ICE agents make arrests at courthouses, sparking backlash from prosecutors and attorneys

The L.A. Times reports:

Octavio Chaidez was walking out of a Pasadena courtroom with a client last month when four men jumped up from a hallway bench and rushed toward them.

The men asked his client’s name. Then they pulled out badges.

“They say, ‘You’re Mr. So and So?’ and he says, ‘Yes,’ ” Chaidez said. “They show him a badge, and they say, ‘We’re from Immigration and Customs,’ and they took him in.”

Chaidez, who has worked as a defense attorney in Los Angeles County for nearly 15 years, said he had never seen federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make an arrest inside the confines of a courthouse.

But in the past few weeks, attorneys and prosecutors in California, Arizona, Texas and Colorado have all reported teams of ICE agents — some in uniform, some not — sweeping into courtrooms or lurking outside court complexes, waiting to arrest immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch...