A Texas judge has dismissed misdemeanor charges of riot participation filed against 211 alleged illegal immigrants who stood accused of overrunning members of the Texas National Guard in March at the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso.
County Court of Law Judge Ruben Morales dismissed the charges Wednesday, ruling that his court had no jurisdiction over the cases, according to the El Paso Times.
The public defender in the case, Kelli Childress, had moved for dismissal, claiming that the EL Paso District Attorney's Office had failed to submit a "transfer order" when the cases were removed from the district court and moved to the county's docket.
Without that order, Childress argued, jurisdiction over the cases remained with the original court.
"All of those processes were ignored here," Childress claimed, according to the Times.
Kyle Lasley of the El Paso County DA's Office, unsurprisingly, disagreed.
"This process argument does not deprive this court of jurisdiction," he told the judge, arguing that since the county court had jurisdiction over misdemeanor cases, it could rule on the 211 riot participation cases regardless of whether the transfer orders had been filed.
Morales sided with the public defender, according to the Times.
"If I don't have jurisdiction," Morales said, "there's nothing I can do on these cases" except dismiss them, the outlet reported.
After the hearing, Childress said the DA's Office should focus on more important cases rather than expending resources prosecuting misdemeanors.
"The tenacity with which they're going after these misdemeanor cases that don't even have evidence," she told reporters Wednesday.
"When we've got thousands of cases still in backlog waiting to have their cases reviewed and screened and brought to a grand jury ... and these cases somehow, 18 hours after they're dismissed for no probable cause, those are able to be brought to a grand jury," she claimed.
The Times reported that Childress claimed to be waiting on the DA's Office to review 1,600 open cases, about half of which were over six months old and another quarter of which had been open for a year or longer.
"It's very frustrating to watch what's happening there and really not understanding," Childress said.
"I keep hearing the words that this is not a political move and this is not an anti-immigration position, but instead of hearing what it's not, I'd like to hear what it is," she added.
District Attorney Bill Hicks said he would appeal the dismissals, however.
"Our office feels very strongly that the procedure was proper," Hicks said during a news conference on Thursday, according to the Times.
"We argued that it was appropriate and proper and we feel very strongly that it was done properly and Morales' order is an inappropriate order," he added.
