{"id":22477,"date":"2020-02-06T11:15:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=22477"},"modified":"2020-02-06T11:15:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:15:38","slug":"ice-courthouses-illegal-aliens-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2020\/02\/06\/ice-courthouses-illegal-aliens-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegals Don\u2019t Fear Courthouse Arrests \u2013 But They Should"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The media is full of stories<\/a> about politicians and activists<\/a> decrying the manifest injustice of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting illegal aliens in local courthouses and about local jurisdictions declaring themselves \u201csanctuaries,\u201d in violation of federal law. \u00a0But are illegal aliens really afraid<\/a> of local law enforcement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently not. Take the most recent example, reported in the Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em>: Ericka Gonzalez Zuniga is an illegal alien, who has been convicted of multiple crimes, and who was ordered deported in 2005. However, she seems to have held a sincere belief that she was safe in entering a courthouse in Hidalgo County, Texas. Ms. Zuniga showed up to observe her son\u2019s sentencing hearing. He had been convicted of killing a local police dispatcher while driving drunk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One would think that any illegal alien who truly feared\narrest simply wouldn\u2019t have shown up any place where justice is meted out and\nlaw enforcement officers are found in abundance. Especially in Texas, a\njurisdiction with a reputation for law and order and a decidedly low tolerance\nfor scofflaws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Ms. Zuniga was so convinced that federal\njurisdiction over immigration does not extend to state courthouses, her family\nactually accused ICE of acting in bad faith. They stated, \u201cIt is important to recognize the\nmalicious intent of the ICE officials who waited for Ms. Gonzalez Suniga [sic<\/em>] outside the 275th District\nCourt.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How so? That\nisn\u2019t at all clear. Because, to any rational observer, it should be obvious\nthat the only party acting with malicious intent was Ms. Zuniga. She broke the\nlaw. Based on her lawless behavior, ICE exercised its authority to arrest her. Where\nICE arrested her is totally irrelevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As FAIR has pointed out<\/a> several times in the past, arrests \u2013 both civil and criminal \u2013 are a common occurrence in courthouses. The notion that courthouses are some type of refuge where litigants are not subject to arrest is a fantastical one that simply does not comport with the way courts are administered in reality.\u00a0 Every day, in courtrooms all over the United States, thousands of probation violators, parents who have failed to keep up with child support payments and litigants who have failed to comply with court orders are taken into custody. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they\nweren\u2019t, law enforcement agencies would waste millions of dollars searching for\nfugitives who could have been lawfully arrested when they stood before the bar\nof justice. Moreover, while courts have the authority to incarcerate criminal\ndefendants over for trial and issue civil arrest warrants (known as a \u201ccapias\u201d<\/em>), they are dependent on\nsheriff\u2019s departments or local policing agencies to effectuate arrests.  Simply put, if apprehensions in courthouses\nwere banned, the business of the courts would grind to a screeching halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, ultimately, none of that really matters. As FAIR has also pointed out, ICE is a federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction throughout the United States. It does not need state or local permission to arrest anyone anywhere in the U.S. And, pursuant to the Supremacy Clause<\/a> of the U.S. Constitution, states have no authority to dictate where, when or how ICE chooses to arrest anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what is the problem here? Other than Ms. Zuniga and her supporters throwing a tantrum because they didn\u2019t get what they wanted, there isn\u2019t one. And ICE should be applauded for enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act, as written, while putting illegal aliens on notice that they no longer have a free and uninterrupted run of the United States. It\u2019s time that all<\/em> immigration law breakers developed a healthy fear<\/a> of arrest anywhere in America. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media is full of stories about politicians and activists decrying the manifest injustice of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting illegal aliens in local courthouses and about local jurisdictions declaring themselves \u201csanctuaries,\u201d in violation of federal law. \u00a0But are illegal aliens really afraid of local law enforcement? Apparently not. Take the most recent example,<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":9151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[7203,1524,47,71],"yst_prominent_words":[2019,5087,4231,1995,1943,2243,1918,2013,2010,2008,1963,7100,2030,2159,2252,7688,1945,1939,1933,7628],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22478,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477\/revisions\/22478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22477"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}