Panel urges no ICE arrests at courthouses

SALEM, Ore. — Seeking to halt federal agents from arresting people in courthouses for immigration violations, a panel of judges in Oregon has asked the state’s Supreme Court chief justice to impose a rule stating that no one should be subjected to arrest without a warrant.

Several judges on the Uniform Trial Court Rules Committee said Friday the matter is of urgent concern because immigrants, even legal residents, are afraid to go to court because of fear they will be detained by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents.

The agents have been detaining people who appear for court proceedings and are suspected of being in the United States illegally. In one case, captured in a videotape shown by lawyers to the committee, ICE agents pepper-sprayed family members of a person they were trying to arrest. That happened in a courthouse in Astoria, Oregon.

The committee voted in favor of recommending to Oregon Chief Justice Martha Walters that she establish a rule that anyone inside a courthouse or in the immediate area be safe from arrest by immigration agents if they don’t have a judicial warrant.

Some of the judges on the committee, though, worried that this could set up an armed confrontation with county sheriff ’s deputies who provide court security and federal agents.

“I don’t know how we would handle that situation, honestly,” said Judge Lung Hung of Malheur County Circuit Court. “It’s the enforcement that concerns me.”

Leland Baxter-Neal, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Oregon, said he did not envision that deputies would be tackling federal agents to prevent them from arresting immigrants in courthouses. Violations of the rule, if it is adopted by Walters, would be presented as evidence if the detainee was taken to immigration court.

Baxter-Neal also said that in jurisdictions that have adopted similar rules, ICE has respected them, and that he expected they would also be respected in Oregon.

ICE spokeswoman Tanya Roman said the idea that a state law can bind the hands of a federal law enforcement agency is wrong. She said federal law provides ICE officers the authority to arrest people who are in the country illegally without a judicial warrant.

“In fact, no judge in this country has the authority to issue a warrant for a civil immigration violation. Congress, by statute, vested this authorization solely to supervisory immigration officers,” Roman said in an email.

The New York State Office of Court Administration in April issued rules curtailing the ability of federal immigration officials to arrest immigrants in state courthouses without warrants.