Trump's FBI Just Arrested a Judge

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:57 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1154. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is COVID -19. How you doing? No, that's still me. I have COVID. That over there, is Matt Cameron, not COVID, that I know of.

0:01:06 Matt: Well, I'm healthy, but I'm hunkered down in the grime and, you know, absolutely filth -ridden streets of Sanctuary City, Boston, Massachusetts. Just absolutely overtaken by one of the safest cities in America.

0:01:21 Thomas: Just all the safety happening. It's just really, it's hard to live. It sort of like how I live in California, a hellhole that no one lives at, everyone's moving away from and no one can do business in, but just crossed over to be the fourth largest economy in the world single handedly, just the other other day. Cross beat Japan, I guess.

0:01:24 Matt: Yeah, it's terrifying. Right, right, right. What a disaster.

0:01:39 Thomas: So isn't that weird?

0:01:40 Matt: Wow.

0:01:40 Thomas: Who's doing all the business? I guess nobody.

0:01:42 Matt: I assume it's MS -13 and Trang Daragwa are doing all the business now, right? They're just running it. Yeah.

0:01:46 Thomas: Oh, that's right. Yeah, those are the businesses.

0:01:48 Matt: They are Silicon Valley now. Yeah . Yeah.

0:01:50 Thomas: But we don't have time for that today. We've got a genuine emergency. I don't just mean the COVID that I feel like I'm dying of. The Trump administration is arresting judges. And this, I mean, I saw this and it seemed really not good. This seemed like a next level of thing. We'll get into it, but I actually read the whole I read an entire legal document Matt I forgot I just remembered right now I was so like blown away by this so I read the whole document this seems really bad real bad all

0:02:16 Matt: It is. Well, it's not even the first time that Trump has arrested a judge. We did have another one last time, but this is worse and it is escalating and it's keeping a promise that they made at the beginning. They're going to start doing this. So it's a good opportunity to talk about what sanctuary cities actually are, how they work, and what we can expect going forward as ICE starts to flex a little more because we've got a lot more of this coming, I'm afraid.

0:02:36 Thomas: Right well we're gonna get to it if you'd like to avoid the ads please go to patreon .com slash law and you can avoid this ad break but everybody else here's an ad break okay

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0:02:46 Thomas: Matt so I saw this arrest but you're saying this has happened before where do you want to

0:02:51 Matt: Back in 2018, the Trump administration did arrest a Newton district court judge right here in Massachusetts, Shelley Joseph. She's very well -liked judge in Newton. Newton's a small, kind of wealthy community. Not a lot happens there. And this wasn't quite as direct as what we're going to be talking about in Wisconsin, but she went off the record, had a sidebar, and basically was indicating to the attorney that ICE is in the courtroom. And there's some dispute about what she did. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't quite like this, but it was very similar that she was indicating that maybe the defendant should take the back door and avoid ICE if possible. And that case kind of lingered until the Biden administration came in and they did eventually drop it. But she suffered pretty severe personal consequences and professional congressional consequences. So it was pretty chilling. It was, you know, around here, it was a big, big thing because, and as far as I know, it was the only judge charged that way during the first term administration. So when I saw this headline this last week about Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it Was very familiar. It certainly looked a lot like the Judge Shelley Joseph allegations, but this is a lot more extreme and there's a lot to be concerned about here. And I know we both read the charging document. I'm going to pull it up here, but the The allegation here is that Judge Dugan was very concerned when she found out that ICE was in her courthouse, as I think she has a right to be, as someone who's supposed to be responsible for the peace and order of a courthhouse. And she had directed the deportation officers who'd shown up to do this to go talk to the chief judge, because they were trying to work out a deal where they would guarantee they wouldn't actually come into courtrooms, which is pretty reasonable. And if they're going to do courthous arrest, they would stay within the public areas in the hallways and in the lobby. And we've talked a bit about courthouse arrest before. It's pretty controversial policy. Because it obviously interferes with state and local authorities and their ability to prosecute cases. But ICE likes them because they're during the day, they're in a place where you're guaranteed to have gone through a metal detector, so

0:02:57 Thomas: Start oh wow oh I remember this now okay oh yeah that's right I bet yeah yeah Yeah.

0:04:37 Matt: They feel like you're going to be safer. Very few undocumented people own weapons anyway, but they just feel like it's the easiest way to do it. So in this case, the defendant was, and Pam Bondi's kind of playing some games here, but he was charged technically with a domestic violence offense, but it was a roommate. It wasn't a partner or family member.

0:04:54 Matt: And it was just a typical roommate argument about music it being too loud that ended up with the man being getting beaten.

0:04:54 Thomas: Based on the allegations I saw, it was like this person pretty savagely beat the person over the argument. So this wasn't like, oh, they had a little spat. I don't want to be accused of trying to downplay anything. Sounds bad.

0:05:06 Matt: Yeah, no, no. No, no. It was bad. The allegation's bad. And it sounds like he went to the hospital. Now what happens, this is a good opportunity to kind of get into the sanctuary city conversation. What happens when you're arrested is that you're taken down, obviously you're booked and you're fingerprinted. And whether you're a sanctuary jurisdiction or not, those fingerprints go to the FBI and they also go to DHS. And because obviously we want to find out if you've got a of war in Alaska or whatever. And DHS just as a mandatory thing is also going to do a ping here and just see what they get. And so of course, when this man was fingerprinted, it came up that he'd already been deported and re -entered. He'd been deportered back in 2013. So he's of interest to ICE immediately because he's somebody who already has a deportation order, who's already re -enterred. It's a pretty serious offense after that. And he's got a pending felony. So this is a pretty typical courthouse arrest. There's nothing unusual about this part of it. But it sounds like Hannah Dugan, whose background is in legal aid, sounds like a pretty good lawyer and all around a decent person from what I could

0:05:58 Matt: Tell here, was concerned about the order in her courthouse. And it does sound like she also adjourned the case that she might've actually put it off so that this man could avoid ICE detection.

0:06:06 Thomas: Yeah, that's what they're alleging. They're allegging in the again, I don'T know what to trust, but like in the documents, it's like, well, she is like a spy. It's crazy.

0:06:08 Matt: That's what they're alleging. Sure. Yeah. Right.

0:06:16 Thomas: I DON'T I DONT KNOW HOW MUCH OF THAT COULD BE REAL, BUT I IMAGINE SOME AMOUNT OF IT. But like she, you know, misdirected them and then kind of blew through the case and then allowed them to allow him to exit through the jury box or something weird like that. There's some something where it's like a jury entrance.

0:06:29 Matt: So yeah, so I looked into this. Local attorney posted about this and that door, the jury door that she put them through is not public, but it goes out back to the public hallway. And you can see in the affidavit that he ended up back out in the public doorway. They had every opportunity. They saw him get onto the elevator. So I'm not really clear on what it is that she's supposed to have done here.

0:06:42 Thomas: Well, to be again fair to them, the way they it's a hell of a read. It's a gripping read. I don't know if it's at all real. Might all be fake. Don't don't get me wrong. But like it's agripping read because what what happened was she took pictures and direct them to go talk to the thing. But she didn't realize there was a different person. There's an additional person that she didn't spot as ice or whatever, as one of them. And so she thought, you know, the judge thought they were all gone. And that's the person who saw that he was still there. And it's only because she didn'T really notice that person and that person was still there that like they were able to kind of eventually apprehend this man. Again, all according to whatever amount of bullshit this is. So, yeah. To the bat cave or something. Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:52 Matt: Yeah, it is. Right. And they did have to chase him down. He ended up taking the elevator down and they didn't have anybody outside apparently. But again, I do want to point out that the door that she sent him to did eventually lead to a public hallway. So she wasn't sending him down a completely private back door. Right, right. Or as was alleged in the Shelley Joseph case, she was alleged to have been sending him back down through lockup, which would have been unusual if it's not a public area.

0:07:45 Thomas: My first question is what law was the law here? What is this? This? I mean, is that like, that's all my questions actually, because it does seem like in some of the discussion in the affidavit, I mean it does talk about like they had discussed it and said they will own, they won't be coming in the courtroom. They're just going to be arresting him in the public area. And I guess if it's a public area, is the law that like that's kind of a fair game or something is what it was represented as. And so like, what is the law here? Did she violate a law? Is this the same as aiding and abetting a fugitive? Like what's what's going on here?

0:07:49 Matt: So yeah. Yeah, she's charged with two things here, 18 U.S.C. 1505, which is abstracting or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency. It's basically like getting in the way of the arrest and then concealing an individual to prevent discovery or arrest in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1071. I think she has pretty solid defenses to both of these, given that she did direct him eventually out to a public hallway, whether or not she thought there was going to be somebody out there. There. Arguably, she was just trying to keep order in her own court and not cause a scene right outside that courtroom. And as you're saying, this is an administrative warrant that they have. Now, she wasn't assisting in a judicial warrant, which to be honest, I'm not really sure she had the right to do under these circumstances. Administrative warrants are for the arrest of a person, and they can be written up by IS at any time. They're just basically warrants that they issue to themselves. And you don't need a judicial warrant to make an immigration arrest because you're making an arrest based on administrative civil charges. It's not criminal charges like you'd have to put in front of a judge.

0:09:09 Thomas: Does it have some more authority or something? Why do you think she was thinking they needed that?

0:09:14 Matt: I couldn't say. I mean, there is this sort of talking point right now that you always have to ask to see the ICE warrant. You want to see if it's a judicial warrant. If it is a judicial warrant, that means they can come into your house, for example. They can do more. And maybe they would have had more rights in the courthouse. But it doesn't sound like this jurisdiction had an established policy about how to handle ICE. And ICE officers are members of the public, and they're allowed to come into courthouses like anybody else. But the courtroom, arguably, would be under her control as a judge, so she could exclude certain people from it if she wanted to, if they're not there for any actual legitimate business purpose.

0:09:24 Thomas: Gotcha. Right. But that, I feel like that could be an issue if what they're saying is true. It didn't really involve the courtroom at all. I mean, they were never, I think the ICE officers from what I read allegedly were never even in the courtroom and it was always about them being outside. So yeah, yeah, sure.

0:09:55 Matt: That's fine. I'm just making the distinction in terms of where they could go. But she came out to talk to them out in the hallway, I believe. But this is just the kind of fight that ICE has been looking for and the DOJ has been working for. But I should point out before I move on, there are also DEA agents involved, as well as a couple of FBI agents you might have noticed in there.

0:10:11 Matt: And that's something I want people to be aware of, that right now, because of this directive from Pam Bondi on February 6th, there's this memo that went out in which basically the Department of Justice is dedicating itself to immigration enforcement. That's like their main thing right now. That is what they are for. In very much the same way that after 9/11, the DOJ became an anti -terror organization, right? You know, they just put everything under terror. Right.

0:10:32 Thomas: You know what? I think I think what my brain did was figure, oh, they're arresting the judge, so the FBI was involved because of that. But no, now that you say that, the affidavit was from an FBI agent who was part of the deportation proceeding the whole time.

0:10:46 Matt: They sent six guys. They send six guys to a courthouse to arrest someone they knew would not be armed, who basically for having re -entered the United States after deportation, which is itself not a very serious civil offense, defense, but also criminal.

0:10:55 Thomas: So, yeah, what's the norm on that? I mean, six doesn't sound like a ton to me, but like if it's, you know, is it not normal, I take it, to have the FBI there? Sure. Mm -hmm.

0:11:04 Matt: I've seen plenty of people arrested by ICE in court, and it's usually by two people, typically, because again, they know that they're not going to be putting up much of a fight. But I wanted to point out that FBI and DEA being involved, now again, this has nothing to do with drugs, but right now, one quarter of the entire DEA's arrest force is out doing immigration enforcement. That seems significant. I don't really care that much about drug enforcement, frankly. But even a little more concerning perhaps is that 80 % of the ATF is now doing immigration enforcement. I guess there's no more trafficking of arms going on in this country because that's a lot. 80 %of their arresting officers are out doing immigration, being ICE officers. So basically they've been deputized.

0:11:43 Thomas: Well, you prepared us for the fact that they didn't have the manpower to do anything close to what they wanted to do. So I guess this is that they're just pulling from everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:48 Matt: Right. Exactly. This is that. And we're going to talk at the end about how they're going to build up quite a lot more van power in ways that actually everybody can help stop right now. Now with Judge Joseph, they gave her the chance to surrender. Again, she's a judge. It's a basic courtesy. She's going to show up and turn herself in. She'S not going to go on the limb.

0:12:05 Thomas: And even not a judge. This can't be that, you know, like that happens all the time in regular crime stuff. Right. It's not not every single warrant. In fact, I would have to imagine that all that many of them are like a bust in arrest somebody kind because, you Know, people turn themselves in all the Time.

0:12:19 Matt: If there's no indication of violence and no reason to think that you're not going show up, then they will give you the opportunity for most of these things. But they had to go and make the point and arrest Hannah Dugan in court, which is extremely dramatic. It's a real message. There's a very dramatic video of Hannah Dugan being let out in her robe, in handcuffs, out of the court, and unacceptable. I mean, there's just no reason to do that. It's just to send a message. It is just to scare every other judge in the country. We already know that Donald Trump doesn't like judges very much, especially judges that don't do the things he wants them to do. And not to go there, you know, 15 minutes into this episode, but you know who else didn't like Judges? It was Adolf Hitler. Hitler. So he said in 1942, I was going back and reading a bit about how Hitler handled judges, because of course, to do everything he had to do, he had compromise not just lawyers, as we've been talking about for quite a while now, with everything that Trump's been doing with lawyers. He had to compromise the judiciary, and he had do it pretty quickly.

0:12:27 Thomas: Yeah. In court. Oh, I actually missed that. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow,

0:13:16 Matt: And so there was a speech here in 1942 in which Hitler said, from now on, I shall intervene in these cases and remove from office those judges who evidently do not understand the demand of the hour. I expect the German legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but they are here for the nation.

0:13:32 Thomas: That sounds familiar. Yeah.

0:13:32 Matt: Sounds familiar. It does. Yeah. Yeah, that you work for me. And there's an interesting German law review piece about sort of the ways that the judiciary was compromised that we didn't even really know about at the time. And of course, one of the Nuremberg trials was just putting judges and jurists on trial for everything they'd been complicit in and talking about how they essentially had murdered due process and the law by going going along with all of this. And so it is very important that they not just remove the lawyers who are willing to fight this and install more lawyers who are wanting to do fascism, but that they also corrupt and remove the judges who are possibly going to stand in the way. And just by my understanding of how these things are supposed to work, I think she has a pretty solid defense here.

0:14:11 Thomas: Yeah, Matt, if you can, I'd like to know, for one, you know, as much detail as you have about like, what are these potential crimes? Like, what kinds of things get people, you know, actually found guilty for this? And I think it's a good time to talk about like, most of us don't have our own courtrooms, but some people listening may They find themselves around an ICE action or enforcement action of some kind. And, like, what can you do or not do and what would get you in trouble or not?

0:14:38 Matt: Yeah, we've had a lot of questions from listeners about this in the last couple of months about what they should do. And I want to be very clear, my personal position, and I think I can say the show's position, is do not put yourself between someone being arrested and an arresting officer. You should not physically do that. It's not a good idea for you, not a great idea for them necessarily. You're going to end up probably with federal charges very much along the lines of these charges, because the charge here, the 1501 charge is something I would expect if you physically put yourself in the way of an arrest.

0:15:05 Matt: Or the other one that she received about the concealing, maybe it would be more like hiding a fugitive or telling somebody the easiest way to get out. If it was actually, like you said, like the Batcave, the private exit or something like maybe what Judge Joseph allegedly did before here in Newton.

0:15:18 Thomas: I mean, it alarms me that you say that. So the kinds of things, forget, you know, forget this current situation. And I just want to ask real quick, is this the kind of statute or whatever it is that, like – it's any criminal or is there – is any of this law specific to ICE and immigrants or is this just any criminal whatever?

0:15:33 Matt: This is any federal proceeding, any federal arrest. Yeah.

0:15:35 Thomas: Okay. OK. And so if someone were evading some sort of federal rest or whatever, and you said, hey, quick, go out this back door. This is a good way to like that's that's not good. Right. I mean, that's probably going to land you in trouble.

0:15:48 Matt: I actually was just doing a training with some municipal employees on some of this, just an education program. And I was also, they got a lot of the same kinds of questions. AndI just don't think that you want to lose your job or be federally prosecuted or, you know, certainly be harmed by ICE, because that's certainly a possibility, too, that you'll be physically assaulted. Andi'm generally a non -violent kind of guy. I'm a pacifist, and I just don' think that there's any benefit whatsoever to to physically getting in the way.

0:16:10 Thomas: I kind of hope there's some other explanation. I meantime, it might sound cool for a moment to be like, yeah, she led the guy out the secret exit. But, yeah. It just doesn't seem like a good idea to me because like they're going to get them anyway. And you're just risking. I mean, I guess if you're doing it as a visible kind of protest and you're willing to take those consequences, then that's actually pretty cool. But I don't know. I worry that that's potentially going to lose a good judge her, you know, her job maybe all for kind of nothing. And so that worries me a little bit.

0:16:38 Matt: It's a real concern.

0:16:42 Thomas: But you think maybe there's going to be some defense or some other explanation or...

0:16:45 Matt: Yeah. I think that from what I'm reading here, she can say that she was just trying to keep order and she was sending him out a quieter way and she didn't want the big public scene that was possibly going to happen here. But I don't think that there was much doubt that there were a lot of them in the courthouse by that point and there was a good chance he was going to get caught. But this though goes to the larger picture of what DOJ and DHS want to do right now in this country.

0:16:48 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Right. Right. Yeah.

0:17:09 Matt: And I want to talk about that, about why it matters.

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0:18:47 Matt: Let's hear Pam Bondi talk about what this means to her, why she was so involved in this particular case.

0:18:52 Thomas: Oh, joy.

0:18:53 Matt: Yeah.

0:18:53 Clip: Trying to obstruct your efforts to make this country safer, what is your message to them? We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you. I found out about this the day it happened. We could not believe, actually, that a judge really did that. We looked into the facts in great depth. That's her picture up on the screen, Hannah Dugan, who is now in custody. You cannot obstruct a criminal case, and really, shame on her. It was a domestic violence case of all cases, and she's protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime.

0:19:25 Thomas: Well, no, that's not what

0:19:28 Clip: In fact, she just had an initial appearance in court. There's also this other case coming.

0:19:32 Thomas: I'm sorry. Am I crazy? She was the one who was going to oversee something going like to do with the domestic violence thing. Right. I mean, that'S not that'S that'S NOT like the judge was like, oh, that' s it. I' m favoring the this person over the victims of. No, like this is the deportation. As you' ve highlighted, I think a lot of people don' t think about deportation often can mean no justice for stuff like this for the victims.

0:19:39 Matt: With the criminal case. Yes. Right. They were not here to arrest him for a crime.

0:19:57 Matt: That's the point I want to make. And that's, I'm glad you remembered because this is so important. Pam Bondi goes on in this interview, like several different times to talk about how the victim of this offense showed up and he wanted to make sure justice was done. And he couldn't believe that this case wasn't going to go forward and that he was being allowed to escape. That is exactly what would have happened if ICE had just grabbed him in the first place, right? Is that that's the end of the case. He's not coming back. So she's being so disingenuous about this. She knows that every time that ICE arrests somebody in state court, that is the endof that prosecution, no matter how much work the local prosecutors put in. Yeah.

0:20:26 Thomas: It's literally the opposite of what's happening. Because also, I think this was not, it's not like this was like his trial, you know, by jury or what. Wasn't this just some part of the process? Yeah. It's like this, the victims were there. Yeah. But like, if Ice wasn't there that day, the victim would have basically gotten what they wanted in that day.

0:20:34 Matt: No, pretrial. Yeah, mm -hmm. Mm -hmm, that's

0:20:45 Thomas: They would have had that proceeding. They Would Have Had, you Know, Like Whatever Amount That Was. And Once Ice Shows Up, That's Not Happening. Or at least that might happen. And then that's the end of it. Like if he's arrested after it, then there's no more. And for all we know, that's just them like setting a court date or something. Right. I mean, this is just a preliminary thing for his, you know, domestic violence charges. So that wouldn't be very satisfying. Imagine if somebody, I don't know, imagine somebody beat the crap out of you. And yeah, I'd be pretty mad at them. And then they just get deported. And imagine if it's worse, as we've seen, if a loved one of yours was killed or something. Again, it's counter to justice to want to send them somewhere where they're, the justice there is going to have no connection to whatever happened here. I mean, there may be no justice or there may Be just this overwhelming dystopian horror, but like either way, it'S not really connected to our process of justice, right? No. Yeah. They just have to pretend it'S did not existing. Yeah.

0:21:14 Matt: It. Yeah and they don't have an answer to this. That's exactly right. I've tried. I had a debate with somebody from the Center for Immigration studies, and she just danced around this because there's no good answer. You are ending the criminal case.

0:21:42 Thomas: When was this? I want to hear this. What debate? Can we get this?

0:21:45 Matt: That was a few years ago. I'll have to link to that at some point. I honestly, I felt pretty good about that one.

0:21:50 Thomas: Oh, holy shit, Matt. We could have had that as OA bonus content this whole time.

0:21:51 Matt: It wasn't supposed to be a debate, but yeah, it was a good one. Yeah, it wasn't a good one. I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, I don' know. It was a wasn't suppose to be debate, by how could it not be? It was supposed to be a conversation, but that's what happened.

0:21:55 Thomas: I would listen to it. Oh, yeah, sure. Like me and Sargon.

0:22:02 Matt: Right. This is just so disingenuous. She knows it. And if you want justice and you care about actually having, I mean this is why so many police chiefs and prosecutors who are otherwise maybe not so lefty generally don't want ICE interfering with their prosecutions and generally want to be sure that ICE doesn't arrest people in courthouses. Because you're also talking about the ability of victims and witnesses to show up and testify.

0:22:22 Matt: If they know that ICE is hanging around, why would they show up too?

0:22:22 Thomas: All right, good point. It's not always like, this might be the least disruptive. Imagine if, as you say, it's not the defendant, but it's like a witness, or maybe it's a defendant, but there could be other people that you haven't gotten yet, or they haven't, you know, that that that person's testimony is instrumental to punishing. And now that person is deported. And maybe citizen criminals get off scot -free because of that, right? Yeah, they don't care. They have their numbers that they're trying to hit, which are insane. So they're just going to go forever. No matter how many two -year -old cancer patients they have to deport.

0:22:39 Matt: Yeah, that's right. Right, exactly. And ICE has no respect for any of this. And they will deport somebody in the middle of a trial. That's right. That is another conversation. But I think that I have have more respect for state prosecutors than ICE does at this point.

0:23:06 Thomas: Which is not saying like a ton, but...

0:23:08 Matt: Not a ton, but enough. Yeah.

0:23:10 Thomas: You know, I want to correct the facts. I just badly misrepresented what the Trump administration is doing. I believe it was a four-year-old cancer victim and a two-year-old who didn't have cancer. And that's just, I want to, you know, that completely changes the point. So I wantto make sure I am accurate in how I say things. Yeah, I know. I can't believe I even, boy, egg on my face.

0:23:24 Matt: Yeah, you're just tugging on too many heartstrings. Yeah yeah.

0:23:29 Matt: So very quickly though, I want to at least cover, because I keep kind of teasing this and we've never really fully talked about what a sanctuary's jurisdiction is, because this is what they're coming for. And I think I set this up a couple of months ago because there was this order from DOJ basically saying that if if we have any opportunity to prosecute state and local officials for interfering with immigration, we're going to do it. Bill Barr, back in 2020, said pretty specifically that he was looking into finding ways to prosecue blue state prosecutors who were, he thought, finding ways to keep ICE from doing its job or offering lower charges to keep people from being deported. This has been an ongoing theme and we're gonna see a lot more of it. So I think it's just good to set up the context for what this is because the concept of sanctuary has gotten a little little muddled. I think that's natural just because it goes back thousands of years. And the thing that we're talking about when we talk about sanctuary jurisdictions is not the same as like the biblical sanctuary or medieval sanctuary. The concept of sanctuary and sort of the history of it here,

0:24:26 Matt: Going back to 1 ,000, 2 ,000 years, there was a British...

0:24:26 Thomas: We used to imprison Bale and Diablo in there, you know, how we made use of our sexual, I don't know. Yeah, back in the day. Now it's just like boring stuff. But back then, there's a big production.

0:24:35 Matt: Oh man, throwback. Great game. Great game. It took me a minute.

0:24:42 Matt: I'm counting on the number of nerds that we have of listening will appreciate that.

0:24:45 Thomas: Yeah I'm also counting on them being like that was like 30 a correct

0:24:51 Matt: You're most of the way there.

0:24:51 Thomas: Reference sanctuary is like a it's an air it's involved it's evolved yeah

0:24:55 Matt: It's involved. But yeah, it was basically the idea was to protect you from lynch mobs and give you an option for not going to jail if you could just kind of like straighten things out. So you could run into a church and declare sanctuary, you know, Michael Scott style, like you're declaring bankruptcy. It actually, it's a major plot point in Hunchback of Notre Dame.

0:25:11 Matt: If you've seen any of the movies, he actually yells it I think four times as he's taking the woman up the spire. The law of sanctuary evolved quite a a lot over the time. And there's like a British version, there's a European version. The British version is about 40 days. And it wasn't fully respected all of the time, there was actually one time when armed men chased a Spanish count into Westminster Abbey and killed him in front of everybody, like during services. Yeah, pretty traumatic. And, there actually was a precedent where a woman killed a priest in a church and then tried to claim sanctuary after killing him in the church. Yeah. Some rules lawyering on that one. Yeah but no. It turns out when you desecrate the sanctuary, you don't get to stay there. That doesn't work that way. A little exception there. But generally speaking, though, the sanctuary movement

0:25:21 Thomas: Right oh wow holy crap she thought she found the ultimate loophole wow yeah oh okay that's fair yeah

0:25:51 Matt: In the United States got going in the 80s in the immigration context. And it was actually driven by churches and good, solid people that were just trying to help Salvadoran refugees because the Reagan administration didn't recognize the grounds for asylum for people fleeing the Central American wars that the Reagan administration was paying for. Yeah, not great. Not great. And as we should, we were giving giving asylum to people from the USSR. We're giving asylum to people coming from other communist countries, but the people who are being persecuted by the right -wing governments that we were paying for, we were very reluctant. There was like a 3 % grant rate or something, even though this was one of the most brutal civil wars in Western Hemisphere history, between El Salvador and Nicaragua, Guatemala, everywhere that we Were paying for. And so churches saw what was going on and they started actively helping people, knowing that they were taking a serious risk because this was a real federal crime, like this was actual harboring. But they believed the asylum system was failing. They were kind of working on the underground railroad model, and they they started stepping up and hosting people in churches.

0:26:08 Thomas: Super cool super chill good use of religion good job more of that I feel like there's none of it now but good job to those folks good use of religion in churches great use of those beautiful buildings

0:26:54 Matt: Yeah, I can tell you there are still churches out there that are dedicated to sanctuary, that are prepared to step up, that have in the past, in recent past, helped people who have removal orders stay here. So it's a very good use of your religious space. Now, of course, there was a sensitive locations policy that included churches that was recently repealed by ICE, of course. So they're allowed to go into churches. It hasn't happened yet, but I fully expect that at some point, sometime soon, they will raid a church, most likely some sort of lefty church. The Quakers is actually recently trying to bring a suit to stop, basically to get an injunction against ICE going into any religious buildings. And that was dismissed because there wasn't any showing. They'd never really done it.

0:26:54 Thomas: More of that imagine oh yeah huh

0:27:27 Matt: So there wasn'T really enough to bring standing. But I will point out that cops already get to do this. They can pretty much follow you in anywhere. They can find you anywhere. So ICE was just kind of voluntarily under Obama taking on the sensitive location policy that included schools and hospitals. There were big headlines about this a couple of months ago, and they rescinded it, that ICE is going to go to schools and hospitals now. They haven'T really been doing that. I still don'T think you're going to see a full -on raid on a school. Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud, but certainly there is going to be something in a church. And hospitals is pretty common for law enforcement. That's normal. But the sanctuary jurisdiction concept is very loose. It doesn't really mean any one thing. And even when you're talking about something like Berkeley, it was actually the first city in the U .S. to be a sanctuary city, but it was eigentlich to protect people in 1971 who didn't want to go to Vietnam. So that was a different kind of sanctuary. But the idea of saying that we will We'll not cooperate with federal authorities to some degree for whatever reason that we don't want to cooperate with the federal authorities. And it's completely, under the 10th Amendment, completely lawful for a state or city to say, we're not going to share information with ICE. We're not gonna do your job for you.

0:28:27 Matt: We're going to carry out immigration enforcement. It's just not going to happen.

0:28:29 Thomas: Because it bears repeating I know we've said it but bears repeating just in case any new listeners or anyone doesn't remember, it's been badly misrepresented as sanctuary city means it's a law -free zone. It's like a hamster dam from the wire. You get to go deal drugs, do a murder, prostitution, you name it. No, it should kind of just be the norm, right? And for two, it just means local officials or whatever are not going going to help do work for the federal government essentially right for the federal agencies right yeah they're not stopping them they're not in gun duels with the feds like they just aren't helping

0:28:40 Matt: Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. But they're not going to line up outside somebody's house and keep federal authorities from coming in. Just never happening. No. No. Even in Boston. That's right. And Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller talk about it, you would think that there's like this active movement to like, because we love criminals, we want to keep them here, right?

0:29:14 Thomas: Them oh yeah it's our favorite thing we love

0:29:22 Matt: But radical leftist, of course, Antonin Scalia wrote in 1997, looking at Prince v. U.S., the federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems nor command the state's officers or those of their political subdivisions to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. So again, pretty straightforward thing. It's just commandeering doctrine, right, that you can't commandeer state and local authorities to do things. And again, not to bring Hitler into this for the second time in this conversation, but that's true. You're making me talk about Hitler, guys. But that was, I mean, that's one part of the Third Reich that I think people really don't understand is the reason it was so successful so early on in 1933 was that they started immediately integrating state, local, and federal law enforcement into one agency. And that is the kind of thing that we worry about when we see the way that conservatives are talking now about how we should just give in to ISIS demands and do everything that they want and that we should have this fully integrated system where they have full access to all of the state and local records at all times. That's a really bad precedent because then, of course, FBI and ATF and everybody else are going to expect the same kinds of things. Now, sanctuary jurisdictions typically are created by state legislatures or local authorities. We have the Trust Act here in Boston, but we also have, I think we're still only the only state to have created a sanctuary jurisdiction by case law. Our Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Lund, I think it was back in 2018, actually held that Massachusetts court officers can't enforce detainers. Now, detainors are really kind of the central point of a sanctuary jurisdiction. And a detainer is when ICE, after running that background check, sees that it looks like you've got somebody in your custody. Because you have to remember, most people come into ICE through the criminal legal system. They don't come in because ICE is just out in the street arresting people at random, at least not yet. They are mostly coming in because you've been arrested usually for something pretty small, often for driving without a license, traffic offense, maybe shoplifting, you know, majority people, if they're coming in, that's how things like that. But they see that they can't see a clear legal status. And in some jurisdictions, you're allowed to ask about somebody's immigration status, but even assuming you're not, even in a sanctuary jurisdiction, ICE can still issue a detainer. It's just up to the jurisdiction about how to handle it. And the detainor itself says, please go ahead and hold onto this person for 48 hours.

0:31:35 Thomas: Jeez what did prince do holy shit we're not the ones bringing hitler into it yeah yeah

0:31:35 Matt: It used to say, you shall hold onto them until that was litigated. And it was determined, of course, they can't just say you shall, because it's not actually something exactly. The wording actually is kind of funny over the years throughout the Obama administration how they had to water it down.

0:31:39 Thomas: They must add a pretty please that's the only way they tried to go for the cherry on top and they said no that's too

0:31:52 Matt: Yeah, no, no. They make it look as official as possible that it's the same as a warrant, but it's a detainer. It's a request. It's just a, hey, I left my watch at your house. Would you mind holding onto it for a little while? Not to compare people to watches, but It's really nothing. It has no legal authority whatsoever. Right.

0:31:56 Thomas: Far yeah yeah it's more like hey fascist to fascist I know we're both for the most part fascist here and they're like oh you say detain I say how high I don't know yeah there you

0:32:15 Matt: Exactly how long actually, because 48 hours is the norm and there there are plenty of jurisdictions that are willing to do that. But of course, if you multiply 48 hours in a place like Chicago or Boston or New York by the amount of time and money that that's going to require for local resources, right, that gets pretty expensive to feed and house somebody for 48 hours that you weren't expecting to on behalf of the federal government. So that's a real problem. And so obviously a lot of the states, even states and local jurisdictions, I've seen police chiefs say in red places that we'd love to do this. We would absolutely love to help by us, but we can't afford it. Right.

0:32:22 Thomas: Go right good

0:32:50 Matt: You guys want to throw us some cash, right? We'll do it for you.

0:32:45 Thomas: Point we are chomping at the bit of fascism over here we just don't have the funds yeah

0:32:54 Matt: But you know, like we have actual crime to prosecute and to do something about in our county. So we're not going to be able to do this. It's a big ask. Now, something that ICE is really working toward right now that I'm very concerned about, that I want to share with everybody about something they can actually do in their communities right now. There's a provision under Immigration and Nationality Act 287G that allows ICE to make agreements because typically speaking, speaking, of course, immigration authorities are the only people that can do immigration enforcement. That's how it's supposed to work. But notwithstanding, the attorney general may enter into a written agreement with a state or any political subdivision of a state pursuant to which an officer or employee of the state is determined by the attorney journal to be qualified to perform a function of an immigration officer. So this has been around for a while.

0:33:37 Matt: Basically, the federal authorities can deputize state and local authorities, and they can train them to do basic immigration enforcement. Now, the worst version of this is called the task force model. There's three different ways that it's done. The task force model was discontinued under Obama because they realized that it was so racist. Like there was no way that this was not going to be racial profiling because you're giving more racist than the default criminal system and more racist than the default immigration system.

0:33:34 Thomas: Sorry I don't think I really understood what that was oh wow more racist than the default of this oh my

0:34:02 Matt: It's a supercharged hybrid because you are giving, imagine like local cops who are just excited about deportation get to go out and accuse anybody they want of a crime and hold them so they can call their buddies at ICE. That's what they get to do under this. They get to just initiate deportation proceedings. So they can just say like, you know, wrong place, wrong time, whatever it looks like you're shoplifting, you're loitering, whatever, jaywalking, whenever you want to do. So this was causing all kinds of problems, obviously personified by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who we've talked about more than once before. I think sadly he's still with us.

0:34:32 Thomas: Is that guy dead yet yeah I don't think he's dead yet

0:34:32 Matt: I don't actually care enough to look it up. I literally don't care if he's alive or dead.

0:34:34 Thomas: Okay joe or I'll look it up I care if he's dead look man I would like to say I care if he is dead and I hope he is I'm just so I would like to 92 years young oh

0:34:43 Matt: Still with us, yeah. Yeah, he was actually the first person that Donald Trump pardoned the very, very first person. And he had to pardon, he was charged with criminal contempt because he wouldn't stop being racist. He was being criminally racist all over the place in Maricopa County, just arresting people based on the color of their skin and holding them for immigration purposes. 287G has other variants, which have still been used. And those are a little more understandable. Those allow something like officers in jail. So like correctional officers can be trained to help write up immigration and work with ICE to transfer people from criminal custody to ICE custody, which is again, how a lot of people come into the contact of ICE and into their custody. That makes sense because you're just kind of doing a passive role of helping to intercept people that ICE is already going to catch anyway and passing them on from the criminal system. It's not great, but it's nowhere near as bad as the task force model, which again was discontinued in 2013, I want to emphasize, because it was so racist. And of course, Trump brought it back. So we've now got hundreds of 287G task force model agreements that have been signed. We'll link to the full database so you can check and see if your local jurisdiction is participating. But it's kind of terrifying looking down this list when you sort this Excel spreadsheet that they link to from the ICE website.

0:35:55 Matt: It's so organized.

0:35:52 Thomas: They shouldn't be allowed to have a spreadsheet god damn it spreadsheets are too fun for what this is it's horrible

0:36:00 Matt: Pervert. Let's see here. We've got... Yes, there's something wrong with you. Spreadsheets are not fun.

0:36:01 Thomas: Did you say pervert that's the funniest joke you've ever made I thought you said I couldn't it was muddled so it took me a second no oh man yeah no I admit it I do I do accept it but I it was still

0:36:17 Matt: I thought you were just accepting it. Like, yeah, that's me.

0:36:30 Matt: I mean, clicking through though, you can sort this thing and Excel does give me hives, but you can sort through the task force model and you can see these have all been created, obviously since January, most of them in the last month or two. And the one that really concerns me is the Texas National Guard. The entire Texas National guard has signed a 287G agreement. This is what they call a force multiplier. And as you referenced before, I said from the beginning that ICE doesn't have the personnel onto itself, but I think I probably mentioned this back when when we were talking about triaging immigration enforcement, that they were going to start ramping up the ability to work with

0:36:34 Thomas: Unexpected yeah click through you sorry okay we get it can't go down that road oh my god yeah

0:37:05 Matt: Local authorities. And this is what that is going to look like. And, this is a pressure point that you, as a member of society who is listening right now, if you live in this country, you have the authority and the ability as a voter to step up and fight this. And to say to your local authorities, please do not engage in immigration enforcement.

0:37:22 Matt: I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to deporting people. I do not want you working with ICE. It is not your job. It's not even political. I just do not even want you to And so if you, and there's also a list on this, and we'll look to the ICE site so you can click there and see for yourself. There's a list both of the completed agreements as well as the pending agreements. So those could still be canceled. But if you get wind that your local law enforcement is considering this and whether it's a red or blue state, please do what you can, because this is a really, really important part of the equation for them.

0:37:45 Thomas: I do appreciate you giving the most centristy version of that message because I you have you know the audience you're trying to appeal to when you are making those requests you're to appeal law enforcement itself right to say don't don't cooperate so totally that's the way to go but I do want to say abolish ice and that should be what we are trying to do and I think that should be what democrats should run on we should stop being scared of everything. So many Democrats, or at least a number of prominent ones, like I think in particular my shitty governor, were taking this approach that like, hey, you know what? Don't even try on immigration because Donald Trump is just, it's such a popular issue. Don't Even try. We got to focus on the thing. And then you look at what happened and a whole bunch of people on the other side of that are really I mean in a way gloating right now that hey look at these numbers all of a sudden he's underwater on every issue including immigration it's not we Democrats I've said before but like we got to stop I don't Chuck Schumer if you listen to the show no I don'T think that any of them do unfortunately but like if you know a Chuck Schummer in your life to everyone find the Chuck Schumer in their life we need to stop acting like public opinion is this firm solid done done thing that we can only react to because it's just the opposite of true. I mean, some stuff is going to be hard to move, but for the most part, these things, we surrender these fights because we look at them as stuck. We look at the immigration as stuck and then a bunch of shit like this happens and all of a sudden it's not.

0:38:18 Matt: Yes. Oh, I hate it. Yep. That's right.

0:39:03 Matt: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And it was very heartening to me to see the numbers specifically on Kilmer Obrega -Garcia, like one guy. The numbers on that were very good, that people are generally opposed. I don't know how you can be somewhat opposed to that. There are quite a few somewhat opposed as well. But yeah, no, of course, I've got the t -shirt. I mean, I abolish ice all the way. But if you want to put together a campaign to organize in your community, no sure, of course, of curse. I always want to give people something they can actually do. And this is one that's going to be coming up a lot. This is going to become a political flashpoint in a lot of places. And once these agreements are made, it is not easy to unmake them.

0:39:17 Thomas: I know. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this was, it wasn't in any way disagreeing with that. Yeah, yep.

0:39:40 Matt: And certainly we're going to hopefully have a future administration someday that will no longer want the task force model and will cancel all of these the way that Obama did. But we can't count on that in time soon. And a lot of damage is going to be done. I mean, if you're talking about an entire National Guard force being enlisted as deputies for ICE, this is not going good places.

0:39:57 Matt: This is really bad. So we cannot allow that kind of integration. There's just no reason at all that state and local authorities should be doing any of this.

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0:41:30 Matt: I do want to just kind of go out on talking about where this goes. I've got a quick clip here from wannabe Bond villain Sebastian Gorka. Yeah.

0:41:38 Thomas: He's just, yeah, I mean, he thinks he's the Bond villain, but he got killed in the first act and actually the opening sequence. It wasn't even you didn't make it past the past the weird thing that's supposed to be the barrel of a gun I guess but looks nothing like the barrel of the gun You know that whole thing they do always thought that was weird. It looks like the back of the gun is ten times wider than the front of the gun I want to see someone draw what the bond gun actually should look like based on this is nothing But anyway, he doesn't even make it past that part.

0:42:02 Matt: It's okay. You've probably heard something about this, but I just want to make a point about what he's saying here. He's talking about public opinion and the response to things like the Obrega -Garcia and the deportations to El Salvador and the Alien Enemies Act. Let's hear him talk about that.

0:42:17 Clip: I came up with this over a year ago when I had my show on Newsmax, Rob, and I realized that the taxonomy of politics in America is dead. It's not left and right. It's not even Republican or Democrat. There's one line that divides us. Do you love America or do you hate America? It's really quite that simple. And we have people who love America, like the president, like his cabinet,

0:42:33 Thomas: I Came up with this thing that the fascists on the right have been doing for all time of America america it's called do you love america I hate america no man that's been from the beginning okay

0:42:38 Matt: Just thought of it. Yeah those are your options. Yep.

0:42:47 Clip: Not like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans.

0:42:49 Thomas: Sorry sorry I just can't help I've got this novel theory are you one of the good people or one of the bad people it's like dude that's been the whole thing that's all anyway sorry it's so stupid

0:42:52 Clip: And then there is the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of illegal aliens, on this side of terrorists.

0:43:11 Clip: And you have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute, Rob.

0:43:07 Thomas: Oh yeah love him favorite he's saying that like those are words he just came came across. Aiding and abetting? Because I... God, this guy. Was there more or was that it?

0:43:24 Matt: That's me. Yeah. Yeah, and abetting. No, that's more than enough, Sebastian Gorka. And historically, people who sound like that are not the good guys, but yeah, it's just Disney villains.

0:43:38 Thomas: Nobody sounds like that. They're not even guys. They're just nobody.

0:43:45 Matt: If you read what he's saying, instead of listening to it, it's actually almost more impactful because you have to take it more seriously.

0:43:49 Thomas: Yeah. He's such a joke.

0:43:51 Matt: But what he is saying is very bad. And I wanted to close on this because this is where this is going. And this is where I've known it's going for a while. But at some point, and again, I want to be extremely as exceptionally clear about this as I've ever been on anything on this show. I do not support violence. I know that you don't support violence. Somebody is going to commit an act of violence against an ICE officer. It's going to happen because they keep kidnapping people off the street. And there are a lot of guns in this country. It is just going to happen. And at the point at which that does happen, there is going to be a lot of talk about those of us who have been criticizing ICE and those of us who have been critical of immigration policy generally and of Trump's policies. And he's saying here directly that people who are critical of immigration policies carried out by this president are aiding and abetting terrorists, as defined, of course, by the Trump administration, which includes their made -up gang members. And that's the first time I've actually heard somebody say that. Now, he's not just some asshole on TV. He's an asshole on tv who happens to be the counterterrorism czar of the United He has

0:44:46 Thomas: He has an actual thing? I thought it was too much of a joke for the...

0:44:48 Matt: An actual job.

0:44:49 Thomas: I thought he got kicked out of something the first administration, but I guess, Yeah.

0:44:52 Matt: He did. And then he still has a job now somehow. So we have to actually take that seriously. I mean, he's promising. He's kind of been teasing this, but they have a new counterterrorism plan coming that will be utterly and completely different from the prior government's approach to domestic terrorism. So that's concerning. I am concerned, I will say.

0:45:12 Matt: Because if they're defining aiding and abetting terror as criticizing ICE, as being critical of these immigration policies, even in a peaceful and rational and democratic way, just as we are here, and then when you have ICE as a gigantic national police force that is only accountable to the president, they really only consider themselves to be accountable to one person. And they really are, at the end of the day, they really are only accountable to Trump when it comes down to it. There's really no one else that can stop them. And when you've got an FBI director like Kash Patel, who's willing to pretty much do anything to go after domestic enemies, this is where this all goes. And so, yes, seeing Hannah Dugan arrested in her courtroom is very, very concerning. Much more so than Shelley Joseph was in 2018, because we're in a different position now than we were in 2018. We're in different place.

0:45:54 Thomas: Yeah, way different. I noted when you talked about that, that it sounded like the only way she got out of that was just by Trump not winning in 2020. Right. I mean, for all we know, had Trump won, like what would be happening right now?

0:46:04 Matt: Pretty much, yes she could be doing time right now.

0:46:08 Thomas: Did she lose her job? Yeah. What's going to I mean? Man, I meant to ask all this earlier. What's going to happen with this judge's position? Does this threaten that? You know, I mean.

0:46:16 Matt: Being charged with federal felonies is not really compatible with being a judge. She's going to have to take a suspension at least, and very likely will end up losing her license. I mean, that's what happened. Let me just double check though.

0:46:25 Thomas: Wow. That is unreal.

0:46:27 Matt: So Shelley Joseph is still a lawyer in Massachusetts, and I believe she's still registered as a judge. I don't know what's going on with her, but she went through a lot and she had to pay quite a lot in attorney's fees, obviously, to defend herself. It was a lot. And the court officer too was also charged. I felt pretty bad for him because he was just doing his job. But this is though, they're promising, specifically promising to do this too. And I'm sure we're going to see a prosecutor. We may even see a mayor, somebody like Michelle Wu may get charged if they continue to speak out. And if there's any indication whatsoever that they're doing anything that the federal government could interpret as getting in the way of immigration enforcement, even if they're just telling state and local police to follow the law and

0:46:34 Thomas: Oh, God, I bet. But I know now my thought is if this can disqualify judges, then he's just this is his way to get rid of all the judges he doesn't like all the time. I mean, it was already bad, but like now it's like on the thinnest of accusations. That sounds like a way to take a bunch of judges out of the equation.

0:47:13 Matt: Scare the rest pretty badly. I know that it certainly was pretty scary, the Joseph arrest. Yeah. So it's a bad sign. Again, I still believe that all of this can be reversed and that we're nowhere near the kind of ICE enforcement that we're going to be looking at. If they continue on the trajectory they want, they're looking for up to, I think, $175 billion at this point from Congress, and they might get a lot of it. They might get all of it, but for the moment, what they're going to be looking for is a kind of force multipliers that we were talking about. And we can stop this. We still live in a democratic society where we can keep our state and local officials from participating in these things, and where we Can eventually get these people out of office. I know we can.

0:47:15 Thomas: Oh, boy, this is bad. All right, man. On that note. Yeah, we got to keep the energy. I saw a lot of protests over this. That's great. I really hope people maintain that energy. This is absolutely unacceptable. And it just really it always can get worse and we need to stop it. I don't mean that in a, I mean that in specifically not a demotivating way, because I do think a lot of what has demotivated people is the thought that it can't get worse, but I'm here to motivate you by saying it very much can get worse.

0:48:10 Thomas: There's so much worse it can get, so therefore stay motivated to not let that happen.

0:48:14 Matt: And don't get used to this. This is not normal.

0:48:15 Thomas: Yeah. Ooh, yeah. I remember that, that oldie.

0:48:18 Matt: Still true.

0:48:19 Thomas: Matt, thanks for the breakdown, and thanks so much listeners, and most of all to our patrons. We'll see you very soon for Bar Exam Wednesday or maybe Rapid Response Friday.

0:48:44 Thomas: While we're stopped I was gonna say your sound is a little hollow is there anything weird going on or just maybe is

0:48:50 Matt: Positioned where I should be as far as I know.

0:48:52 Thomas: It what setting is this the

0:48:53 Matt: Oh, wait, hold on. Wait, is that better? On this side?

0:48:55 Thomas: Same that's way better yeah that might be

0:48:57 Matt: My mic was backwards. Holy shit. Somebody in the move switched my mic around. Oh there we go.

0:49:02 Thomas: It that sounds like you're actually

0:49:04 Matt: That's nice. That waveform is so much better. Wow. Okay.

0:49:08 Thomas: Here dear god okay we are chomping at the bit of fascism over here we just don't have the funds