Elizabeth Beckley is a magisterial district judge who apparently thinks she’s an immigration judge. The Pennsylvania Republican’s job was to marry high school sweethearts Alexander Parker and Krisha Schmick, but she instead called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the groom:
When the constable announced he would be detaining Parker for ICE, the couple was stunned. Though born in Guatemala, Parker, 21, had been adopted by American parents when he was 8 months old. At that moment, he was technically undocumented, with his green-card renewal being processed. But he does not speak Spanish or consider himself an immigrant, much less a deportable one.
Philadelphia ICE was in the midst of its second big enforcement operation of 2017, and federal agents rushed to the courthouse with their biometric identification device. At about the time Parker had hoped to be slipping a ring onto his wife’s finger, he was reluctantly putting his own hand into a fingerprint machine.
That’s something Parker tells Newsweek he did not consent to. He “knew something was wrong when courtroom staff took fifteen minutes to check his Guatemalan identification card after only taking moments to check his then-fiance's.”
"I was really scared,” he said. “I didn't know if they were going to arrest me. I didn't know what they would do. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to see my wife again if they took me."
ICE let Parker go after Schmick raced home to get his documentation. Of course, there’ll be some folks wagging their fingers and asking why they didn’t bring their files of paperwork in the first place, but who goes to the local courthouse to get married and also expecting the possibility of deportation?
To make matters worse, this isn’t the first time Beckley has decided to moonlight as a one-person deportation force.
Worse, Krisha said, was that this wasn't the only time Beckley had called ICE agents to her courtroom. The mother of two said she was contacted by a lawyer who said she was representing at least one other couple who had immigration enforcement officers called by Beckley on their wedding day.
That couple was not as lucky as Krisha and Alex, with the groom and his best man allegedly being led away in handcuffs, according to a report from ProPublica.
Parker and Schmick said Beckley “apologized after the incident and offered to still carry out their marriage ceremony, an offer which they accepted only because Alexander's aunts had traveled from New Jersey to see the pair get married.”
America’s Voice points out Beckley’s racism is doing damage that goes far beyond the two couples she tried to tear apart through deportation:
Beckley, as a judge, should understand that making immigrants afraid of courthouses erodes trust in the law — though she’s apparently a graduate of Thomas M. Cooley Law School, one of the worst-ranked law schools in the nation, which is also the alma mater of Trump-fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen. Beckley and Cohen, in fact, were contemporaries at Cooley.
“Beckley also did not respond to a request for comment for this story, with a representative from her legal firm telling Newsweek she is on vacation.”