A Federal Immigration court judge has determined, "We're not really doing names publicly," in reference only to ICE's lawyers, after disclosing the names of the immigrants and their lawyers, as well as her own, and offering a free pass to the brown shirts.
That's apparently becoming the new normal, at least in a couple of courts, as Debbie Nathan reports for The Intercept.
Inside a federal immigration courtroom in New York City last month, a judge took an exceedingly unusual step: declining to state the name of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney pressing to deport asylum seekers.
"We're not really doing names publicly," said Judge ShaSha Xu — after stating her own name and those of the immigrants and their lawyers. It was the first of two separate instances The Intercept identified in which judges chose to withhold the identities of the attorneys representing the Trump administration's deportation regime.
Who's "we," Judge Xu? Everyone in attendance knows who you are, along with the names of the immigrants and their lawyers. "We" cannot possibly be the government's lawyer, because only one person is being granted this extremely peculiar privilege.
The non-government parties objected to this unearned and completely unexpected anonymity but it didn't matter. Judge Xu also apparently felt the non-government parties weren't deserving of any legal justification for her decision to omit the name of the ICE lawyer from the public record:
Xu attributed the change to "privacy" because "things lately have changed."
What had "changed" went unexplained. Either this judge was buying into ICE's bullshit about assaults on ICE employees (which is a number so low it provokes unintentional laughter) or the government had decided it wanted anonymity and the judge decided she was going to oblige the party with the most power.
Either way, Judge Xu isn't the only one doing this.
TechDirt
How or why government lawyers or highly militarized police officers should go anonymous is beyond me. We have become a society where knocks come on doors and people disappear. TechDirt points out that the immigrants' lawyers failed in one event by not pushing back against this abnormal cowardice by lawyers representing the United States; however, they should not have to. The Justice system may be the least broken branch of the Federal government, but that is shocking and horrifying, not any sign of its strength.
Previously:
• Civil rights lawyers have one simple piece of advice for border stops: Keep your mouth shut
• Neighbors of arrested Iranian nationals skeptical of CBP claims (video)
