Masked ICE arrest is unconstitutional, federal judge finds
A West Virginia federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration violated an El Salvadoran man’s rights when masked federal agents arrested him and then kept him in custody without a bond hearing. Here, a masked federal agent roams the halls of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, New York City, in December seeking possible detainees. (Photo by Andrea Renault/Star Max/IPx via the Associated Press)
A West Virginia federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration violated an El Salvadoran man’s rights when masked federal agents arrested him and then kept him in custody without a bond hearing, according to a story by Law360.
Describing the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts as an “assault on the constitutional order,” U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately release Anderson Jesus Urquilla-Ramos, a man who entered the country as an unaccompanied minor. Urquilla-Ramos has a pending asylum case and work permit, according to Law360.
“Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process,” Goodwin wrote in the ruling.
“The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description,” the judge wrote. “It is what the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. It is what the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids.”
Urquilla-Ramos was arrested and detained after a Jan. 7 traffic stop, when masked agents in an unmarked vehicle with no license plates pulled him over—on the premise that there was a plastic cover on his vehicle’s license plate.
A U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson declined to comment Monday. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Law360.
See also:
Judge blocks California’s ban on federal agents wearing face masks; badges still required
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