David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, said that a Wisconsin judge protecting an illegal immigrant from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be “something illegal” and “something heroic” against the Trump government.
Brooks talked about the news on Friday that Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested and charged with obstruction of an official proceeding after it was found that she had kept Mexican national Eduardo Flores-Ruiz from talking to ICE agents after his court hearing.
A criminal charge says that Dugan told the officers to go to the chief judge’s office. After his hearing was over, he led Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out of a restricted jury door, going around the area where agents were waiting to help him avoid being arrested.
Brooks said that even if Dugan did “escort this guy out the door,” that could be seen as “necessary” civil obedience, even though he didn’t “know the specific details of this case” at the time.
“It seems like something that might be against the law, but it also seems like something that would be brave.” When things are going badly, people are sometimes told to disobey the law. Also, I believe that people who break the law should be taken to task. “To be honest, that’s part of what makes it heroic,” Brooks said on “PBS Newshour.”
He said, “And so you can both think that she shouldn’t have legally done this and that morally protecting somebody against, maybe not even in this case, but in other cases, frankly, a predatory enforcement agency, sometimes, civil disobedience is necessary.”
Brooks thought that there might be more resistance in the coming weeks and months and told protesters to do so calmly.
“That’s one way to change people’s minds, because violently cracking down on peaceful protesters is one way for authoritarians to lose control.” This is how you make an authoritarian government look bad. “And so that—that may happen,” Brooks said.
Flores-Ruiz had three misdemeanour battery charges against him for reportedly beating up two people when he went to court with Dugan on April 18. He was caught after officials said they had “probable cause” to believe that he was removable under U.S. immigration law, since he had been deported before and had never asked for or been granted permission to come back to the country.
When police told him who they were outside of court on April 18, he ran away on foot, but after a short chase, he was caught, according to the criminal charge.