7 ms·

A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant.

A key point here, which the judge brought up with the ICE agents, is that they only had an "administrative warrant".[1] An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant. It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause. "An immigration officer from ICE or CBP may not enter any nonpublic areas—or areas that are not freely accessible to the public and hence carry a higher expectation of privacy—without a valid judicial warrant or consent to enter."[2] The big distinction is that an administrative warrant does not authorize a search. [1] https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-rights-immigration-enforcement-and-warrants https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r... [2] https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Subpoenas-Warrants_.pdf https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2025-Subpoen...

nonethewiser 2y ago
That is key indeed. She specifically clarified the type of warrant then escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.
Gabriel54 2y ago
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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ajross 2y ago
  It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it? 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.
  - linksnapzz 2y ago
    As it turns out, hyperbole is not aside.
  - asdsadasdasd123 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ty6853 2y ago
      Garcia could have been deported literally anywhere but el salvador as he had an active deportation order, and withholding only from El Salvador. They could have just dropped him in a barren reef in the middle of the Pacific and said good fucking luck, why they took him the one place he couldn't go evades all logic.
      - asdsadasdasd123 2y ago
        I think you have the wrong case; is Garcia also a domestic abuser?
        ty6853 2y ago
        His wife claimed in a restraining order filing that he was one writing she was "punched" "scratched" and had her clothes forcibly ripped. No idea if he was one as she claimed the exact opposite of what she wrote on her GoFundMe donation page about how they needed money because he is such a great husband/father.
  - maxlybbert 2y ago
    Immigration law is wildly different from what people expect. But it is the law and it has been held up in countless court cases. This weirdness is not new. 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/IF11536 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362
- lolinder 2y ago
  The claim is that the judge, upon finding out that they were there to make an arrest, deliberately led the man out a back door which would under almost no circumstances be available to his use (the jury door), allowing him to bypass the officers attempting to make the arrest. 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.
  - godelski 2y ago
    > The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction There's other questions tbh. I don't know the answers, but I think it is critical to point out. 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-and-administrative-warrants/ https://www.motionlaw.com/the-difference-between-judicial-an...
- pyuser583 2y ago
  My understanding is that you have an obligation to act lawfully, even if another person is not acting lawfully. This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”
downrightmike 2y ago
Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law
- lenkite 2y ago
  Which law aren't they obeying ?
s1artibartfast 2y ago
How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area. The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them through a private back door to avoid arrest. Edit: directed, not escorted.
- TrackerFF 2y ago
  If we're going to be technical about this, which one has to be in the eyes of the law, what is the difference between escorting them through the private back door vs escorting them through the front door? How do you prove intent? That her intent was to obstruct? They point out in the article that such room (juror room) is never usually used by certain people, but that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    If it can be credibly demonstrated that she cancelled the hearing and escorted the defendant out a back door within seconds of sending the officers away, that she had every intent of proceeding with the hearing before meeting with the officers, and that she and her peers did not usually use that door for defendants, then I would consider that to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that she intended to obstruct the arrest. It's not a given, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable burden of proof either.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > that still doesn't prove anything about her intent. If the only reason to use the backdoor is to avoid arrest, then that proves her intent. If there was another reason to use it then that will come up in court.
- sasmithjr 2y ago
  > [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest. According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator. INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal. [0]: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b741fb2c398/97ea7f41-full.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b74...
insane_dreamer 2y ago
If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.
- Jensson 2y ago
  They didn't need to search, they just needed to wait outside to arrest. That would have worked if the defendant didn't use the backdoor.
  - rolph 2y ago
    FBI should review thier fieldwork, alternate entrance/exits, must be secured or under watch, before the approach.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      They did catch the guy so they did do their job.
      - rolph 2y ago
        yeah they did thier job, but operationally speaking, they need a review.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    But they didn't have a valid warrant for arrest. Therefore him going out the back door was not "escaping arrest".
    - Jensson 2y ago
      They did have a valid warrant for arrest, they just didn't have a warrant to search the courtroom but they had a warrant to arrest the guy as soon as he stepped outside.
      - 2y ago
lolinder 2y ago
Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients: 1) knowledge of a government proceeding 2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him. The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1). https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice
- ivape 2y ago
  The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how. Frontpage of /r/law: ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without-a-warrant-to-find-migrants-doj-memo-says/ https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without...
  - lolinder 2y ago
    [flagged]
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant False.
- os2warpman 2y ago
  An ICE warrant is for civil offenses. Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter. If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
  - rufus_foreman 2y ago
    >> If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested? I don't know. Is an FCC warrant like an ICE warrant? If so, then you don't have to open the door. You can probably tell them to fuck themselves, but that's probably not a good idea. You can't obstruct their investigation. You can't conceal what your neighbor is doing. You can't tell the FCC that your neighbor doesn't have a transmitter, or that it only reaches 200 feet when you know that that it reaches farther than that. Those are crimes, in my admittedly limited understanding of the situation. An ICE warrant is not a search warrant. ICE did not need a search warrant in this case. They needed a warrant to arrest a named person they had probable cause to believe was in the country illegally. It appears they did in fact have that warrant. It was a real warrant. And if they facts in the ICE criminal complaint are true, this is a textbook case of someone obstructing that arrest.
nonethewiser 2y ago
That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz. The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.

nonethewiser 2y ago

That is key indeed. She specifically clarified the type of warrant then escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.

Gabriel54 2y ago

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.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ajross 2y ago
It can't very well be "obstruction" if they aren't empowered to do the search in the first place, can it? 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.
- linksnapzz 2y ago
  As it turns out, hyperbole is not aside.
- asdsadasdasd123 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ty6853 2y ago
    Garcia could have been deported literally anywhere but el salvador as he had an active deportation order, and withholding only from El Salvador. They could have just dropped him in a barren reef in the middle of the Pacific and said good fucking luck, why they took him the one place he couldn't go evades all logic.
    - asdsadasdasd123 2y ago
      I think you have the wrong case; is Garcia also a domestic abuser?
      - ty6853 2y ago
        His wife claimed in a restraining order filing that he was one writing she was "punched" "scratched" and had her clothes forcibly ripped. No idea if he was one as she claimed the exact opposite of what she wrote on her GoFundMe donation page about how they needed money because he is such a great husband/father.
- maxlybbert 2y ago
  Immigration law is wildly different from what people expect. But it is the law and it has been held up in countless court cases. This weirdness is not new. 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/IF11536 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10559 * https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362 https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10362
lolinder 2y ago
The claim is that the judge, upon finding out that they were there to make an arrest, deliberately led the man out a back door which would under almost no circumstances be available to his use (the jury door), allowing him to bypass the officers attempting to make the arrest. 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.
- godelski 2y ago
  > The only question is whether obstructing ICE is classified as the legal offense of obstruction There's other questions tbh. I don't know the answers, but I think it is critical to point out. 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-and-administrative-warrants/ https://www.motionlaw.com/the-difference-between-judicial-an...
pyuser583 2y ago
My understanding is that you have an obligation to act lawfully, even if another person is not acting lawfully. This why civil rights advocates say “don’t talk to the police.”

downrightmike 2y ago

Key point is the Feds aren't obeying the law

lenkite 2y ago
Which law aren't they obeying ?

s1artibartfast 2y ago

How is that a key point? The agents were asked to wait in a public area, the hall outside the courtroom. There was a call with the chief judge who confirmed this is a public area. The allegations revolve around judge Dugan's actions. They allegedly cancelled the targets hearing and [directed] the them through a private back door to avoid arrest. Edit: directed, not escorted.

TrackerFF 2y ago
If we're going to be technical about this, which one has to be in the eyes of the law, what is the difference between escorting them through the private back door vs escorting them through the front door? How do you prove intent? That her intent was to obstruct? They point out in the article that such room (juror room) is never usually used by certain people, but that still doesn't prove anything about her intent.
- lolinder 2y ago
  If it can be credibly demonstrated that she cancelled the hearing and escorted the defendant out a back door within seconds of sending the officers away, that she had every intent of proceeding with the hearing before meeting with the officers, and that she and her peers did not usually use that door for defendants, then I would consider that to be proof beyond reasonable doubt that she intended to obstruct the arrest. It's not a given, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable burden of proof either.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > that still doesn't prove anything about her intent. If the only reason to use the backdoor is to avoid arrest, then that proves her intent. If there was another reason to use it then that will come up in court.
sasmithjr 2y ago
> [Dugan allegedly] escorted the them through a private back door to avoid arrest. According to the complaint [0] on page 11, Flores-Ruiz still ended up in a public hallway and was observed by one of the agents. They just didn't catch him before he was able to use the elevator. INAL but I don't think "Dugan let Flores-Ruiz use a different door to get to the elevator than ICE expected" should be illegal. [0]: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b741fb2c398/97ea7f41-full.pdf https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/3d022b74...

insane_dreamer 2y ago

If ICE wasn't legally authorized to search the premises or arrest the man, then the judge wasn't "obstructing" his arrest.

Jensson 2y ago
They didn't need to search, they just needed to wait outside to arrest. That would have worked if the defendant didn't use the backdoor.
- rolph 2y ago
  FBI should review thier fieldwork, alternate entrance/exits, must be secured or under watch, before the approach.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    They did catch the guy so they did do their job.
    - rolph 2y ago
      yeah they did thier job, but operationally speaking, they need a review.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  But they didn't have a valid warrant for arrest. Therefore him going out the back door was not "escaping arrest".
  - Jensson 2y ago
    They did have a valid warrant for arrest, they just didn't have a warrant to search the courtroom but they had a warrant to arrest the guy as soon as he stepped outside.
    - 2y ago

lolinder 2y ago

Another key point is that generally speaking the charge of obstruction of justice requires two ingredients: 1) knowledge of a government proceeding 2) action with intent to interfere with that proceeding It doesn't especially matter in this case whether ICE was entitled to enter the courtroom because she's not being charged for refusing to allow them entry to the room. The allegation is that upon finding out about their warrant she canceled the hearing and led the defendant out a door that he would not customarily use. Allegedly she did so with the intent of helping him to avoid the officers she knew were there to arrest him. The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent (1). https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obstruction_of_justice

ivape 2y ago
The government has to prove intent here, which as some have noted is difficult, but if the facts as recounted in the news stories are all true it doesn't seem that it would be overwhelmingly difficult to prove that she intentionally took action (2) to thwart an arrest that she knew was imminent She is brave. I suspect we will look back on this one day if it goes that far. Even if you are staunch anti-immigration advocate, I would ask everyone to do the mental exercise of how one should proceed if the law or the enforcement of it is inhumane. The immigrant in question went for a non-immigration hearing, so this judge was brave (that's the only way I'll describe it). Few of us would have the courage to do that even for clear cut injustices, we'd sit back and go "well what can I do?". Bear witness, this is how. Frontpage of /r/law: ICE Can Now Enter Your Home Without a Warrant to Look for Migrants, DOJ Memo Says https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without-a-warrant-to-find-migrants-doj-memo-says/ https://dailyboulder.com/ice-can-now-enter-your-home-without...
- lolinder 2y ago
  [flagged]

rufus_foreman 2y ago

>> An “ICE warrant” is not a real warrant False.

os2warpman 2y ago
An ICE warrant is for civil offenses. Like operating a non-conforming radio transmitter. If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested?
- rufus_foreman 2y ago
  >> If my buddy is in my backyard blasting out Freebird 24x7 on a transmitter that can reach 201 feet instead of the unlicensed maximum of 200 feet and the FCC knocks on my door looking for him and I tell them to go fuck themselves, should I be arrested? I don't know. Is an FCC warrant like an ICE warrant? If so, then you don't have to open the door. You can probably tell them to fuck themselves, but that's probably not a good idea. You can't obstruct their investigation. You can't conceal what your neighbor is doing. You can't tell the FCC that your neighbor doesn't have a transmitter, or that it only reaches 200 feet when you know that that it reaches farther than that. Those are crimes, in my admittedly limited understanding of the situation. An ICE warrant is not a search warrant. ICE did not need a search warrant in this case. They needed a warrant to arrest a named person they had probable cause to believe was in the country illegally. It appears they did in fact have that warrant. It was a real warrant. And if they facts in the ICE criminal complaint are true, this is a textbook case of someone obstructing that arrest.

nonethewiser 2y ago

That is key indeed. But I'm not sure if it's key for the reason you believe. Its not a big deal that they didnt have a search warrant - they stayed in public areas. But it helps prove the intent of the judge to aid the escape of Ruiz. The judge specifically clarified the type of warrant with the agents when she learned they were there. Then she escorted Ruiz out a path that she knew they could not legally be in.