The immigration enforcement officers involved in an operation that resulted in the shooting death of a man in Houston were not wearing body cameras at the time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday. And the father of three who died was not the agents’ intended target, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia.
A spokesperson for Garcia, the Houston Democrat whose district includes the predominantly Latino area where the shooting took place Tuesday morning, said she had spoken with David Venturella, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Venturella allegedly told Garcia that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was shot and killed on Tuesday by an ICE agent, was not the intended target of the operation.
“Another passenger had an administrative warrant and was the target,” Joseph Guzman, a spokesperson for Garcia, told Houston Public Media.
Remember how there was that brief spike in convictions of cops planting evidence, for about six months until the cops figured out the body cam kept recording for about 30 seconds after pressing the off button? Then poof magically this spike disappeared after the cops learned this.
I remember.
For anything that happens when a cop’s body cam is turned off, it should legally be assumed the cop is lying.
They should record for a random amount of time between 30 seconds and five minutes after being turned off
They should record from the moment they’re taken off of a charger until they’re put back on, I think. Makes their use even easier! Nothing to complain about, right, cops? Right, guys? Please?
“Another passenger had an administrative warrant and was the target,” Joseph Guzman, a spokesperson for Garcia, told Houston Public Media.
Except they’ve already claimed that they let all of the passengers go.
“Administrative warrant” is a bullshit term, they are not warrants (which requires an executive branch law enforcement officer to ask a judicial branch court for permission), they’re fucking rubber stamps one ICE employee gives another
They’re warrants, but they’re not judicial warrants.
Police are allowed to arrest someone actively committing a crime in public at any time. An warrant can allow specific individuals to be arrested/detained without having probable cause. But a judicial warrant is required to search, detain, arrest, etc in a manner that would otherwise violate civil liberties (e.g. entering private property to enforce the warrant).
An immigration court judge ha as “judge” in their title, but since immigration courts are part of the executive branch their warrants are administrative and not judicial. So they can allow someone on public property to be arrested, but they aren’t supposed to enter homes or businesses without permission from the property owner.
A lot of the habeus cases that the admin has been losing have been based on the improper execution of administrative warrants.
The reason immigration courts with administrative warrants exist is because being in the country illegally isn’t actually a crime, but a civil infraction. The reason for that (other than the obvious idea that existing in a place isn’t a crime) is because if it were a crime they couldn’t be deported. Criminal law seeks punishment and restitution for crimes. That essentially means you can imprison, fine, or execute someone for a crime.
Civil law seeks relief.
We’ll look at 2 lesser examples. Speeding versus building a fence over your property line into the sidewalk. For speeding, there’s no relief to be found. They can’t undo the speeding. So they generally get a fine through criminal court. But for the sidewalk example, simply giving a fine doesn’t fix the problem. Relief would be removing the fence and repairing any damage to the sidewalk, so the city would take the person who built the fence to civil court to get an order for its removal. But a judge won’t give a warrant to arrest a person for having a fence encroaching on public property.
In the case of immigration, relief would be having the person leave the country voluntarily or through a deportation order, and since warrants usually granted for civil cases, the immigration courts are part of the executive branch.
An warrant can allow specific individuals to be arrested/detained without having probable cause. But a judicial warrant is required to search, detain, arrest, etc in a manner that would otherwise violate civil liberties (e.g. entering private property to enforce the warrant).
The language you used here is a bit confusing/misleading. Just want to clarify.
A) Detainment in the US does not require a warrant of any kind, ever. It doesn’t even require probable cause. The bar for detainment is only reasonable suspicion of a crime or civil violation under their purview. They don’t even have to see you do a specific action that could be criminal in itself.
Simply walking around in a high crime area at odd hours can be enough to detain you, alone. Generally matching the description of a suspect that could reasonably be you, even if you’re doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, is enough to detain you, too.
And they also don’t have to share the reason for their suspicion with you, btw, so you may not even be aware of what they are trying to find evidence of, meaning you may be unable to either dissuade them of the suspicion or dispute in court that they even had reasonable suspicion or the grounds for it at the time. Reasonable suspicion is a pretty low bar and heavily in the favor of law enforcement.
But also detainment must be reasonably short, used only for the purposes of seeking evidence confirming or assuaging their suspicions, and otherwise not intruding upon the constitutional rights of the suspect (no searches or seizures of property without consent (barring civil forfeiture, which is a whole can of worms I’m not going to get into), no restrictions on or retaliation for speech, etc.)
B) An administrative warrant does not require probable cause, you’re correct. But a judicial one does, just to be clear. A judicial warrant is issued when law enforcement demonstrates that they have enough evidence to meet the threshold of probable cuase of a crime without directly witnessing it themselves in the moment.
But then, yes, as you suggested, an administrative warrant, having a lower threshold to issuance and only pertaining to civil matters, also provides less authority to the agents holding it to intrude upon one’s private property. They cannot overstep the bounds of the 4th amendment to enter a home, for example, without probable cause of a crime, either witnessed in progress, or granted by judicial warrant, or exigent circumstances.
C) Unfortunately, these legal protections have become less reliable under the Trump administration which continuously defies the law and judicial orders and review. ICE and Border Control have been given carte blanche by the Supreme Court to consider apparent race, language spoken, or other cultural identifiers as reasonable suspicion for violations of immigration policy or status. And their documented policies, erroneously, tell their agents that their administrative warrants grant them the power to enter private homes, offices and vehicles to execute arrests based on them.
Despite repeated judicial orders that tell them that this is illegal and to stop acting on this policy, they continue to do so with no apparent consequences apart from losing the occasional habeas case and releasing people they’ve illegally harassed, arrested and jailed for months. The fear and torment are part of the design, you see. So whatever the rules say, that doesn’t stop fascists from doing what they want when no one actually stops them, turns out.
So those darn body cams were just too heavy? WTF?
As were any identifying marks on either them or their vehicle if the reports I read were accurate
Hey, we may kill you by accident, whoopsie. Also it’ll be your fault and not the masked murderers.
