Chaos at the courthouse
ICE arrests near Denver courthouse escalate tension between ICE and state and local governments
When Trump was first president, ICE officers tackled a man in the doorway of Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. When they arrested another man and his lawyer asked to see their warrant, the agents refused. Worried that courthouse arrests make it hard for state courts to function, legislatures passed a law in 2020 protecting access to court proceedings.
Four years later, Trump is back in the White House and so are ICE agents. Activists reported that ICE agents arrested three people outside the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse on Wednesday. If true, this marks a major escalation in the tension between the federal government and Colorado.
The law that Colorado legislators enacted in 2020, inspired by research by my late colleague Chris Lasch, bars “civil arrest while the person is present at a courthouse or on its environs, or while going to, attending, or coming from a court proceeding.” Most violations of immigration law, including living in the United States without the federal government’s permission, are civil matters. Reports from the Colorado Rapid Response Network, based in Denver, claim that the people arrested were either arriving at the courthouse or leaving after a hearing.
ICE’s acting director, Caleb Vitello, announced during Trump’s first week that agents would return to making courthouse arrests. The agency’s new policy allows agents to arrest targeted individuals as well as their relatives and friends.
Arresting someone solely because ICE agents believe the person is in the United States in violation of immigration law clashes directly with Colorado’s courthouse safety policy. The law authorizes a person who is arrested in violation of the state law to sue the arresting officer. Despite that legal option, holding an individual ICE officer financially accountable is near impossible if they were carrying out their job duties in good faith.
The state law also allows the Colorado attorney general to sue the Department of Homeland Security to prevent future arrests of people who are going or coming from a courthouse. Asking a court to block ICE from arresting anyone else inside the state’s courthouses pits the federal government against Colorado. The federal government’s authority to decide who can live in the United States, and under what conditions, isn’t in doubt and the state law doesn’t threaten that.
Instead, the state law tries to protect important features of the state’s democratic governance. Without people coming and going, courts can’t operate effectively and without effective courts Coloradans’ ability to regulate themselves diminishes. When it enacted the state law, Colorado legislators reiterated that “access to courts is a cornerstone of Colorado's republican form of government.”
The state and local officials who run the Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse aren’t without options. They wouldn’t let a marching band traipse through the courthouse lobby or protestors line the hallways. When a victim’s relatives attack an accuser or a defendant attacks a judge, court officials quickly step in to quiet the chaos and allow courts to do their work.
In 2017, when ICE last arrested people inside Denver’s courthouse, I published an oped in the Denver Post asking, “How will Denver respond?” Seven years later that question is again relevant.
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Dear César García Hernández,
May this comment find us all ever closer to God, and His Clarity.
Although I support end of non-legal immigration and returning all illegals except those that really are political risk in their country, I honor your Service to those in need.
This morning I was abusing ChatGPT on immigration and it spewed-up all the native-genocide pushing mass immigration programmed Woke lies, how diversity from a culture much worse than ours used to be, all flooded in, that our culture and economics would improved - never mind we already have too many of whichever Diversity the AI's lying trainers, those that hope to ship mass labor numbers in to drive wages even lower, to starve our families, for their profits.
As a Lawyer perhaps you might suggest this approach to end the 1960's immigration law that started our path to full replacement.
In Minersville School District v. Gobitis is stated "But all these specific activities of government presuppose the existence of an organized political society. The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment. Such a sentiment is fostered by all those agencies of the mind and spirit which may serve to gather up the traditions of a people, transmit them from generation to generation, and thereby create that continuity of a treasured common life which constitutes a civilization." ..
.. and so, can this be an argument against mass immigration of peoples that do not value or nation's cohesive sentiments and values?
Perhaps the arguments that made sense in the 1940's and thousands of years before is too sane to be useful? Well, I will have to read through more legal case records wider the I have been reading for fun.
God Bless., Steve