Judge threatens illegal immigrant seeking a restraining order against her husband with deportation

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Sam Quinones of the LAT reports that:

A substitute judge hearing the case of an illegal immigrant seeking a restraining order against her husband threatened to turn her over to immigration officials if she didn’t leave his courtroom.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Pro Tem Bruce R. Fink told Aurora Gonzalez during last week’s hearing that he was going to count to 20 and that if she was still in his courtroom when he finished, he would have her arrested and deported to Mexico.

In an interview Wednesday, Fink said that the woman had admitted in court that she was in the country illegally and that he didn’t want her to get in trouble with immigration officials.

“We have a federal law that says that this status is not allowed,” Fink said. “You can’t just ignore it. What I really wanted was to not give this woman any problems.”

He said he thought the couple “obviously wanted to get back together” and that he was trying to avoid granting a restraining order that would keep them apart for at least a year. He said he also thought the court order might lead to Gonzalez’s deportation, because her husband would not be able to continue helping her get legal residency.

You can read the rest here.

Thanks to Charles Bowden for pointing this story out.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate