A court officer with the powers of a judge in Portland, Ore., is accused of helping an illegal alien evade immigration officers who were waiting outside a courtroom, says the U.S. attorney for Oregon.
The officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, were waiting outside a courtroom to take custody of an illegal alien who was then being arraigned for drunk driving in Portland’s Multnomah County Courthouse. The officers were told to wait, and then discovered their quarry had escaped out a door used only by court officers, U.S. Attorney Billy Williams said.
Williams said that on Jan. 27 a “judicial referee” helped the illegal alien sneak out another door to elude ICE agents, according to the Oregonian.
The U.S. Attorney noted that ICE officers “waited and waited” outside the referee’s courtroom but the suspect never came out through the public entrance.
“The man exited the courtroom through a side door and found his way out of the building,” Williams said.
A judicial referee has the powers of a circuit judge and can preside over cases in small claims court, can hear issues concerning landlords and tenants, as well as preside over traffic court.
“I found it to be troubling,” Williams added. “We are all officers of the court, and we all take an oath to follow the law.”
Judge Nan Waller, Multnomah County Circuit Court’s presiding judge, sent an email to court staffers warning them not to impede federal officials. But she also wrote that she informed federal officials to treat the courthouse as a “sensitive location.”
The actions by this Portland “judge” is yet another example of government officials acting on their own hook to frustrate immigration officers.
For a few examples, in what was described as an unusual move, a federal judge stepped outside his venue and issued orders to block the White House travel order on February 3. Judge James L. Robart, a federal judge in Washington State, granted a nationwide emergency order blocking the president’s Jan. 25 Executive Order restricting immigration travel, declaring the order unconstitutional.
In another example, the Dallas, Texas, school District decided to afford “sanctuary” status to their facilities to deny ICE officials any access to students.
Further, only a week ago, bureaucrats leaked an “incomplete” report critical of the Jan. 25 Executive Order putting a temporary halt to immigration from a list of seven terror-stricken countries flagged by the Obama administration. The leak led to stories in the media insisting that the Department of Homeland Security was at odds with the White House on the travel order.
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning claimed that the leaks should spark the president to cut up to 20 percent of the federal workforce. “By now it should be abundantly clear … that there are Obama administration holdovers in the 1.3 million non-defense, civilian federal workforce who have no other intention than to politically damage the White House,” Manning said.
Finally, just prior to the 2016 presidential election, Obama’s Border Patrol was accused of fudging statistics in order to help Hillary Clinton win the election by obscuring the fact that a record number of illegals had crossed the border in 2016. Brandon Judd, Border Patrol agent and president of the National Border Patrol Council, condemned the leadership of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for allegedly “keeping this information secret” ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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