As part of an ICE operation, plainclothes agents on Thursday dragged an alleged MS-13 suspect into the city’s federal courthouse, catching lawyers and a judge off guard, and casting doubt on the outcome of his trial.
Mark Sedlander, the defense attorney, said agents, along with one deputy U.S. marshal, surrounded and detained his client, Orlando Olivar, shortly after U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. who left the bench following a pre-trial conference on Thursday.
Sedlander said the agents supported Olivar against the wooden wall that separates the public area from where the gangs live. He said the agents did not identify themselves and did not produce or state the warrant to be used. He asked them to wait until the judge returned, but they said that they immediately took his client out of the court and entered the cell door.
Sedlander said the prosecutor told him they had no authority over ICE. Olivar is now on the ICE detainer list as he is being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
Prosecutors have accused Olivar of being the shooter for the MS-13 gang, which Sedlander said his client denies. Olivar is charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and distribution of methamphetamine.
Olivar, who pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, will be arraigned on May 19. He had been out on bond.
“First and foremost, I’m concerned about my client, the time, and secondly about people’s willingness to participate in our justice system, whether criminal or civil, knowing that unlike years past, the courtroom is not a safe place,” Sedlander told the Times. “This will encourage people to participate in the program.”
The US attorney’s office in LA declined to comment.
Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Lauren Bis, confirmed that ICE arrested Olivar, whom she described as an “illegal alien from El Salvador.” Bis said his criminal history includes charges of robbery, drug trafficking, drug possession and trespassing.
Bis said Olivar was arrested by ICE at a United States Marshals Service facility in a “controlled transfer between the US Marshals and ICE.”
“He will remain in ICE custody until he is taken to El Salvador,” she said. “This is a great example of law enforcement working together to ensure that illegal aliens are not released into American territory.”
According to Bis, Olivar was previously allowed by a judge to leave voluntarily and left the country in 2014. He said he returned to the US illegally a second time that same year and was removed the following year. He said he then entered the country illegally for the third time on an unknown date.
In recent months, immigration authorities have detained undocumented defendants, and in at least one case deported the defendant, while a criminal case was pending. Federal judges dismissed the cases, after defense attorneys cited difficulty reaching their clients in immigration detention centers and, in at least one case, struggling to find them at all.
Last January, ICE issued interim guidance stating that officers or agents can make arrests in or near courthouses, but that they must “take place in non-public areas of the courthouse, be conducted in cooperation with courthouse security personnel, and use non-public entrances and exits of the building.”
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in LA who is now a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called the arrest “horrifying.”
“I haven’t heard what happened in court,” Levenson said. “I don’t know what to say, because that seems to be going further than what we have seen so far.
Evan Jenness, a federal criminal defense attorney who has practiced in the Central District of California since 1988, described the arrest inside the courthouse as “very unusual.”
Jenness said he saw his arrest happen only once in court, more than ten years ago. He said the judge sat on the bench and told both sides that there was an arrest warrant from somewhere else, not ICE.
“Having agents, a man wearing street clothes, arresting them, failing to explain themselves, without announcing it beforehand and asking for the judge’s permission to take action in court is unusual,” he said. “This is a new level of assault in our criminal justice system, in my opinion.”
“They have undermined the functioning of the court by behaving in that way,” he added.
ICE arrests also played out in LA County courts. In June, ICE officers arrested two women outside the Airport Courthouse on La Cienega Boulevard. Two months later, a man called for help as federal agents carried him by his arms and legs from the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on Temple Street.
Lawyers, defense attorneys and other prosecutors have long raised concerns about potential problems with ICE using federal criminal courts as a basis for federal immigration enforcement. Such tactics have a chilling effect that can make people reluctant to come to court or become witnesses, critics say.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
