An investigation regarding a judge accused of assisting illegal immigrants in evading immigration officials concluded that she had no knowledge of any escape plan. It was found that Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph inadvertently helped an immigrant exit through a back door, but she didn’t authorize or even know about the plan. This finding was included in a report released by the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, which recommended some disciplinary action for the judge, effectively bringing to a close a saga that had spanned over seven years.
“We find that Judge Joseph did not know about, let alone authorize, the escape plan and did not mislead court officials after the incident,” stated hearing officer Dennis McInerney in a lengthy report.
The incident happened in April 2018 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were at Newton District Court, intending to arrest Jose Medina Perez, an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic who had been deported twice and faced a 20-year re-entry ban to the U.S.
ICE officers were waiting for Medina Perez to be released on bail, but instead of directing him to leave through the court lobby, Judge Joseph allegedly instructed them to let him exit via a back door leading to the parking lot. This occurred after a conversation where the judge requested the court recorder to be turned off, which involved Medina Perez’s defense lawyer and an assistant district attorney.
Joseph was formally charged in April 2019 with conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice due to her actions. However, the then-acting ICE Director Tom Homan remarked that Joseph had overstepped her bounds.
Maintaining her innocence, Joseph contested the charges until the prosecution eventually dropped the case in September 2022. She opted instead to refer the situation to the Judicial Conduct Commission, which looks into allegations against court officials. Investigators later determined that Joseph had engaged in “willful misconduct” on the day in question.
The investigation uncovered that the escape plan was actually conceived by Medina Perez’s attorney, who claimed to have discussed it with Joseph and that she endorsed it. Yet, McInerney concluded that she was entirely unaware of the scheme and mistakenly thought that the immigrants needed to return to the exclusion zone to confer with a lawyer and interpreter.
McInerney recognized that Judge Joseph should face a public reprimand for unintentionally breaching a court order by having an off-the-record discussion prior to allowing the immigrant to leave the courtroom.
ICE arrests in courts have raised significant concerns in recent years, especially under the previous administrations that were particularly stringent towards judges accused of aiding illegal immigrants. For example, in April, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant evade ICE. Subsequently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended her from her position.
At that time, FBI Director Kash Patel asserted that Judge Dugan had intentionally kept federal agents away from the locked courtroom to allow the immigrant to dodge arrest. Fortunately, investigators managed to track down the individual, but it highlighted the risks posed by judicial interference.
