In 2021, then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a directive declaring large numbers of places off-limits to immigration police looking for illegal aliens. Among those de facto sanctuaries were courthouses. This week, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the agency had tossed out the restrictions on couthouse arrests. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement:
The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense. It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons. Secretary Noem is empowering law enforcement to use common sense to remove criminal illegal aliens from American communities.
In April, one such attempted courthouse arrest in Wisconsin was temporarily foiled by a judge, of all people, who ushered an illegal migrant defendant and his lawyer out the back way of the courthouse to avoid DHS officials. The Milwaukee County circuit judge, Hannah Dugan, was forthwith arrested herself and charged with obstruction, a felony. She was also at least temporarily suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She is to appear in court in her new role as a defendant on May 15.
The illegal whom Judge Dugan illegally assisted, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was arrested just outside the courthouse during his abortive elopement. Previously deported in 2013, at some point Flores-Ruiz had entered the US illegally a second time. At the time of his short-lived escape, he had been in court facing a misdemeanor charge of brutally assaulting his roommate and the roommate’s girlfriend. He is due back in court on May 14, a day ahead of his would-be benefactress.
For more, see Breitbart News.