Editorial: Justice takes aim at ICE’s ‘chilling’ courthouse stings

California’s Chief Justice Patrician Guerrero is fed up with one of the more nefarious Trump administration policies: targeting immigrants for detention as they attend scheduled court hearings. She issued a stern warning and announced some steps that will help assure crime victims and witnesses don’t need to fear coming forward.

She warned about the “potential chilling effect” of this policy, which has taken place routinely in California. “I use this opportunity to reiterate that California’s courts are, and must continue to be, open and accessible to all,” Guerrero said in statement. “Making courthouses a focus of immigration enforcement hinders, rather than helps, the administration of justice.” She’s right. These raids undermine the rule of law and the fair administration of justice.

Per CalMatters, the justice proposed a variety of ideas including remote hearings and educating court officials about their authority. We like the idea of remote hearings. If the federal government insists on misusing courts as traps rather than the place where disputes are legally hashed out, then our justice system needs to find safe ways for people to appear.

Nationwide, we’ve seen a number of disturbing examples of these immigration stings. In some cases, federal officials detain people at immigration courts when they show up for hearings. ICE will also monitor scheduled dates in regular courts, which is the specific situation Guerrero addressed.

In a free society, the courthouse is a where one exerts the right to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. These ICE operations make a mockery of that protection and undermine law-enforcement efforts by discouraging people from appearing as required.

As NPR reported, attorneys “worry their clients feel pressured to accept plea deals so they don’t have to show up to court anymore. And it’s not just defendants. Immigrant victims and witnesses are afraid to go to court, too, to testify against someone, for instance, or to get a protective order.”

Guerrero said she doesn’t want to just make a statement but to find solutions. The state should implement the remote hearing idea as soon as possible.