Experts Criticize Judge's Deportation Threat

But immigration law experts said Fink overreached by issuing the threat. A state judge has no authority to order an arrest for violation of federal immigration laws, they said.

Regardless, Gonzalez, who lives in a domestic abuse shelter, would probably have been granted a stay of any deportation proceeding under the federal Violence Against Women Act, said Ed Pilot, a Beverly Hills immigration attorney.

"By issuing the restraining order, it could help her on her VAWA case," he said. Also, if Gonzalez had a pending application for legal residency, as asserted, she would have been allowed a grace period while the issue was resolved, he added.

Fink "may have had the best intentions in the world," Pilot said, "but he's treading into an area that he understandably is not an expert on."

Victor Nieblas, an immigration attorney and adjunct professor of immigration law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, agreed that Gonzalez would probably have been protected.

"This is what the judge doesn't understand," Nieblas said. "You can't assume that because someone is here without documents that the automatic result is deportation."

The Los Angeles County Superior Court is investigating the incident, which occurred during a July 14 hearing on Gonzalez's request for a restraining order against Alfredo Salgado, 51, her husband of six years and a legal resident.

In her court petition, Gonzalez accused him of years of emotional and verbal abuse against her and the couple's two young boys. In one argument, she said, he told her to leave the house and the children and threatened to call immigration officials.

During his questioning of Gonzalez, Fink asked if she was in fact an illegal immigrant, and she said she was.

"I hate the immigration laws that we have," the judge said, according to the court transcript, "but I think the bailiff could take you to the immigration services and send you to Mexico. Is that what you guys want?"