Even mayors, judges aren't safe from federal overreach

We are already living under a form of authoritarian rule.

May 15, 2025

Federal agents arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at a migrant detention center in Newark, on May 9, 2025. (Photo: Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman)

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Back in February, I was featured on the American Doom podcast to discuss two things I had recently written — an investigation unmasking an ICE lawyer in Dallas as the operator of a white supremacist X account, and a column that argued the Trump administration is marching us toward neo-fascism and that along the way our nation is likely to slide into what some political scientists call competitive authoritarianism: “a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition.”

Since then, the United States government has sent legal residents to a foreign penal colony, where President Donald Trump has openly considered sending citizens, arrested international students for their participation in the Palestinian solidarity movement, and done a litany of other things that are almost certainly unconstitutional and have foisted us into a constitutional crisis. We are no longer in the process of sliding toward competitive authoritarianism. We are already there.

Just last week, masked agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Newark while he was on a visit along with three Democratic members of Congress. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement accusing Baraka and others of “storming into a detention facility” and a spokesperson for the agency said that more arrests could be on the way.

According to Baraka, he was invited to visit the site, had already been on the property for an hour before he was removed, and was there primarily to inform the government contractor operating the facility that they needed a new certificate of occupancy. Earlier this year, the City of Newark filed a lawsuit attempting to block the use of the facility for the ICE detention center, alleging that Geo Group, the private company ICE contracted to run the center, did not obtain the proper permits.

A few weeks prior to Baraka’s arrest, the FBI arrested a Milwaukee County Circuit judge for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest. On April 18, plainclothes federal agents appeared at the courtroom of Judge Hannah Dugan with the intention of arresting a Mexican immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, who had been previously removed from the United States in 2013 but had returned and been arrested in a domestic abuse case.

According to court documents, Dugan demanded the federal agents leave and told them they needed a criminal warrant, not an administrative warrant, to make the arrest. Witnesses told investigators that Dugan then directed Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to exit the courtroom through a jury door instead of the main public exit. Flores-Ruiz managed to get outside of the building but then federal agents quickly apprehended him. In other words, he did not avoid arrest. This week, a grand jury indicted Dugan on the charge alleging she concealed a person from arrest and obstructed the proceedings of an agency of the United States.

In both of the aforementioned examples, the impulse to punish is quite clear. As Justin wrote in an April 30 post, this is what we should expect from the Trump regime. They will utilize every legal weapon available to intimidate and silence its foes, which include elected officials or members of the judiciary who do not allow the federal government to run roughshod over due process.

Consider a third, lesser known case that has yet to reach the same level of awareness but is likely to escalate and become a national story.

On May 8, plainclothes ICE agents in Worcester, Massachusetts approached Ferreira de Oliveira, a Brazilian woman accused of entering the country illegally in 2022. Some of Oliveira’s neighbors witnessed the interaction and began to get involved. They asked for a warrant, which they say the ICE agents declined to present. According to statements from ICE, Oliveira was wanted on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and assault and battery on a pregnant victim.

As ICE attempted to arrest and transport Oliveira to a detention center, a crowd of protesters first gathered around Oliveira and then the ICE agents in an attempt to prevent agents from making an arrest. Local police were called, Oliveira was taken away, and two protesters were also arrested: Oliveira’s teen daughter and Ashley Spring, a Worcester resident and candidate for the local school board. Also among the protestors was Etel Haxhiaj, a Worcester City Councilmember, who was not arrested but has been singled out in statements from DHS and the Worcester police union.

“District Councilor for the City of Worcester Haxhiaj pulled a political stunt and incited chaos by trying to obstruct law enforcement,” reads a statement from a DHS spokesperson.

In a public statement, the Worcester police union accused Councilmember Haxhiaj of assaulting federal law enforcement and local police, and called for federal authorities to take action against Haxhiaj. No evidence has yet been presented to support these claims.

In a statement published in Newsweek, Haxhiaj said “the way immigrants in Worcester and across the Commonwealth are being targeted and terrorized by this federal administration for deportation is absolutely unconstitutional."

I agree with Haxhiaj, whose courage should be commended. What Trump is doing is unconstitutional. If more elected officials followed her example, perhaps they would be more effective at stopping the Trump administration’s worst impulses.

Given that I believe we are already living under a sort of competitive authoritarianism that yearns for neo-fascism, I fear that the Worcester police union will get their way and Haxhiaj will become a target of federal law enforcement, just like Baraka and Dugan. I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this — and that Justin’s recent predictions about what Trump does next are also wrong. Unfortunately, I expect we will see this sort of federal overreach against local and state level elected officials again and again. And even if officials like Baraka and Dugan end up winning their legal cases, that will take time, and in the short term the Trump regime has every reason to want to intimidate those who might try to stand in its way.

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Even mayors, judges aren't safe from federal overreach

We are already living under a form of authoritarian rule.

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