Boston Municipal Court Judge Mark Summerville must have flunked Constitutional Law 101 from whatever law school he managed to graduate from. He apparently doesn’t realize that he can’t go after federal agents for enforcing federal immigration law.   

Summerville held an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent named Brian Sullivan in contempt for detaining an illegal alien charged by local authorities with lying on a driver’s license application. The judge even ordered the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the ICE agent for “obstruction of justice.” 

The alien, who was going under the alias of Wilson Martell-Lebron in Summerville’s courtroom, is actually a Dominican named Juan Carlos Baez with prior drug convictions who is illegally in the country. ICE picked Baez up as he was leaving the municipal court. 

A Constitutional Law Tutorial for the Judge 

Since you, Summerville, don’t seem to understand basic constitutional law, here is an explainer. 

The supremacy clause of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution provides that the Constitution and all federal laws “shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby” no matter what their state laws or state constitutions may provide “to the Contrary.” That means state court judges like you, Summerville. It means that federal immigration laws override state laws that would prevent enforcement of those federal laws. 

And local district attorneys prosecuting federal agents under state law for carrying out their duties under federal law? You can’t do that, judge. If you hadn’t skipped class, you would have no doubt read the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case on this issue, In re Neagle (1890).  

In that case, a local sheriff in California tried to prosecute for murder a deputy U.S. marshal who was protecting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field from an assassination attempt by a disgruntled former member of the California Supreme Court, who was unhappy over court rulings that went against his wife.   

You would expect to see this kind of unbelievable plot in a Hollywood movie, which is why the case is so well known. 

The key point: The U.S. Supreme Court said that federal officers and agents who are acting within the scope of their federal authority and carrying out their duty to enforce federal law are immune from prosecution by state and local prosecutors. That means you, judge, as well as the Suffolk County district attorney. 

A ‘Disturbing Case’? Check Out the Case of Your Colleague

You, judge, are quoted as saying what ICE did was “a disturbing case” and “a case of obstruction of justice.” Really? How ironic. Here’s a suggestion. Review the federal criminal indictment in 2019 of your colleague, Massachusetts state court Judge Shelley M. Richmond, for obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstructing a federal proceeding. 

She was indicted for helping an illegal alien who was also in her courtroom on local charges avoid being taken into custody by a waiting federal agent on a federal immigration detainer warrant. She instructed her bailiff to release the alien through the backdoor of the courthouse so the alien would not encounter the waiting federal agent in the courthouse lobby—after ordering the agent out of her courtroom.   

The only reason Richmond did not go to trial was because she accepted a generous plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department. The DOJ dismissed the federal charges conditioned on her submitting herself to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct for her misbehavior.  

Lesson concluded, your Honor. You will be tested. 

Punishing ICE Agents for Doing Their Job Is What’s ‘Disturbing’ 

Federal agents carrying out their duties to detain illegal aliens under federal immigration law are immune from punishment or prosecution by judges and local prosecutors who want to obstruct such enforcement. But local judges and other local officials, including law enforcement officials, are not immune from federal prosecution for violating federal laws that prohibit concealing, harboring, transporting, or taking other actions intended to protect aliens illegally in the United States. 

Summerville is correct when he says this is a disturbing case. But what is disturbing is his attempt to punish an ICE agent for doing his job and his attempt to order the local DA to go after that agent. The only individual involved in this “disturbing case” who is trying to “obstruct justice,” as the judge claims, is the judge himself. 

He should have learned all this in law school. 

Republished from The Daily Signal.