Not all open-borders subversives hide behind black bandanas and hurl Molotov cocktails. Sometimes, they wear three-piece suits or silk dresses. Most insidiously, the saboteurs of American justice wear black robes, wield gavels and enlist other officers of the court to help them perpetrate crimes instead of punish them.
Nothing shocks me anymore after 30 years of covering immigration anarchy, but my disgust with American apathy toward the erosion of this once-sovereign nation deepens every day. Take the case of United States v. Shelley M. Richmond Joseph and Wesley MacGregor. She’s the Massachusetts state court judge and he’s the former court deputy who collaborated to hide and free an illegal alien criminal being sought by a federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Joseph’s Newton, Massachusetts, courthouse in 2018.
A year later, federal prosecutors charged these two government human traffickers with obstruction of justice after they conspired to let Dominican national Oscar Manuel Peguero a.k.a. Jose Medina-Perez — a fugitive who had been wanted on narcotics possession and drunk driving, had been deported twice before and had been barred from reentering under federal law — out a back door when ICE issued a detainer and warrant of removal.
Judge Joseph’s lawyers admitted the truth of prosecutors’ allegations on how she “purposefully” helped Peguero/Medina-Perez “evade” the ICE agent by “concocting a ruse.” While informing the federal agent that the illegal alien would be sent to the courthouse lobby, she cooked up an excuse for him to head “downstairs to lockup” and “then exit the courthouse through a rear sally-port exit.” Joseph directed MacGregor to “go off the record while she devised” the scheme with the illegal alien’s counsel. “After the recorder was turned back on and the alleged plan was set in motion, Deputy MacGregor used his access card to swipe” Peguero/Medina-Perez out the back portal.
Although he was captured a few weeks after the catch-and-release ruse in Newton, Peguero/Medina-Perez was granted bond by an immigration judge in May 2018. The previous double deportee was entrusted to return for a hearing in July 2019. I asked ICE this week about the status of that deportation hearing and Peguero/Medina-Perez’s whereabouts. Cue the sound of crickets.
Once again, the woke joke’s on us. Last week, three years after their illegal alien jailbreak conspiracy, Joseph and MacGregor learned they are getting off scot-free. U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha announced that the U.S. Department of Injustice is dropping its charges against the scheming judge and deferring prosecution on the single perjury charge against her co-conspirator deputy. Joseph’s transgressions will now undergo “review” by a state judicial conduct commission. As a Reuters investigation reported, such toothless panels nationwide tend to “err on the side of protecting the rights and reputations of judges while overlooking the impact courtroom wrongdoing has on those most affected by it.”
Translation: If you’re an American citizen whose loved one gets mowed down by a drunken Peguero/Medina-Perez or whose child overdoses on drugs sold by him, good luck. The law is on the side of the illegal alien criminal and his judicial coddlers, not you and yours. Oh, and don’t bother protesting to the Newton City Council. Its members declared the city an open-borders sanctuary city on a 16-1 vote in 2017. In fact, the following cities in Massachusetts are all official sanctuaries that hinder and obstruct ICE from enforcing federal immigration laws inside our borders: Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Concord, Newton, Northampton, Somerville and Lawrence.
So, citizens, who can you turn to in the Bay State for equal justice under the law? Ha. I remind you that in May 2018, Obama-appointed federal judge Indira Talwani attacked ICE agents in Massachusetts when they took an alien into custody who had received probation for visa fraud. “I see no reason for places of redress and justice to become places that people are afraid to show up,” Talwani argued on behalf of a Chinese national sentenced to probation for using a fake passport and visa to take a graduate school entrance exam for another person.
Have no fear, drunken Dominicans and Chinese cheats. American judges are here to help!
And so are other tax-subsidized DAs.
In March 2019, notorious Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins ordered her employees to monitor and snitch on ICE officers around any courthouse while trying to do their jobs. Rollins’ election was part of a wave of successful campaign bids to install “progressive prosecutors” to carry out left-wing billionaire George Soros’ plan of undermining the criminal justice system from within. A week after Joseph and MacGregor conspired to free their illegal alien poster child from ICE, Rollins and fellow subversive Middlesex County DA Marian Ryan sued ICE for doing its job. It was rendered moot and dropped after the anti-American Biden DOJ cut ICE off at the knees on its own.
I’d like to blame only leftists, Soros and Biden for the mess we’re in. But, as usual, I can’t. Judge Shelley “Jailbreak” Joseph is on the bench today thanks to the nomination of a Republican governor, retiring RINO Charlie Baker. Immigration anarchy is what you get when “bipartisanship,” “centrism,” “pragmatism” and “diversity” matter more than protecting an American judicial system that puts Americans first.
Michelle Malkin’s email address is [email protected]