Oh boy! This case highlights the state and federal tensions with illegal aliens and deportation. Ignoring law and order has gone on for so long that it’s even being ignored by a judge in Portland, Oregon.
Many leaders in sanctuary cities across the country have already said they’ll ignore the immigration laws and harbor the illegals. If they do ignore the laws, federal funds could be withheld from them:
A young man’s daring escape from capture by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, apparently with the assistance of a local judicial referee, has shocked and divided the Portland legal community.
Multnomah County court referee Monica Herranz is under internal review and the target of complaints from a federal prosecutor after allegedly helping the undocumented immigrant elude ICE last month by exiting the courtroom through an employee door.
The getaway didn’t ultimately keep the man from being snared by immigration officials after pleading guilty to a DUII. But it demonstrates how everyday court proceedings have mutated, and how tensions have grown within the criminal justice system, as ICE steps up deportations under President Donald Trump.
“Our job is to run a courthouse,” says Multnomah County Circuit Presiding Judge Nan Waller. “It’s a difficult position to be in.”
Diddier Pacheco Salazar, a Mexican-born construction worker in his mid-20s, was charged Jan. 1 with driving recklessly and under the influence of intoxicants. At his first court appearance Jan. 3 he pleaded not guilty.
At his second appearance, on Jan. 27, he changed his plea to guilty in exchange for a deferred sentence and entry into a diversion program.
Two days earlier, Trump had signed executive orders starting the construction of a border wall with Mexico, stepping up deportations of undocumented immigrants, and declaring that “sanctuary jurisdictions” such as Portland could lose federal grant funding. Reports spread of increased activity by plainclothes ICE officers in and around the Multnomah County Courthouse.
Pacheco Salazar and his court-appointed attorney, John Schlosser, were aware of the risks. They knew, Schlosser says, that plainclothes ICE agents were waiting outside the courtroom on the third floor of the Justice Center at 1120 SW 3rd Ave. It appeared Pacheco Salazar might be deported before he could face justice.
“I prepped my client. I said, ‘I don’t know if they’re going to pick you up outside or what, but here’s how to prepare,'” Schlosser tells WW. “After the court appearance, I went out in the hallway and sat.
Read more:wweek
