First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli filed a 79-page appeal this week challenging a federal judge's decision to throw out the criminal case against an illegal immigrant from Mexico charged with striking law enforcement officers with his car during an immigration arrest in South Los Angeles. The appeal does not merely contest the ruling, it accuses the judge of reaching his conclusion before the case even began.
The defendant, 45-year-old Carlitos Ricardo Parias, was charged in October with assaulting a federal officer after he allegedly rammed law enforcement vehicles while trying to flee the targeted enforcement stop. Officers opened fire during the incident, hitting Parias in the elbow. A deputy U.S. Marshal was wounded by a ricochet bullet.
Judge Fernando M. Olguin, an Obama appointee who has sat on California's Central District bench since 2012, dismissed the charges. His rationale: Parias had been denied access to a lawyer while held in immigration detention. Essayli's appeal, as reported by the New York Post, argues the judge had already decided the outcome before either side set foot in his courtroom.
The language in Essayli's brief is unusually direct for a federal filing. The brief states that Olguin "made up his mind" about the case early and that the proceedings amounted to a "premeditated performance." Prosecutors wrote:
"None of this was the fair, impartial assessment of legal and factual questions that judicial review requires."
The appeal further alleges that Olguin "proclaimed that defendant's (mandatory) immigration detention was unlawful before defendant was even detained, and worked backward from that premise." The brief argues that ICE was legally required to hold Parias because he was in the country illegally and had been arrested for assaulting a law enforcement officer.
"That strayed far outside the court's proper judicial role," the prosecutors wrote.
The case made headlines last year. Parias, known on TikTok under the name Richard LA, had documented immigration enforcement activity on the platform. He is currently being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County on immigration violations, but the criminal charges for allegedly attacking federal officers no longer stand, thanks to Olguin's ruling.
What makes the appeal especially pointed is its broader argument: that Olguin's dismissal of the Parias case fits a pattern. The 79-page brief cites two other cases in which the judge threw out serious federal charges under circumstances prosecutors describe as legally unjustified.
In August, Olguin dismissed the federal case against Marco Antonio Arreola-Arreola, an illegal immigrant from Mexico charged with criminal possession of firearms. Court documents described in the appeal say Arreola-Arreola was caught on video inside a Downtown Los Angeles warehouse handling stolen Browning rifles, part of a batch of roughly 650 weapons swiped from trains running between the Port of Los Angeles and Missouri.
Olguin's reason for dismissal: Arreola-Arreola had already been taken into immigration custody pending deportation. The judge apparently decided that was enough to end the criminal matter. Arreola-Arreola was subsequently removed from the United States, but the criminal case remains under appeal.
The pattern extends further. In 2022, Olguin dismissed charges against Nathan Wilson and Christopher Beasley, who had been charged with arson after a protest over the death of George Floyd in Santa Monica. The judge tossed the case after prosecutors declined to provide evidence the defense sought to support a selective-prosecution claim. Department of Justice lawyers appealed that ruling.
In 2024, a federal appeals court reinstated the charges and sent the case back to Olguin. Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, in a concurring opinion, wrote that "the district court far overstepped its boundaries." That is not the language of a minor procedural quibble. It is an appellate judge telling a colleague he exceeded his authority.
This pattern, of a federal judge facing accusations of activism for blocking enforcement actions, has become disturbingly familiar in recent years.
Olguin's record on the bench raises questions. So does his academic record. In 1989, the Harvard-educated jurist wrote a master's thesis on U.S. involvement in Central America. In it, he argued that "the United States has been instrumental in establishing a Central American political system 'characterized by the dominance of a wealthy landed elite governing...almost always with the collaboration of the military.'"
He further wrote that "this system has resulted in extreme inequality, injustice, and poverty in most of the region," and that "local leaders have obtained US support in putting down the indigenous revolutionary movements by labeling them 'communist.'"
When he was nominated for the federal bench, Olguin was questioned about those views. He told questioners he was "committed to the rule of law and will apply and uphold all laws of the United States, irrespective of my personal views on any particular area of law."
Prosecutors are now, in effect, arguing that commitment has not held. The appeal in the Parias case will be considered by a panel of judges. Olguin did not respond to a request for comment.
Consider the practical results. A deputy U.S. Marshal took a ricochet bullet during the arrest of Parias. Federal agents carried out a lawful immigration enforcement stop. The suspect allegedly used his vehicle as a weapon against those officers. And a federal judge decided the appropriate remedy was to dismiss the criminal charges entirely, not because the facts were in dispute, but because of how the defendant was held after his arrest.
That is a remedy that punishes the officers and rewards the accused. It sends a message to every illegal immigrant who might consider resisting arrest: a sympathetic judge may erase the consequences.
The broader landscape of judicial interference in immigration enforcement only sharpens the concern. Courts across California have become a recurring obstacle for federal agents trying to do their jobs. A federal judge recently blocked California's mask ban targeting ICE agents, and a separate appeals court halted a state law designed to force ICE agents to display identification during operations. In each case, the state or a sympathetic judge attempted to hamstring enforcement, and a higher court stepped in.
That corrective pattern may be the only thing standing between lawful enforcement and judicial nullification. When judges dismiss cases against defendants accused of attacking federal officers, the system is not protecting rights. It is protecting lawbreakers at the expense of the people sworn to uphold the law.
The tensions between federal judges and the Justice Department have only deepened in recent months, as clashes over DOJ transparency and enforcement priorities continue to play out in courtrooms nationwide.
Essayli's brief lays out a straightforward argument: Olguin decided the Parias case before it was tried, invented a legal theory to justify dismissal, and ignored the statutory requirement that ICE detain an illegal immigrant arrested for assaulting law enforcement. The appeal asks a panel of judges to reverse the dismissal.
If the panel agrees, the case against Parias would be reinstated, and the message would be clear: federal judges do not get to pre-decide outcomes and dress up the result as judicial reasoning.
If the panel declines, the precedent is grim. A man accused of using his car as a weapon against federal officers walks free on a technicality manufactured by a judge whose prior dismissals have already been overturned on appeal.
Olguin has been on the bench for over a decade. His thesis blamed the United States for Central American instability. His rulings have repeatedly let accused criminals, including illegal immigrants charged with serious offenses, escape accountability. And higher courts have already told him, at least once, that he went too far.
The question now is whether anyone with the authority to act will treat the pattern as what it plainly appears to be: not a series of isolated legal judgments, but a judicial philosophy that puts ideology ahead of the law it is supposed to serve.
When a judge's record reads like a policy agenda, the robe stops being a mark of impartiality. It becomes a costume.
