As part of an ICE operation, plainclothes agents on Thursday pulled an accused MS-13 shotcaller out of a downtown federal courtroom, catching attorneys and the judge off guard, and casting uncertainty over the fate of his pending criminal trial.
Mark Sedlander, a defense attorney, said the agents, and at least one deputy U.S. marshal, surrounded and detained his client, Orlando Olivar, shortly after U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. left the bench following a pre-trial status conference on Thursday.
Sedlander said the agents backed Olivar up against the wood railing that separates the public area from where the parties sit. The agents did not identify themselves and did not display or mention a warrant, he said. He asked them to wait for the judge to return, but said they immediately whisked his client from the courtroom through the holding-cell door.
Sedlander said the prosecutor told him they had no control over ICE. Olivar is now listed in an ICE inmate locator as being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
Prosecutors have accused Olivar of being a shotcaller of an MS-13 clique, which Sedlander said his client denies. Olivar is charged with racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and distribution of methamphetamine.
Olivar, who has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, is set to go to trial on May 19. He had been out on bond.
“First and foremost, I’m concerned about my client, period, and second about people’s willingness to participate in our judicial system, whether it’s criminal or civil, when they know that unlike in years past, the courthouse is not a safe space,” Sedlander told the Times. “This is going to chill people from participating in the system.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. declined to comment.
Department of Homeland Security Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis confirmed that ICE arrested Olivar, whom she described as “a criminal illegal alien from El Salvador.” Bis said his criminal history includes charges for robbery, drug trafficking, drug possession and trespassing.
Bis said Olivar was arrested by ICE at the United States Marshals Service building “in a controlled transfer between the U.S. Marshals and ICE.”
“He will remain in ICE custody until removed to El Salvador,” she said. “This is a perfect example of law enforcement cooperation to ensure criminal illegal aliens are not released into American neighborhoods.”
According to Bis, Olivar was previously granted voluntary departure by a judge and left the country in 2014. She said he illegally reentered the U.S. a second time that same year and was removed the following year. She said he then illegally entered country for a third time on an unknown date.
In recent months, immigration authorities have taken undocumented defendants into custody, and in at least one case deported the accused, while federal criminal proceedings were underway. Federal judges have dismissed indictments, after defense attorneys cited difficulties accessing their clients in immigration detention centers and, in at least one case, struggling to locate them at all.
Last January, ICE issued interim guidance stating that officers or agents could make arrests in or near courthouses, but that they should “take place in non-public areas of the courthouse, be conducted in collaboration with court security staff, and use the court building’s non-public entrances and exits.”
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in L.A. who now serves as a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called the detention “alarming.”
“I have not heard of it happening in a courtroom,” Levenson said. “I don’t know what to say, because that seems to be taking it even further than what we’ve seen so far.”
Evan Jenness, a federal criminal defense attorney who has been practicing in the Central District of California since 1988, described an arrest inside the courtroom as “very, very unusual.”
Jenness said she’s only seen an arrest happen in a courtroom once before, more than a decade ago. She said the judge remained on the bench and told both parties that there was an arrest warrant from another jurisdiction, not ICE.
“To have purported agents, gentleman in street clothes, executing an arrest, failing to identify themselves, not having previously announced themselves and asking the judge’s permission to take action in the courtroom is extraordinary,” she said. “This is a whole new level of assault on our criminal justice system, in my opinion.”
“They’ve undermined the functioning of the courthouse by behaving that way,” she added.
ICE arrests have also played out at L.A. County courthouses. In June, ICE officers arrested two women outside the Airport Courthouse on La Cienega Boulevard. Two months later, a man pleaded for help as federal agents carried him by his arms and legs away from the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on Temple Street.
Advocates, defense attorneys and even some prosecutors have long sounded the alarm about the problems that could arise from ICE using state criminal courts as staging grounds for federal immigration enforcement. Such tactics have a chilling effect that could make people less inclined to come to court or serve as witnesses, critics say.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
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