THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:
(Rumpole notes: the prior post has a copy of the order, scroll down if you want to see it.)
We interrupt this issue of "Diary of a Mad President" to bring you this BREAKING NEWS:
THE 10TH AMENDMENT IS ALIVE AND WELL - IN MIAMI-DADE COUNTY .....
..... so Order's Circuit Court Judge Milton Hirsch today .....
"No doubt the limitations imposed by the Tenth Amendment, like so many limitations imposed by the Constitution, are a source of frustration to those who dream of wielding power in unprecedented ways or to unprecedented degrees. But America was not made for those who dream of power. America was made for those with the power to dream." (From Judge Milton Hirsch's Order today).
James Lacroix was repeatedly arrested for Driving With License Suspended. James Lacroix was also a Haitian National living in Miami. He was here on a "temporary protected status" arriving in the US after the natural disasters that affected his island nation.
After picking up yet another DWLS Felony, at some point, he was ordered deported by ICE. So, after spending several weeks in jail on his latest DWLS charge, and then pleading guilty to the charge and receiving credit for time served, instead of being released to the outside world, this time, the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (MDCR) held Mr. Lacroix on an Immigration detainer. Corrections was acting based on the recent Order signed by Miami-Dade County's Mayor Carlos Gimenez which now required them to honor the federal detainers. On February 17th, the County Commission approved Gimenez' Order by a vote of 9-3.
Remember that in January, shortly after his inauguration, President Trump signed an Executive Order promising to cut off federal funding for so called "sanctuary cities". To avoid the label of being considered a "sanctuary city", Gimenez signed his Order agreeing to hold inmates in local jails for federal immigration agents even if the feds refused to reimburse the county for the expense.
Last Wednesday, Lacroix, after spending a total of 28 hours in jail on the immigration hold, after having already been sentenced to credit for time served, ICE agents came to pick him up and transfer him to their custody.
Enter attorneys Phil Reizenstein and Kristy Kawass. Handling the case pro bono, they filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus before Judge Milton Hirsch. The Motion was effectively challenging Mayor Gimenez's Order.
Yesterday, Reizenstein argued that the continued detention of Lacroix, even for a minute, violated the 10th Amendment*, which limits the reach of the federal government on states. Reizenstein describes the action of the Trump Administration's threat to pull federal dollars from any city that is a "sanctuary city" protecting criminal illegal immigrants, as "nothing more than the federal government threatening and blackmailing states and Miami-Dade County".
Reizenstein argued that the controlling case on this matter was Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)where no less than Justice Scalia overruled the federal government's attempts to command state and local law enforcement officers to conduct background checks on prospective handgun purchasers.
This morning, Judge Hirsch, in a 15 page ruling, shot down the Gimenez Order. Hirsch explains the issues of ICE's detainer requests upon the MDCR this way:
"This practice, however, gives rise to two inequities. First, it obliges the Department to
house, oversee, and control prisoners in whom neither the state nor the county has any ongoing
interest; and it obliges the Department to do so at county expense, because neither ICE nor any
other instrumentality of the federal government makes the county whole for the cost of this
housing, overseeing, and controlling. Second, it results in the continued incarceration in county
jails of persons neither charged with, nor sentenced for violating, any state or county law, and
whose ongoing incarceration by the county is therefore difficult to justify."
Hirsch, citing to Scalia’s opinion in Printz said: "Apparently it was clear to the members of the first Congress that the federal government is without power to compel state authorities to house and maintain federal prisoners – even if the federal government offers to pay a fair price for that housing and maintenance".
Hirsch ruled that:
Lacroix was a county prisoner, but at present the county has neither a reason nor a basis in law to
keep him its prisoner. A federal agency wants Lacroix to be a federal prisoner, but demands that
the county do the imprisoning on the federal government’s behalf. That is a demand that the
federal government is constitutionally prohibited from enforcing, and it is a demand with which
the local government is constitutionally prohibited from complying. "It might well be deemed an
unconstitutional exercise ... to insist that the states are bound to provide means to carry into
effect the duties of the national government, nowhere delegated or intrusted [sic] to them by the
Constitution." Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539, 541 (1842) (Story, J.).
Judge Hirsch went further by stating that:
The "people" to whom the Tenth Amendment refers include the native-born as well as the
naturalized citizen; the native English speaker as well as the speaker for whom English is a
second, or third, language; the scion of old Yankee stock as well as the newcomer who took the
oath of citizenship yesterday. Miami is not, and has never been, a sanctuary city. But America
is, and has always been, a sanctuary country. As I have written elsewhere, "America, perhaps
more than any other nation, was made great not by its leaders but by its people: by the refugees
who were called to begin life anew; by the pioneers who were called to build a nation; by ‘the
homeless, tempest-tossed’ who were called by the light that shone from the ‘lamp beside the
golden door’." State v. Robaina, 20 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 406a (Fla. 11th Cir. Ct. 2013) (quoting
Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus")
With that, Hirsch GRANTED Lacroix's Petition for his Writ of Habaus Corpus. The Order will undoubtedly be appealed by the County Attorney's Office. Kudos to Phil Reizenstein and Kristy Kawass for a job well done.
*10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
CAPTAIN OUT ......Captain4Justice@gmail.com