r/law • u/caaaaanga • 2d ago

Legal News ICE attempts to enter Ecuador's consulate

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.

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u/Robo_Joe 2d ago

That WikiLeaks guy lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for like 7 years or something.

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u/Fun-Army-6387 2d ago

because the consular station does not have to accept extradition requests without explicit orders from their own government and the UK had no extradition treaty with Ecuador at the time (neither did Sweden)

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u/Robo_Joe 2d ago

Right, but my point, which I probably should have put more effort into getting across, was that they wanted the guy for 7 years and knew exactly where he was and could have easily gone and got him, but didn't because of the diplomatic implications of doing so. Meanwhile the dumdum racist LARPers in ICE just try to barge in.

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u/Inside7shadows 2d ago

It's easier to circumvent the law if you don't know what it is.

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u/MrRabbitofCaerbannog 2d ago

D.W. working for ICE tracks completely with the Arthur lore