A Federal Decision Just Left the Door Wide Open for ICE Agents to Do Whatever They Want Without Consequences

7 min readThis Week in the Laboratories of Democracy(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)Being our semi-regular, weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where the sun behind a cloud just casts the crawling shadow.We begin in Texas, where a Trump-appointed federal judge has stepped in to help out Governor Greg Abbott in an extradition fight with Minnesota over a trigger-happy ICE agent who shot someone in Minneapolis. From The New York Times:In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. sided with the Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas. Judge Rodriguez said Minnesota had not proven that Mr. Abbott had done anything wrong by waiting to act on the extradition request.The ruling by Judge Rodriguez, who was appointed by President Trump, means that the immigration agent, Christian Castro, could be released from a Texas jail on Thursday after three months in custody. Texas law limits detention on extradition warrants to 90 days.Mr. Castro was charged in mid-May in state court in Minneapolis with four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. Mr. Castro has not appeared in court to answer to those charges, and he did not respond to attempts by The New York Times to contact him in recent months at the jail where he has been held. At the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, lawyers for the two states argued on Tuesday about whether Mr. Abbott had a legal obligation to act on Minnesota’s extradition request before Thursday. A final decision on extradition would be left to a state judge if the governor signed off on Minnesota’s request. Naturally, the highly trained and judicious Agent Castro shot the wrong dude. And, needless to say, ICE's first explanation was abject crapola.State prosecutors in Minnesota accused Mr. Castro of shooting through the front door of a Minneapolis duplex on the evening of Jan. 14 after an immigrant he had been chasing ran away after a car chase. Mr. Castro was accused of shooting and wounding Julio C. Sosa-Celis, the roommate of the migrant who had fled. The Department of Homeland Security initially claimed that Mr. Castro had fired a shot in self-defense after enduring a sustained assault that involved a broom and a shovel. Days after the shooting, Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate, who are both from Venezuela, were charged in federal court with assaulting a law enforcement officer. Federal prosecutors dismissed the case in February after investigators determined, based on a video of the encounter, that Mr. Castro had likely lied about the events that led to the shooting.Sounds like someone Texas would be relieved to be rid of. But Greg Abbott is a slug, and this judge, as Scott Lemieux points out at LGM, has given Abbott a chance to nullify federal law, a notion that gives every neo-Confederate goon a woody you can see from space. It also gives Agent Castro a chance to beat feet out of the country.Last week, Minnesota filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to compel Mr. Abbott to sign off on Mr. Castro’s extradition. Minnesota officials expressed concern that the agent could flee to Mexico if he were released, citing monitored conversations he has had while in custody with a woman south of the border. Their conversations touched on plans “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released,” according to the lawsuit.Once again, Mr. Dos Passos—All right we are two nations.We move along to Iowa, where GOP senatorial candidate Ashley Hinson has a serious spouse ruh-roh at the worst possible time. From NOTUS:Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson, a congresswoman pitching herself as a warrior against special interests in Iowa, and her husband, Matt Arenholz, have deep ties to the insurance industry, with Arenholz owning millions worth of interest in a private equity-backed brokerage. Documents reviewed by NOTUS reveal Arenholz also held a government affairs post at a leading insurance industry lobbying group, which has not been previously reported. He helped arrange meetings with Hinson and other Iowa congressional delegation members, the documents indicate.Meanwhile, down in Georgia, GOP senatorial candidate Mike Collins has a serious staff ruh-roh at the worst possible time. From The Washington Post:The images—found in a search by The Washington Post—follow other controversial actions and rhetoric from former Collins staffers and other Collins associates that have dogged his Senate campaign. A number of people in Collins’s orbit have been accused of having ties to white nationalists or of making racist or antisemitic comments, and the congressman’s own social media presence has also drawn scrutiny.You don't say. Hmm...Several Republicans in Georgia told The Post that they have grown increasingly worried about what some call a pattern of troubling associations and behavior. “In the South, we have a saying: You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” said Debbie Dooley, an original tea party organizer and conservative advocate in Georgia who backed Collins’s rival in the primary. “Well, Mike Collins has got a lot of fleas on him.”News to Ms. Dooley, "original tea party organizer." You are a charter member of the flea chorus.The ex-staffer who posted the Nazi and KKK images, Preston Parra, 24, interned for Collins for two months in 2024 before working as a contractor for his leadership PAC the next year. Overhaul PAC paid Parra $7,700 for fundraising consulting in May 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings, and in an interview, Parra said he worked for the group for several months. That was shortly before Collins announced his Senate bid.Parra, who recently described himself as a “twink fascist” on his X account until changing his biography and making his posts private on Aug. 24, is a conservative political operative whose consulting site touts his ability to marshal a network of influencers to boost Republicans. The Daily Mail reported this year that Parra posted frequent crotch shots and a photo of himself that he captioned “racist.”I ask this in all sincerity: Where in the fck do they find these people?We move along to Idaho, where ProPublica's Audrey Dutton explores the limits of religious freedom, and those are some far-out limits, folks.In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for “traditional” Idaho values. But from at least the 1880s through the early 1970s, it was illegal for parents in Idaho to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake, newspaper archives and historical documents show. “Every parent of any child who willfully omits, without lawful excuse, to furnish necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance for such child, is guilty of a misdemeanor,” reads the 1887 edition of Idaho territory statutes, published before statehood. Back when Idaho made sense. In the 19th Century.It wasn’t long before the law came down on members of the Followers of Christ [Ed. Note: Ruh-roh], a faith-healing sect that arrived in Idaho in 1899 and remains active in the state. From 2015 to 2025, the sect’s congregations in Idaho experienced 15 preventable deaths of children, according to ProPublica’s reporting. Pearl Annis was a 13-year-old girl whose parents had moved from Oklahoma to Idaho’s Magic Valley in the spring of 1915 with at least one other Followers family. The Annises and their 13 children shared “a two-room shack,” a local newspaper reported. An officer and a doctor visited the home after neighbors voiced concern. They found Pearl in bed, fully dressed and on the cusp of death. Her father, Lurid P. “Lewis” Annis, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of refusing to provide medical attention. Pearl was taken to the hospital, according to the news story, and died there with what today would be described as septic shock from a bowel blockage. The newspaper, which didn’t appear to follow up on Annis’ criminal charge, called the Followers church “a religious cult” and Pearl’s death a consequence of “religious mania.”(An aside: what monstrous parent names their kid "Lurid"?)You let somebody's personal Jeebus in where He doesn't belong, and trouble follows with him.During a full-on rewrite of Idaho’s criminal code in 1971, the Legislature added a section that said the state could not bring endangerment charges against someone “who chooses for his child treatment by prayer or spiritual means alone.” Legislative records don’t make clear how the wording originated. The passage of another law one year later, affirming the “spiritual means” language and applying it to other crimes, has been credited to the Christian Science church, another Christian denomination with Idaho members.There was a rush to pass these exemptions in other states. An attempt at a federal involvement flared briefly but died when the Reagan Administration (!) adjusted its regulations to take a more neutral position on the issue. This allowed the states to re-regulate, which most of them did. Except Idaho, which has now spiraled into the Meathead Nebula forever.And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Vasco da Gama fanboy Friedman of the Algarve brings us the tale of the rathole that is his former home. From 2News:For the fourth year in a row, multiple Oklahoma state agencies are found to have mismanaged tens of millions in federal funding, according to the state auditor...According to Byrd, just since the pandemic, Oklahoma DHS and OMES have misappropriated more than $200 million combined. While she said the past mistakes were under different agency leadership, elections matter as well."This is the fourth year in a row I have stood here and sounded the alarm that Oklahoma needs to get its financial house in order or pay serious consequences," Byrd said. “Things get fixed at the ballot box. You’ve got to be involved in government. You’ve got to have your voice heard. You’ve got to demand accountability."You're welcome, Sooners. Your bill is in the mail.Sincerely, the Commonwealth (God save it!)This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.