Brilliant DHS Investigative Sleuths Targeting Migrants at Court Hearings (Again)

This method was tried in Trump's first administration and the results were not good

You’d think that with all the resources of the federal enforcement apparatus at their disposal, that the Department of Homeland Security and their immigration law enforcement arm Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be able to conduct business in a more tactful way.

The startling news of the arrest of a Wisconsin judge has highlighted the Trump Administration’s preferred investigative technique: check court schedules, see if any names match up with names on a list of undesirable migrants, and boom, apprehend them in the courthouse.

It’s like they read the first chapter of Investigations for Dummies¹ and acted upon their newfound knowledge.

Now, at first glance, this might seem like an admirable way to solve the “problem” of criminal migrants. Criminals, after all, are the ones that have to go to court for criminal proceedings. So if you do a scan of criminal court proceedings and there are some migrants on the docket then that’s an easy way to find and apprehend these people.

Notwithstanding the provable fact that there is not really a criminal migrant problem, I’m going to be generous here to the Trump administration and acknowledge that they are onto something; they have indeed uncovered a useful phenomenon. The simplicity and cost-savings of this approach are evident, and we must give them credit for that. DOGE would be proud.

But is this really the best they can do? A simple cross-reference of the migrant equivalent of a “naughty” list with publicly available court schedules? And then strong-arm the target in the hallways of the court right after the proceeding?

At the very least, it seems like these ICE agents might want to exercise their brains a bit and do some real investigative work. It’s not incredibly hard to find out where people live in this day age if one really wants to, especially with all the technology and data in the world just seconds away.

The way this particular incident played out was another example of embarrassing brutishness, if not downright incompetence, for the Trump administration. According to the criminal complaint of the arrested judge, there were six agents on hand. And after reading the complaint you’d think that they were all misdirected and confused by the judge’s wily schemes, despite ending up in the same hallway, elevator, and courthouse-adjacent sidewalk as the migrant in question, even after the judge perpetrated her deception.

But beyond the Chief Wiggins-esque ham-handedness, there are other factors that dictate a different approach in apprehending migrants. There are costs other than money and labor-hours that will be difficult to overcome.

The Effectiveness Cost

First, there is the cost of effectiveness. By staking out courthouses at hearings involving migrant targets, the government is showing its hand, which weakens their ability to apprehend such people.

The charges against the migrant in question, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, were pretty serious, and one could make an argument that he should be removed from the country. But if you really think he’s a bad person with a penchant for criminal intent, why expose the most obvious technique for arresting him? Wouldn’t other migrant bad actors notice and adjust?

Similar to how intelligence officials don’t act on important information because they don’t want to tip their hand to foreign adversaries about their sources and methods, it makes more sense to use stealth and unpredictability to arrest these individuals.

You might say, “well the migrants have to be there because they’ve been ordered to by the court. They will get in further trouble if they don’t show up or try to evade them”.

True, but this also presents a bit of a conundrum: The migrants that follow the procedures of justice are in essence either cooperating and paying the price for their alleged crimes, or are taking advantage of constitutionally guaranteed due process to prove such allegations wrong. If they are found guilty, they’ll be punished; if they are not, they are exonerated and at that point it’s hard to accuse them of being “dangerous criminal migrants” if they weren’t convicted of a crime.

The ones that are truly criminals will be less inclined to show up, more likely to go on the run and hide underground, and therefore less likely to be found.

Conservatives that believe that “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”, might find the following analogous statement useful: “if migrants know they are going to be picked up at court hearings, they will be less likely to show up and more likely become outlaws.”

The Justice System Cost

You also have the problem of gumming up the gears of the judicial system. By doing highly public performative arrests at courthouses, the government is making the administration of justice harder.

This is because it alters certain elements of a criminal prosecution. It has a chilling effect on not only alleged criminals’ willingness to show up, but also victims’ and witnesses’ willingness to speak up and cooperate.

Trump implemented the same courthouse apprehension policy in his first term from 2017-2021, so there’s plenty of data about how such policies affect the judicial process.

A 2018 ACLU report entitled “Freezing Out Justice: How Immigration Arrests at Courthouses are Undermining the Justice System” explained the effects (bold added by me to emphasize the main points).

What is clear from the results is that when immigration officers conduct arrests in courthouses, there can be significant damage to the ability of the police, prosecutors, defenders, and judges to deliver justice.

In 2017, immigration arrests by ICE soared by 30 percent from the 2016 fiscal year. During the same period, police officers reported the most dramatic drop in outreach from and cooperation with immigrant and limited English proficiency (LEP) communities over the past year. Since police are often the first point of contact for survivors of crime within the justice system, the decline in trust and cooperation has a significant impact on their work and on the rest of the justice system.

…. law enforcement officials reported that many crimes have become more difficult to investigate: 69 percent said domestic violence was harder to investigate, 64 percent said this applied to human trafficking, and 59 percent said this was true about sexual assault.

….many categories of crimes have become more difficult to prosecute as a result of an increase in fear of immigration consequences. In particular, 82 percent of prosecutors reported that since President Trump took office, domestic violence is now underreported and harder to investigate and/or prosecute. Seventy percent of prosecutors reported the same for sexual assault, while 55 percent stated the same difficulties for human trafficking and 48 percent for child abuse.

The report concludes with a recommendation that DHS include courthouses on a list of “sensitive locations that are protected from immigration enforcement actions” along with schools, hospitals, and places of worship. This is exactly what the Biden administration did in 2021.

In a statement announcing the 2021 change in policy, then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said: “the expansion of civil immigration arrests at courthouses during the prior administration had a chilling effect on individuals' willingness to come to court or work cooperatively with law enforcement.”

Limiting courthouse arrests is therefore not a policy of immigration leniency, it is a policy of maximum justice system efficiency. If you are truly interested in the administration of justice and the rule of law, including criminals being caught and prosecuted, you should be less inclined to want a policy of migrant arrests at courthouses.

The Political Cost

We won’t know for sure until the midterm elections in 2026 what political effect will truly be. But the polls are suggesting that it won’t go well for Trump and Republicans that support this policy.

Even before this spectacle in Wisconsin, Trump’s support among Americans for his immigration policy has been suffering.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration 53%-46%. In addition, about half said that Trump hads“gone too far” on deportations.

Below is a graphic showing how people voted in the 2024 presidential election based on five main issues:

As you can see, immigration was considered Trump’s strongest issue in the presidential campaign. The fact that his approval on immigration is now underwater is extraordinary and suggests that actions like the judge’s arrest are going to further alienate the public.

Just get the job done

Most reasonable people can agree that truly violent or criminal migrants should be arrested, prosecuted, and potentially deported. But the grandstanding and showboating by immigration law enforcement officials at public places such as courthouses makes the overall enforcement more difficult.

If we want a more law-abiding society, then the government needs to stop pushing spectacles of human suffering into the spotlight and start simply doing their job. And their jobs will be much easier with the cooperation of some of the very people they seek to remove from the country.

1. Not a real book