An immigration judge recently promoted by the Trump administration allegedly threatened a 2-year-old Guatemalan boy with an attack dog in an attempt to make the kid be quiet in court, according to a report. Mother Jones reports Judge Stuart Couch, who was promoted to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals in August, threatened the boy at a hearing in March 2016 in a North Carolina courtroom. Reportedly irritated by the noise the boy was making, Couch is said to have yelled: “I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you! ... Want me to go get the dog? If you don’t stop talking, I will bring the dog out. Do you want him to bite you?” According to the report, the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, Couch’s superior at the time, wrote to a legal advocacy group following its complaints about the incident in June 2016 to say: “Judge Couch acknowledged he did not handle the situation properly and assured me it will not occur again.”
