Perhaps realizing that its attempts to prevent the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran prison may be coming to a close, the Trump administration has opened up a new front in its war on immigrants and the legal system.
Such attacks are designed to hinder institutions that might stand in the way of the Trump administration’s agenda,
Last week, federal agents arrested a Wisconsin state court judge, Hannah Dugan, on the charge that she allegedly frustrated efforts by officials to arrest an immigrant in her courtroom. It is alleged that when immigration officials appeared outside Dugan’s courtroom to apprehend a defendant in it, she sought guidance from the chief judge in the courthouse as to how to handle the situation. According to the charging documents filed against her, she questioned the warrant the ICE officials presented because it was not a judicial warrant, just one issued by an immigration official. She then allowed the defendant and his lawyer to exit through a courtroom door that did not lead to the public areas of the courthouse. The defendant was apprehended soon after leaving the courtroom.
Prosecutors might have a difficult time proving that Judge Dugan intended to frustrate immigration officials and to obstruct justice. But that may be beside the point for the administration. Sending a message to those who might oppose it: that may be more important.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi now calls Judge Dugan “a criminal judge sitting on a criminal bench.” What lies at the heart of these and other attacks on the judiciary is certainly a desire to chill any institution that might seek to frustrate the Trump administration’s agenda. But what these moves also do, in the end, is make us all less safe.
The arrest of Judge Dugan clearly marks an escalation of the administration’s attacks on the judiciary, such as calls for the impeachment of judges or to strip courts of power. Much like attacks on law firms and universities, such attacks are designed to hinder institutions that might stand in the way of the Trump administration’s agenda, but they also have public safety implications throughout all communities.
The fact that courthouses are now a location where anyone, even judges, could be seized, means that once again the administration is engaging in actions designed to quell dissent and strike fear in the hearts of those who might wish to stand in its way.
Today it is a judge who is alleged to have frustrated a law enforcement operation; tomorrow it might be a plaintiff or lawyer who seeks to file a case against the administration.
The widespread knowledge that the Trump administration has been making dramatic, life-threatening mistakes in its efforts to engage in punitive deportations, not just with Mr. Abrego Garcia, but also its recent removal from the United States of three minors who are all U.S. citizens, means that anyone who fears they might be caught up in one of these operations — even if they have legal status — might think twice before going to court, even when they are there to serve as a witness in the prosecution of a violent criminal.
The arrests also have second-order effects, making all of us less safe.
Law enforcement officials work overtime to build relationships of trust with immigrant communities because they know that community cooperation is essential to any effective law enforcement strategy. The use of surveillance and sting operations to find would-be undocumented immigrants, or those who the immigration officials might strip of their immigration status, makes it harder to fight crime. Such immigrants also become easy prey as criminals are aware of the culture of fear in a community and that their victims will not come forward to report them.
In the end, efforts designed to intimidate the judiciary and make courthouses places where anyone can be subject to arrest make communities less trusting of law enforcement and the judicial system.
One must see the actions against this state court judge in the context of the attacks on the federal judiciary, law firms and universities, as efforts designed to intimidate these institutions directly. But they also have second-order effects.
When even a judge can get caught in the administration’s anti-immigrant dragnet, no one is safe, and it is more difficult to fight violent crime in every community.