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Notes -
The FBI this morning arrested a Wisconsin state judge on charges of concealing an illegal alien from arrest.
The initial criminal complaint is here. For those of you who prefer to watch TV instead of read, here is attorney general Pam Bondi giving the details on Fox News. The accusation is that upon seeing federal agents waiting outside her courtroom to serve an administrative warrent for the arrest of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz (who is an illegal alien currently being charged with battery), Judge Hannah Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz out of the courtroom through the jury door so that he could evade arrest.
For all of the "Kash Patel Arrests Judge" headlines I saw this morning, this seems totally fine? It looks like an open and shut case if the facts alleged in the complaint are true. It sounds like there ought to be plenty of witnesses (it literally took place in a courthouse). State-law judges don't have jurisdiction over federal agents executing federal functions. An illegal alien in court for an unrelated violent crime is an incredibly unsympathetic defendant. All of the smarter left-leaning commentators I follow seem to be keeping quiet on this, which seems smart.
Well, that certainly won't help in the broader judiciary-versus-executive political fight over deportation processes.
In the short span of time since I've heard this case, I've been trying to digest how exactly this fits in, and it's just so remarkably brazen that I can barely articulate it. I already thought that the more immigration-sympathetic judges played fast and loose with the rule of law, but it's on a completely different level to personally aid and abet the attempted escape of an illegal alien. When it's a legal proceeding with a decision I don't like, there's at least some pretense that we disagree about the law. This doesn't even have that fig leaf.
Suppose you're a judge, and you issue a warrant to arrest a murder suspect. Before the police can execute the warrant, he is detained by ICE and set for deportation. Would you consider this a satisfactory outcome?
In this hypothetical are you a state or federal judge? Demanding the feds remand someone they've detained to state custody seems like something you at best could ask nicely for (see the precedent of Grant v. Lee on the subject). I would generally expect them to agree for major crimes absent other major political concerns. If federal (and assuming Article III), then no. If federal and Article II, then I think it's at least unclear which parts of the executive can order which others around.
I'm talking about state judges, because that's what's at issue here. And yep, ask nicely is what they do, by which I mean put in a formal request. And they generally agree for minor crimes as well as major ones, unless there's some compelling reason to get the guy out of the country ASAP. I remember a DUI case in Washington County, PA where the defense attorney was arguing for a dismissal since the guy was going to be deported and the case was moot. The fairly hardass judge wanted the attorney to request a release from ICE detention because he wanted to keep the guy from driving drunk and could require an interlock device and testing if the guy stayed here until the case was resolved. I don't know how the case ended, but I got the impression that the judge was convinced that they guy would end up killing someone in Mexico if he didn't dry out first.
The judge wanted the case off his call permanently. That is the most likely reason for this attitude.
*Edit
Here is how I imagine the thought process of a tougher on crime in my jurisdiction going:
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