Masked ICE brokers are solely the beginning of the assault on authorities transparency. Now, authorities attorneys which might be arguing to deport immigrants are doing so in secret.
The Intercept reports on two separate situations immigration judges in New York Metropolis declined to establish the federal government attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Within the first case Decide ShaSha Xu mentioned, “We’re not likely doing names publicly.” However that’s not likely true. As a result of she *did* ID the immigrants earlier than her in court docket and their attorneys. It was solely the federal government lawyer that operated anonymously — in contravention of each customized of the authorized occupation.
The attorneys arguing towards the anonymous agent of the federal government, Jeffrey Okun and Hugo Gonzalez Venegas in separate circumstances, have been shocked by the event. Okun referred to as it “weird” and Gonzalez Venegas mentioned it was “a horrible lack of transparency on the a part of officers of the court docket.”
The id of the federal government lawyer was revealed to the attorneys by personal messaging. And Gonzalez Venegas recognized her as Cosette Shachno.
Decide James McCarthy was additionally noticed declining to establish authorities ICE attorneys on the file, as an alternative utilizing the dystopian moniker “Division” in open court docket.
And it may even worsen:
“This can be a very new and really disturbing flip of occasions,” mentioned Daniel Kowalski, a former longtime immigration lawyer who now edits the authorized journal Bender’s Immigration Bulletin for LexisNexis.
“The place does it cease?” requested Kowalski. “Are the immigration judges going to be unnamed? Behind a display screen?”
In line with one other immigration choose, Shirley Lazare-Raphael, there isn’t any formal coverage directing judges to anonymize ICE attorneys on the file. “It’s as much as the judges whether or not or not they need to do it,” she mentioned. She additionally famous some ICE attorneys imagine it’s “harmful to state their names publicly.” Cue the attention rolls. That’s the identical drained excuse ICE brokers are utilizing to conduct masked raids, when actually it’s being recognized with the controversial and dangerous “mass deportations” of the Trump administration that’s the difficulty.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Legislation, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the perfect, so please join together with her. Be happy to e mail her with any ideas, questions, or feedback and observe her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
