Courts

Judge Compares ICE To Unjust Regime, ICE Is 'Concerned' About Her Tone

Activist "plucked" from his family is released so he can say goodbye.

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Her gaze mocks us now.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, has become one of the most evil paramilitary organizations on the planet. They’ve been empowered to do so. It’s almost hard to blame them for doing exactly what Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, and 60 million xenophobic bigots want them to do.

We are powerless to stop them, because frankly there are just not enough people willing to take up arms against them (yet). Too many of us still believe in judicial or political remedies, and so, for the moment, we are willing to sacrifice our brown neighbors and friends instead of setting up the barricades to protect them. ICE is a street gang and instead of meeting them in battle we’ve decided to lock our doors and hope they pass us over.

The federal judiciary is one of the only institutions left with the strength to fight ICE in any meaningful way. There’s not a lot they can do: justice works slowly and requires the consent of the governed, thugs can move quickly and don’t wait for due process before cracking skulls. Judges can’t even necessarily “right wrongs,” not in a time such as this one where the law has been manipulated to provide legal cover for totalitarian tactics.

But judges are uniquely positioned to raise the alarm bells, and U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest has done so here.

She’s overseeing the case of Ravi Ragbir. He is the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, a legal permanent resident, and married to a U.S. citizen. But a 2000 conviction for accepting fraudulent loan applications made him eligible for deportation. He’s been living under that cloud since 2006 and this month, during a routine check-in with immigration officials, they snatched him up.

Or, to use Judge Forrest’s words, ICE “pluck[ed] him out of his life without a moment’s notice.”

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Judge Forrest called the move “cruel” and provided Ragbir a reprieve to “say goodbye” and put his affairs in order. Then she unleashed some hardcore dicta:

“It ought not to be — and it has never before been — that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away,” said Forrest, who read her seven-page opinion aloud in court.

“We are not that country,” Forrest said, “and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it.”

Thing is, we are that country now. Trump won. This is what happens when the forces of hate win. What everybody said would happen is now happening.

ICE was not concerned that its behavior drew a strong rebuke from the federal judiciary. Far from using this moment to examine itself (hahahaha), it objected to the “tone” of Judge Forrest’s opinions.

In a statement to the Associated Press, ICE said it was “concerned with the tone of the district court’s decision, which equates the difficult work ICE professionals do every day to enforce our immigration laws with ‘treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust.’” The agency added it was “actively exploring its appellate options.”

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These are dark times. For now, ICE pays lip-service to the “rule of law” and seeks to appeal decisions it doesn’t like. But it won’t be long before their grand leader starts ignoring laws and prosecutions he doesn’t like. And once Trump starts doing it, ICE’s respect for the courts will not hold up.

ICE are the shock troops of a reviled, unjust regime. They have their boots on the neck of immigrant communities across the country.

I would hide an immigrant family from ICE. It sounds like Judge Forrest would too. Soon, hiding our friends might be our only option left. History will judge us for our weakness and complicity.

Federal judge blasts ICE for ‘cruel’ tactics, frees immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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