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Notes -
https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/04/17/u-s-born-man-held-for-ice-under-floridas-new-anti-immigration-law/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-born-citizen-detained-ice-immigration-florida-rcna201800
A Florida State Trooper claimed a natural born citizen admitted to entering the country illegally. Thankfully, his family was able to prove his citizenship to a state judge. Unfortunately, ICE requested Florida keep him in custody, for an as-yet not-public reason, and Florida has done so, despite the citizen not being charged with any state crime, other than an unenforceable statute against illegal immigrants entering Florida, of which he was already proven innocent, even if it were enforceable. He was later released, thankfully.
Any data on the rate of these sorts of things happening, in the past? Should or shouldn't this be worrying and why?
One of the problems with judges is that there is no accountability for legislating from the bench unless extremists are in power. Under moderates or even principled radicals, judges can be impeached for personal misconduct, but not for bad rulings that run contrary to the basic desires of most people. This inevitably drives radicalization.
For several decades, in both North America and Europe, judges have ruled on immigration cases in ways that fundamentally violate the popular will, and have unjustifiably prevented the deportation of people that most citizens did not and do not want to share their countries with. Unlike politicians, the people cannot really even try to remove judges, because while some are technically political appointees, the ‘profession’ has largely wrangled the ability to regulate itself away from legislatures in both spirit and practice.
The historical Anglo-Saxon judicial tradition upon which the Common Law is based always afforded judges the right, and indeed in many cases implicitly obligated them, to respect the people’s will. If a crowd of people clamor outside the courthouse for a man’s innocence or guilt, judges were and should be swayed by it. For millennia, and to the great detriment of the Jewish people, Christians blamed the Jews (the civilians) and not Pilate, who ultimately sentenced Christ, for his execution. Less (although sometimes not much less) controversially, there are countless cases in the English legal tradition in which judges heeded the popular call for a specific kind of justice.
I don’t want to live in an unaccountable dictatorship, in the Chinese legal system in which lawyers are either set dressing, fixers or enemies of the state or powerful officials with a very short career and freedom expectancy. But that is inevitable in the West unless judges use their verbal ability to sense the way the wind is blowing on immigration and start giving the people what they have so often and so politely requested.
Can you be more specific? In the USA, immigration courts handling individual cases are "administrative courts," within the Executive, so the judges can be changed with each administration. "Article III" Senate-confirmed, appointed-for-life judges rule on applicable statutory and constitutional questions.
The problem is not with these immigration “judges”, but with actual Article III judges like Boasberg or Xinis, who override the determinations of Article II examiners at will, making it effectively impossible to enforce law at scale. If every illegal gets Article III judiciary proceedings before finally getting removed, we will never be able to actually enforce the law. Imagine if military had to get a court decision before being able to kill an invading soldier.
What in the world are you talking about? In the Garcia case (that's in front of Xinis), it was the Article II examiner (in 2019, under Trump!) that signed the order withholding removal.
I really don't comprehend how you character this as overriding that determination. If anything, Boasberg is doing the polar opposite -- enforcing it.
The problem is not with the withholding order. The problem is that apparently everyone expects infinite process before you’re actually able to execute any removal.
In the Garcia case, the government made a mistake by not complying with that withholding offer (I’ll assume that it was indeed a mistake, and not deliberate flouting of the order, because otherwise the below argument doesn’t apply). Liberals, moderates, and centrists seem to believe that the outcome at hand means that the Garcia’s right to due process was not met, and district and some appellate judges seem to believe that too. There is an implication here that if Garcia’s due process rights were met, he would not have been deported to El Salvador. This is not so. There is no amount of due process that will prevent government from ever making mistakes of this sort, and excessive efforts of judiciary and activists using the judiciary to prevent mistakes meaningfully detract from the Executive’s ability to execute its core function.
The simple fact is that there is absolutely no existing process that could have prevented this mistake. Garcia had final, confirmed on appeal order to be removed. He had no further ability to appeal it. If the government removed him to a different country, that would have been it. This is how the process works, not just in immigration, but in every case.
For example, imagine you’re a tenant who stopped paying rent. Landlord goes through legal process to get you evicted, you appeal, but since you’re clearly in the wrong, ultimately you get a final eviction order. Accordingly, you get a notice from sheriff’s office that you’ll get evicted on May 1st, approved by court. However, on April 30th, the sheriff looks at the calendar wrong, and thinks that your eviction date is today, and evicts you. A clear mistake, in violation of court order to remove you on May 1st. However, is it a violation of your due process? No, there was absolutely no judicial process that you were not given access to, that would have prevented your too early eviction. What is the legal remedy that you should be accorded after the fact? I actually don’t know. I would actually be fine with no remedy or damages at all: the government does extremely detrimental things to people all the time that have no remedy whatsoever, the sovereign/qualified immunity and all that, but if you insisted on some damages, I’d accept the sheriff reimbursing you for any actual cost caused by too early eviction, like eg. one night hotel stay.
Now, imagine a judge ordering the sheriff to kick the landlord out of the freshly vacated home, and effectuate your return to the home that you were about to get evicted from anyway. It just so happens that you were also a wanted fugitive on federal charges, and as you were getting evicted by state officers, federal officers use the opportunity to arrest you and throw you in federal prison. The judge then require the state sheriff to somehow “facilitate” your release from federal prison, without specifying in any way whatsoever as to how exactly you are supposed to do it, or what that even means. Lastly, it issues a statewide injunction on any evictions unless you get one more hearing after final (already appealed) eviction order, with another ability to appeal the outcome of that hearing, to prevent additional future eviction mistakes.
Most people would see this as a mockery of justice, an excessive concern for the rights of someone who is clearly in the wrong, and meaningful making it even more difficult for people who are in the right to have their rights enforced. And yet, here we are.
What bearing does being "in the wrong" have on a persons rights? How does what's happening in the Garcia case make it more difficult for people who are in the right to have their rights enforced?
Americans are in the right to want to deport tens of millions of illegals, and excessive concern for the rights of illegals make it meaningfully more difficult to enforce the right to remove them.
I'm one of them!
Who are you to say my concern is excessive?
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