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From the article: "He said he also thought the court order might lead to Gonzalez's deportation, because her husband would not be able to continue helping her get legal residency."

You are imputing mindless and sinister purposes to the rulings of the judge when he was just trying to spare the woman other consequences.

The problem is that this judge doesn't know squat about immigration law. He may genuinely felt that he was doing her a favor or that he could deport her, but only an immigration court can do that. Secondly, absusive spouses don't just stop being abusive. If this woman needed protection, he should have granted the restraining order. Without the restraining order, she may well wind up in an emergency room getting medical care paid for by our tax dollars. I will grant you that the article doens't go into details about why she wanted the order. Lastly, and this is where the judge's knowledge of immigration law is flawed, if he did grant a restraining order, it would be a positive for her immigration status, not a negative. She may well have been there because a restraining order against an abusive spouse acts in her favor for immigration purposes. She becomes eligible for a green card because she is a victim of domestic violence. Here is the link to the government website that describes this:

http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/battered.htm

This woman's problem is that she likely did not have a lawyer competent in both immigration and criminal law.

My whole point here is that there seems to be some people here that feel a) an abused spouse doesn't need protection from their abusers, especially if they are here illegally and b) support state judges who know nothing of immigration law who make ill-informed immigration decisions which are outside their jurisdiction and c) crime is OK in the U.S. if it's against illegals.