Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel further underlined their lack of needed basic training and of competent leadership when ICE agents tried on Tuesday morning to enter the Ecuadoran Consulate in Minneapolis. Trying to do so violates one of the most basic rules of international law and practice and if the shoe were on the other foot, i.e., foreign police were trying to enter an American embassy or consulate overseas, Washington — rightly — would be furious.
Ecuador’s government was right to protest, which they did to our diplomats in Quito. (“Protest” in this case is diplomatic-speak for the kind of anger and language used when someone cuts you off and nearly kills you on the Jersey Turnpike.)
The sanctity and immunity of diplomatic and consular facilities is a basic tenet of international law and is enshrined in treaties and conventions that the United States helped author as well as signed and ratified. While there is a lot more to these treaties and conventions, a basic point is that diplomatic facilities are regarded as the territory of the sending government. In other words, the British Embassy in Washington is technically British territory; the American Embassy in London is a piece of the sovereign territory of the United States. British police and other officials cannot enter the American Embassy in London without the permission of the American Ambassador.
These principles are basic to governments being able to conduct relations with other countries. They are essential as well to a government’s ability to help and protect its citizens overseas. While an embassy is the seat of the ambassador, the President’s personal representative to his fellow head of state and who also oversees all official Americans working in a country except combat officers operating under a combatant commander, consulates may be outside the capital and have the primary job of providing protection and assistance to its citizens living in that country.
In other words, the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt, Munich, Shanghai, or Mumbai is there to help Americans in that part of Germany, China, or India. The help U.S. consular staff, whether diplomats from the State Department or other USG agencies or locally engaged staff and experts, provide includes helping Americans who are arrested, who get sick, who need a passport or birth certificate, or a document notarized in a way it can be used overseas. Consular staff help families when someone dies and the American’s body needs to be sent back to the U.S. for burial. They can help find an American in that country when a family emergency happens and they need to know and perhaps get back home fast. Consular staff also help U.S. exporters and others do business in that part of their host country — one reason why consulates are often located in a foreign country’s largest cities and major commercial hubs.
Foreign countries operate the same way in the United States, with consulates in New York, Houston, Miami, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, or Seattle. And foreign countries expect to be treated according to the agreements and conventions we helped write and then signed and ratified; agreements and conventions from which we all benefit
The Iranian takeover of our embassy in Tehran in 1979 for 444 days, an action sanctioned by the then new Islamic Republic, rankles to this day, as do memories of other attacks on our embassies, consulates, and diplomats.
For this reason the ICE agents should have known better than to try and enter Ecuador’s consulate in Minneapolis. Memories of the anger, rightly felt, when one of our facilities was violated should have deterred them, or at least be a basic aspect of their training when operating in a city with foreign diplomatic presence.
There are many problems with ICE’s operations in Minnesota, Maine, and elsewhere. All of them, including this one, need to be addressed ASAP.
Ambassador (ret.) Robert Cekuta is a four-decade veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service whose postings included Berlin, Tokyo, Albania, and the Middle East as well as senior positions in State and Ambassador to Azerbaijan.” He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.