Last week, after their absurd attempt to make a martyr of Salvadoran deportee Kilmar Abrego Garcia, some Democrats seemed to realize they had committed a political blunder. As Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) put it, “I don’t know if that’s the right issue that Democrats should be focusing on right now.” Many polls, including a CBS/YouGov survey released Sunday, indicate that most Americans support the deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally. Yet, when a Wisconsin judge was arrested for aiding a “migrant” in his effort to escape immigration officials, the Democrats repeated their error.

If any reader managed to miss this story, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was taken into custody by the FBI on Friday and charged with two federal crimes involving obstruction of a federal proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent his arrest. The specific “individual” was Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican national living in the country illegally. Judge Dugan foolishly assisted his futile attempt to avoid apprehension at the Milwaukee County Courthouse on April 18, and her subsequent arrest inspired a number of Democrats to issue irresponsible statements such as this one from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.):

Americans are watching with outrage the stunning news that Trump’s FBI has arrested a sitting judge in Milwaukee for alleged obstruction of an immigration arrest. While all the facts are not yet in, the implications of this arrest are chilling. This is a drastic escalation and dangerous new front in Trump’s authoritarian campaign of trying to bully, intimidate, and impeach judges who won’t follow his dictates.  We must do whatever we can to defend the independent judiciary in America.

Conspicuously absent from this portentous nonsense is any justification for Dugan’s illegal actions. Raskin is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and often reminds us that no one is above the law. He has never mentioned a county judge exception. Nor has Raskin’s counterpart on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who denounced Dugan’s arrest in an Orwellian statement: “When immigration enforcement officials interfere with our criminal justice system, it undermines public safety, prevents victims and witnesses from coming forward, and often prevents those who committed crimes from facing justice …”