{"id":127010,"date":"2025-07-17T10:18:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/17\/government-attorneys-now-on-board-with-the-whole-secret-police-thing\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T10:18:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T18:18:36","slug":"government-attorneys-now-on-board-with-the-whole-secret-police-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/07\/17\/government-attorneys-now-on-board-with-the-whole-secret-police-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Attorneys Now On Board With The Whole Secret Police Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Masked ICE agents are only the start of the assault on government transparency. Now, government attorneys that are arguing to deport immigrants are doing so in secret.<\/p>\n

The Intercept reports<\/a> on two separate instances immigration judges in New York City declined to identify the government attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

In the first case Judge ShaSha Xu said, \u201cWe\u2019re not really doing names publicly.\u201d But that\u2019s not really true. Because she *did* ID the immigrants before her in court and their lawyers. It was only the government attorney that operated anonymously \u2014 in contravention of every custom of the legal profession.<\/p>\n

The attorneys arguing against the nameless agent of the government, Jeffrey Okun and Hugo Gonzalez Venegas in separate cases, were shocked by the development. Okun called it \u201cbizarre\u201d and Gonzalez Venegas said it was \u201ca terrible lack of transparency on the part of officers of the court.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The identity of the government attorney was revealed to the attorneys through private messaging. And Gonzalez Venegas identified her as Cosette Shachno.<\/p>\n

Judge James McCarthy was also spotted declining to identify government ICE attorneys on the record, instead using the dystopian moniker \u201cDepartment\u201d in open court. <\/p>\n

And it could even get worse:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis is a very new and very disturbing turn of events,\u201d said Daniel Kowalski, a former longtime immigration attorney who now edits the legal journal Bender\u2019s Immigration Bulletin for LexisNexis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does it stop?\u201d asked Kowalski. \u201cAre the immigration judges going to be unnamed? Behind a screen?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to another immigration judge, Shirley Lazare-Raphael, there is no formal policy directing judges to anonymize ICE attorneys on the record. \u201cIt\u2019s up to the judges whether or not they want to do it,\u201d she said. She also noted some ICE attorneys believe it\u2019s \u201cdangerous to state their names publicly.\u201d Cue the eye rolls. That\u2019s the same tired excuse ICE agents are using to conduct masked raids, when really it\u2019s being identified with the controversial and harmful \u201cmass deportations\u201d of the Trump administration that\u2019s the issue. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Government Attorneys Now On Board With The Whole Secret Police Thing<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Masked ICE agents are only the start of the assault on government transparency. Now, government attorneys that are arguing to deport immigrants are doing so in secret.<\/p>\n

The Intercept reports<\/a> on two separate instances immigration judges in New York City declined to identify the government attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

In the first case Judge ShaSha Xu said, \u201cWe\u2019re not really doing names publicly.\u201d But that\u2019s not really true. Because she *did* ID the immigrants before her in court and their lawyers. It was only the government attorney that operated anonymously \u2014 in contravention of every custom of the legal profession.<\/p>\n

The attorneys arguing against the nameless agent of the government, Jeffrey Okun and Hugo Gonzalez Venegas in separate cases, were shocked by the development. Okun called it \u201cbizarre\u201d and Gonzalez Venegas said it was \u201ca terrible lack of transparency on the part of officers of the court.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The identity of the government attorney was revealed to the attorneys through private messaging. And Gonzalez Venegas identified her as Cosette Shachno.<\/p>\n

Judge James McCarthy was also spotted declining to identify government ICE attorneys on the record, instead using the dystopian moniker \u201cDepartment\u201d in open court. <\/p>\n

And it could even get worse:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThis is a very new and very disturbing turn of events,\u201d said Daniel Kowalski, a former longtime immigration attorney who now edits the legal journal Bender\u2019s Immigration Bulletin for LexisNexis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere does it stop?\u201d asked Kowalski. \u201cAre the immigration judges going to be unnamed? Behind a screen?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

According to another immigration judge, Shirley Lazare-Raphael, there is no formal policy directing judges to anonymize ICE attorneys on the record. \u201cIt\u2019s up to the judges whether or not they want to do it,\u201d she said. She also noted some ICE attorneys believe it\u2019s \u201cdangerous to state their names publicly.\u201d Cue the eye rolls. That\u2019s the same tired excuse ICE agents are using to conduct masked raids, when really it\u2019s being identified with the controversial and harmful \u201cmass deportations\u201d of the Trump administration that\u2019s the issue. <\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Government Attorneys Now On Board With The Whole Secret Police Thing<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Masked ICE agents are only the start of the assault on government transparency. Now, government attorneys that are arguing to deport immigrants are doing so in secret. The Intercept reports on two separate instances immigration judges in New York City declined to identify the government attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the first case […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-QpPFIV.jpeg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}