Texas Lawyer Harassed At Home By Federal Agents, Fired By His Employer After He Tells His Story
Radley Balko’s post on Substack details an ordeal, however brief, Texas appellate lawyer Clayton Jackson suffered through recently. A longer one possibly awaits, thanks to his employer firing him shortly after he went public with his recounting of this unwanted interaction.
Balko’s opening paragraph explains why the Trump Administration has hit law firms and universities with punitive executive orders. It explains why it’s blocking certain news agencies from attending press conferences and threatening others with further punishment for daring to report the facts. It’s why Trump has weaponized every aspect of the federal government to go after anyone who dares to criticize him or repudiate his claims. These are not the acts of a president. These are the acts of an aspiring despot. Here’s how that’s working out right now:
One of the more pernicious effects of authoritarianism is to make the everyday participation in civic life we take for granted feel subversive. The goal isn’t to police all behavior at all times. It’s to make us fearful to the point that we police our own behavior.
And that’s where Clay Jackson comes in. While at a local gas station, he was approached by an employee who asked if he might be able to give a little legal advice to an immigrant family. The family’s father had recently been detained in an ICE workplace raid and the gas station attendant wondered if Jackson might be able to help.
It turns out he could, even if it was out of his area of expertise, something that was further complicated by the language barrier. But Jackson did what he could.
Later that afternoon, March 4, Jackson visited the family in their home. “It was a little difficult to communicate because everything had to be translated through the 10-year-old kid.” He met with them for less than an hour and told them their rights if they’re detained by ICE. “I said I’d help find them pro bono counsel who specialized in immigration.”
Simple enough, even if it probably wasn’t enough (and what could possibly be under this government?). No good deed goes unpunished, not in this bizarre iteration of the Land of the Free.
“A couple days later, on March 6, I was working from home at around 11:30 when I got a notice that my VPN had gone down,” he says. “I didn’t think much about it. It can cut out from time to time. About 10 minutes later, I got a knock at the door.”
Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges.
“I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’”
Cool cool cool. Officers refusing to identify themselves or wearing anything clearly identifying their law enforcement agency just rolling on up on someone’s house to insinuate that they probably broke a federal law. Fortunately, Jackson is a lawyer. He demanded identification. They refused to provide it. They asked to come inside. He refused. And 15 minutes after they left, his WiFi suddenly started functioning again. But because it was out during this unwanted interaction, it wasn’t captured by his Ring devices.
Whether or not the internet outage and the arrival of officers at Jackson’s door was just a coincidence is a mental exercise best left to the reader. It can mean whatever you want it to mean, but there’s nothing about this story that rings false. And it certainly serves no purpose for Clay Jackson to simply make this whole thing up, especially since it has now cost him his job. And that makes his comments to Balko in his post extremely (and unfortunately) prescient:
Jackson isn’t an immigration attorney, but he occasionally represents undocumented people in non-immigration matters. He is using his real name, but he asked that I not name his employer or describe the type of law he practices.
“I thought, shit, now I’m going to have to get my employer involved. I’m going to have retain my own attorney. And now I have to worry about my clients. If they’re investigating me, are they going to start looking into my clients, too?”
And, as careful as he was discussing this with Radley Balko, it still somehow wasn’t enough. It would be extremely interesting to see if his employer experienced a similar visit from, um… unmarked officers? (Is that the correct term?) Balko reached out to every law enforcement agency that might have been involved in this visit (ICE, local cops, the state police, etc.) and, of course, has received no responses. But there’s not much comfort to be taken from even the best-case scenario:
Clay Jackson hasn’t heard anything more from the two officers who visited him, nor has he heard from whatever agency that employs them. It seems likely that his initial hunch was correct — this incident wasn’t the product of a top-down conspiracy to intimidate lawyers. It’s more likely that two cops were pissed off that someone had the audacity to help a scared and powerless family.
Not when the outcome is losing your job and realizing that intimidation tactics — no matter how clumsily they’re deployed — still work. And when one side has all the power, even those who know the law and their rights are equally capable of getting fucked.
If there’s anything we can all agree with, it’s Jackson’s take on the current political climate in his state — a statement that applies to this entire nation at this point in time:
“[C]an I just be honest with you? I’m fucking scared to be in Texas right now.”