The chief federal judge in Minnesota accused federal officials of continuing to disobey judicial orders related to immigration enforcement and then mischaracterizing the scope of their missteps.
The judge, Patrick Schiltz, threatened to hold government officials in criminal contempt if the pattern continued, writing in a scathing order on Thursday that, “one way or another, ICE will comply with this court’s orders.”
“The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” wrote Judge Schiltz, who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush.
Across the country, federal judges have repeatedly called out Trump administration officials in recent weeks for testifying dishonestly, representing the law inaccurately and failing to comply promptly with their orders, especially on immigration-related matters. Tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration have been especially high in Minnesota, where the courts have been overwhelmed with lawsuits stemming from a crackdown on illegal immigration.
On Thursday, Judge Schiltz identified 210 orders issued in 143 cases in Minnesota in which he said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had not complied with court orders. Federal officials had previously taken issue with Judge Schiltz’s characterization of their compliance with orders.
In his opinion, the judge quoted from an email that he said was sent to him by Daniel N. Rosen, the state’s top federal prosecutor, that acknowledged some missteps but argued that the judge had overstated their scope.
Judge Schiltz acknowledged in his ruling that federal officials had not disobeyed orders in some cases he had previously cited, but noted dozens of additional examples where he said the government did not obey a judge’s instructions. Among the errors: missing deadlines for releasing detainees, transferring a detainee to Texas against a judge’s order and not filing required updates with the court.
Mr. Rosen and the Justice Department did not immediately comment on Thursday. The U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota has seen an exodus of experienced lawyers in recent weeks who said they objected to the Justice Department’s handling of immigration-related matters, including the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, by an ICE agent.
In the email that Judge Schiltz quoted from, sent on Feb. 9, Mr. Rosen pledged to “redouble our efforts to achieve compliance,” but complained that “the lawyers in my civil division didn’t deserve” to be criticized by the judge in the way they were.
On Thursday, Judge Schiltz questioned the sincerity of Mr. Rosen’s promise to improve — “This, too, appears to be untrue,” the judge wrote — and noted that the government had continued to fail to comply with orders.
Judge Schiltz also expressed some sympathy for lawyers in the U.S. attorney’s office, saying judges had been patient with them, “recognizing that they have been put in an impossible position by Rosen and his superiors in the Department of Justice.”
“What those attorneys ‘didn’t deserve’ was the administration sending 3,000 ICE agents to Minnesota to detain people without making any provision for handling the hundreds of lawsuits that were sure to follow,” the judge added.
Judge Schiltz, who decades ago clerked for Justice Antonin G. Scalia, had in recent weeks showed flashes of growing frustration and anger with the Trump administration, emerging as an unexpected new critic of the administration’s tactics in court. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security referred to the concerns expressed in one of his previous orders as a “diatribe from this activist judge.”
Mattathias Schwartz contributed reporting.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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