Our Constitutional system of government, which was instituted by “We the People”, currently has authorized 890 Federal judges; however, our citizens have only 535 elected Representatives in Washington to look after their interests. To avoid responsibility and voters’ ire for their actions, our elected representatives have placed power in the unelected Washington bureaucrats residing in the Deep State, untouchable, and in unelected federal judges.
The deportation fiasco surrounding the” Maryland Man”, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, highlights the political mess caused when the constitutional lines between the three branches of the U.S. government are crossed and the judiciary becomes politicized. The first error in judgment in this case occurred when a judge granted a foreign gang member asylum from rival gang members in his home country.
A second error of judgment furthered the problem when he was stopped in Tennessee, allegedly harboring and transporting other illegals across state lines, and let go without being charged.
A final judicial error was made when his deportation to his home in El Salvador was recalled without the judge reevaluating the situation there since he left thirteen years ago. The gangs in El Salvador have since been curtailed, thereby removing his argument for gaining asylum in the United States.
Situations like this, where searching for an accommodating judge who is willing to bend existing laws for political ends, might well be averted if Congress were to modify existing immigration law to meet current population needs and clarify existing ambiguities. Unfortunately, in our divisive political climate, common-sense legislation has been impossible for the past 10-20 years. Our politicians would rather have the issue than a solution!
The larger question is why our nation has 1.66 more federal judges than we have elected Washington representatives. Most crimes in the U.S. are punishable by state and local criminal codes, including murder, assault, rape, kidnapping, theft, burglary, traffic offences, and fraud, just to name basic categories of non-federal crimes. The large number of federal judges is necessary to enforce crimes that citizens commit against Administrative State regulations, or to expand the federal encroachment into areas that were constitutionally within state or local jurisdiction. Murder is murder, a state crime; why should it also be a federal crime?
As of 2019, American citizens are subject to an estimated 5,199 federal crimes covered in 1,510 sections of the U.S. Code. The regulators never sleep, so the number of crimes citizens are subject to could now be near 6,000. In 1994, only 1,111 sections of the U.S. Code were in effect, a 35 percent increase in 25 years.
With this many crimes to choose from, the odds are that any U.S. citizen is a prospective breaker of some Federal law just waiting to be investigated. The bottom line on the power given by the Federal judicial system is that:
- 90 percent of those charged plead “guilty”. Few have the financial resources to challenge the Fed’s unlimited prosecution resources, prosecutorial immunity, and a briefcase of unfair practices to use, including:
- Conceal exculpatory evidence – Brady Rule
- Prosecute for outdated or seldom-used laws
- Use of multiple count indictments to coerce plea bargain testimony
- Prosecute non-Federal or non-existent crimes
- Extending lengthy legal action to bankrupt the target
- Enact asset forfeiture and excessive criminal fines to prevent the accused from funding an adequate legal defense
- Present perjured testimony
- Bribe or coerce witnesses
- Hide or prevent witnesses from testifying
- Commit political bias or animosity
- Provide selective leaks to the press to prejudge the target in the mind of the public
- Conduct illegal seizures and forfeiture of personal property
- 2 percent of those charged go to trial but face an 83 percent prosecution success rate at the hands of Federal prosecutors.
- The number of indicted citizens going to trial has dropped 60 percent in the past two decades – they know they are playing against a “stacked deck”!
Instead of the Ten Commandments, if Moses had been required to bring the nearly 6,000 Federal criminal acts down from Mount Sinai, he would still be waiting for them to be etched in stone, and he would have required a team from the builders of the Giza Pyramid Complex to move them down the mountain for him.
Forty years in the wilderness might have encompassed another generation or two before they arrived at the Promised Land with their laws to live by!
TW3
August 28, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
