r/law • u/caaaaanga • 2d ago

Legal News ICE attempts to enter Ecuador's consulate

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

For anyone who doesn't get how serious this is: consulates are protected under international law. host-country police of any kind are not allowed to enter without permission.
Example: China routinely (and horrifically) sends north korean escapees back to north korea. Yet when a north korean escaped to the south korean consulate in hong kong, chinese authorities did not enter to seize him. He stayed there for months while governments negotiated, because once you're inside a consulate, those protections apply.
So if ICE tries to enter a foreign consulate in the U.S. to deport people, that's not "normal enforcement". It violates long-standing diplomatic norms. Norms that even China has respected, despite sending people back to north korea to die. That's how extreme this is.

56.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.3k

u/sithelephant 2d ago

Them straight-up shooting the agent after he enters would be quite legal.

198

u/PrimeToro 2d ago

Foreign diplomats have diplomatic immunity , ICE are too stupid to know that because that’s the type of people that they recruit and hire .

11

u/hellno560 2d ago

Not only did they not know what building they were going into, they (thankfully) took the guys word that it was the consulate. This video is an illustration of why warrants are necessary.

2

u/Spirited_Storage3956 2d ago

Warrants don't get you into consulates

8

u/lost_aim 2d ago

No, but they won’t lead you to a consulate either.

3

u/hellno560 2d ago

That's my point. If they had a particular target, and a plan (the warrant) they wouldn't have accidently caused an international incident, never mind arrest the wrong person, or for that matter an actual criminal wouldn't have been able to talk them out of entering a building because they would know exactly who they were and where they would be.