A federal judge on Thursday said that the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey had lost its credibility and was intentionally violating immigration-related orders, the latest rebuke from a judiciary that has grown increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration.
The judge, Zahid N. Quraishi, added that if the Trump administration continued to make immigration arrests under a rationale that had already been found legally unacceptable, those arrests would most likely have to be justified through sworn testimony by administration officials.
That strict standard would reflect an extraordinary lack of faith in the government and would place an additional burden on it every time it made an arrest of that nature.
“Efforts by the court in this district to protect detainees’ rights have been largely frustrated by the government,” Judge Quraishi wrote, saying that officials from the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey had admitted to violating more than 70 orders from judges there. He added that he would “not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on. It ends today.”
The Justice and Homeland Security departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Judge Quraishi’s comment are the latest in a series of stern rulings in recent weeks from federal judges who are increasingly impatient with the administration and willing to accuse it of breaking the law.
Last week, a California judge, Sunshine Sykes, wrote that “Americans have expressed deep concerns over unlawful, wanton acts by the executive branch,” and characterized its acts against noncitizens as a terror campaign. And earlier this month, a Minnesota judge, Laura M. Provinzino, found a Justice Department lawyer in contempt of court, saying, “What the court will not tolerate is what happened here: disobedience and radio silence.”
Judge Quraishi is a former federal prosecutor and army veteran who was appointed as a district judge by President Biden. He previously worked as a lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security.
The case in which Judge Quraishi issued his ruling involved a 29-year-old woman from El Salvador who crossed the border in August 2016 and was apprehended by the Border Patrol. The woman, Diana Cartagena Hueso, was found to have credible fear of returning to El Salvador and was referred for hearings in which she could have attempted to claim asylum. However in October 2016, she was released and has lived in the United States for the last decade.
Ms. Cartagena Hueso, who is married with a 5-year-old who Judge Quraishi wrote was presumably an American citizen, was arrested with her husband on Jan. 27 on the way to a doctor’s appointment.
On Feb. 14, Ms. Cartagena Hueso filed a petition to be released, and three days later, Judge Quraishi ordered that the government refrain from moving her from New Jersey and ordered a bond hearing. But by then she had already been transferred to Oklahoma. On Feb. 17, she was transferred to Texas and then back to Oklahoma.
According to Judge Quraishi, the Trump administration did not alert him to any of those transfers. He wrote that the government had not bothered to explain why Ms. Cartagena Hueso was transferred three times in two days, and had argued it was not obligated to transfer her back to New Jersey.
The government justified Ms. Cartagena Hueso’s arrest by invoking a law that allows for the expedited removal of a person who crossed the border illegally.
But the New Jersey federal appeals court has said that the law only applies to noncitizens “arriving in the United States” and noncitizens “encountered within 14 days of entry without inspection” and within 100 miles of an international border.
Judge Quraishi wrote that previously, he had saved the government from what he characterized as its own faulty legal argument by understanding other detainees to have been held under a different statute, and said that he had even attempted to do the same in Ms. Cartagena Hueso’s case. “No more,” he wrote, and instead ordered her release.
“I think it was very unfair what was happening with my client, and I’m glad the judge saw it our way,” said a lawyer for Ms. Cartagena Hueso, Noemi Simbron.
Judge Quraishi said that the matter did not stop with Ms. Cartagena Hueso’s case, because the government’s handling of her petition was “emblematic of its approach to immigration enforcement in this state.”
“On the merits, its detentions are illegal,” he wrote, “It knows this.” He then referred to a different decision that noted in about 300 cases, the government’s use of the statute in question had been rejected by federal judges.
Thus, Judge Quraishi said, any further arrests and detentions under that statute would “likely trigger” the scheduling of a hearing at which individuals from the U.S. attorney’s office and the Homeland Security Department would be expected to testify under oath about the case in question.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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