need to change some other things to make that work, but that's not important right now. And even though I'm that radical on immigration, back when some cities chose to become "Sanctuary Cities" by announcing the current elected officials had decided to just... stop doing their job of enforcing (some) laws - I wasn't happy like you might think. No, even though I liked the outcome in that one instance, it actually troubled me greatly that a handful of individuals elected in the public trust decided to unilaterally seize power by illegally subverting the constitution and their solemn oaths of office.
And the fact I felt that was very bad back then, even over something I generally agreed with, leaves me feeling like I'm on firm logical, ethical, legal and moral ground when it troubles me equally that Trump and his fellow travelers are abusing the public trust in, conceptually, the very same ways. If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions. I think you're probably gonna have a bad time under any system of government that's not a monarchy or anarchy - with yourself as dictator for life.
On the other hand, I thought it was an incredibly dangerous and illegal expansion of presidential authority when Obama droned a U.S. citizen overseas without due process (even though that person was indeed an active terrorist). I'm funny that way about seizing power unconstitutionally. I'm always against it. No matter who does it or what they do with the stolen power. I hope those who are complaining today that Trump is using (and building on) the unconstitutional presidential power grab techniques that Obama pioneered, but didn't see a problem with it until someone they don't like started doing things they disagree with, are at least learning from this very hard lesson. Abuse of power is wrong no matter who does it or what they do.
> If your support for "the rule of law" depends on who the current ruler is and whether they agree with your personal opinions.
This Obama comparison seems like a false equivalence because you are ignoring the _where_, i.e. within the U.S. vs a foreign battlefield.
It's been a while but IIRC it was unconstitutional because the president cannot unilaterally execute a U.S. citizen anywhere without due process except under certain conditions, none of which were met in this case. It wasn't a declared war ("War on Terror" was a PR slogan, not a congressional declaration of war). I think the fact it was targeted specifically at a named person and there were no exigent circumstances (like trying to free hostages or stopping an eminent attack) were also factors. But, based on the plain wording, this wasn't a close or subjective call. To be clear, while it was illegal and unconstitutional, I don't personally think killing this guy was morally unjustified. He was a shithead who spouted anti-American, pro-terrorist crap online. But he was basically a poseur in a cave in Yemen. He was never a material terror threat to the U.S. other than making online videos. He claimed allegiance with real terrorists but they never took him seriously because he was a fucking American and they'd be stupid not to assume he was a double-agent.
You're not alone in assuming dropping a missile on this guy must have been legally okay because of the surrounding circumstances. I mean, that can't just... happen, right? The U.S. had already droned lots of non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants. The guy was clearly a wannabe terrorist calling for jihad against the great Satan America. He was awful and unsympathetic in every possible way. He was in a country (Yemen I think) that was fighting a declared insurrection-ish war against the local jihad group that sort-of associated with the guy. And that country was a U.S. ally. But... none of those circumstances made killing him legal. Yemen didn't launch the missile. A U.S. soldier under direct presidential order did. Legally and constitutionally, what Obama did was no different than Trump ordering U.S. soldiers to execute a U.S. citizen on the White House lawn with no due process. Except I highly doubt U.S. soldiers would do that without the surrounding circumstances of being a known terrorist, in Yemen, droned like they'd legally done before to similar non-U.S. citizen terrorists. Unfortunately, all of those circumstances were legally and constitutionally irrelevant. And, of course, even Trump would never give such an order because he knows American's sensibilities would be shocked, and both parties in congress would be forced to protest en masse, hold hearings, etc. But Obama and congress knew, in those circumstances, in that era, in that middle eastern country, against that unsympathetic target, it would encounter minimal protest. But it's at times like that and under circumstances like those that Rubicons get crossed and dangerous precedents set.
Sadly, that political calculation was correct. Despite being forcefully protested by a few members of congress, our system failed to work because the "War on Terror" was started by the opposition party and Obama's own party chose not to hold their President accountable for partisan political reasons. The media similarly followed party lines with the democratic majority choosing not to make an issue of it and the opposition media not wanting to go against the "War on Terror" they still actively endorsed. Only a few media people went against their traditional alignment and called it the unconstitutional execution that it clearly was. The handful of politicians, media and pundits who stood up on this issue despite doing so alone, are worth noting for their integrity. Even though they knew it might be politically costly and wouldn't change anything, they chose to stand on the right side of history in one of those rare moments when all others failed.
Sorry, then would a janitor who puts up a slippery floor sign in front of a door and asks someone to use a different door be "obstructing arrest by changing standard procedure."
This is absurd on its face. You don't have the right to arrest a Judge for "obstructing justice" because they let someone use a different door to leave. And you should think 1 million times of the implication to the rule of law before you do such a thing.
ICE are not gods, and I would hope after this, that Americans would start to consider taking away what power they have, because they are abusing it. And it's threatening our democracy.
Oh. Do expand.
If true, that's pretty clearly a deliberate attempt to obstruct their efforts. The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction, but I don't have any specific reason to believe it wouldn't be.
> The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction
An important one is "does ICE have the authority to operate in the location they were operating in?" If the answer is no, then Dugan's actions cannot be interpreted as interfering with ICE's official operations. You cannot interfere with official operations when the operations are not official or legal. An extreme example of this would be like police arresting somebody, and in a formal interrogation they admit to murder, but the person was not read their Miranda rights. These statements would likely be inadmissible in a court. But subtle details matter, like if the person wasn't arrested or if they weren't being interrogated (i.e. they just blabbed).
This matters because the warrant. In the affidavit it says Dugan asked if the officer had a judicial warrant and were told they had an administrative warrant.[0] That linked article suggests that an administrative warrant can only be executed in an area where there is no expectation of privacy. This is distinct from public. There are many public places where you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy. A common example being a public restroom (same law means people can't take photos of you going to the bathroom). So is there a reasonable expectation of privacy here? I don't know.
I think it is worth reading the affidavit. Certainly it justifies probable cause (at least from my naive understanding). But the legal code is similar to programming code in that subtle details are often critical to the output. That's why I'm saying it isn't "the only question", because we'd need to not only know the answers to the above but answers to more subtle details that likely are only known to domain experts (i.e. lawyers, judges, LEO, etc)
[0] https://www.motionlaw.com/the-difference-between-judicial-an...
> the director of the FBI posted
> showing a clear politically motivated bias in an ongoing case
[0] https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626
Archive in case gets deleted again[1]:
https://archive.is/20250425194646/https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626
[1] https://gizmodo.com/fbi-director-deletes-tweet-about-arrest-of-wisconsin-judge-but-its-unclear-why-2000594375This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”