A federal judge in New Jersey will now require immigration officials to formally declare that they are aware of court orders that bar migrants from being transferred out of state, after the government repeatedly flouted those directives.
The judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, introduced the new process in an order on Monday. It is the second time in a week that U.S. District Court judges in New Jersey have suggested that federal officials were intentionally violating the law and proposed new checks aimed at preventing more violations.
Judge Farbiarz, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., warned that he might move to hold the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency or its leaders in criminal contempt if they continued to sidestep his orders.
“Local ICE leaders must square up to the serious problem in their midst of noncompliance with judicial orders,” he wrote. “And they must get the problem solved.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At least 17 detainees have been moved out of New Jersey in violation of a judge’s order since Dec. 5, Judge Farbiarz said last month in a separate court filing. In his order on Monday, the judge wrote that he would encourage compliance with the law by requiring ICE officials to sign affidavits relating to each individual case.
“Ordinary workplace processes are not getting the job done,” he wrote. “Officials are said to be losing track of judicial injunctions in the course of the day’s work. Routine database entries are not being made.”
Judge Farbiarz instructed leaders in the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey to sign similar declarations. But he stressed that prosecutors in the office appeared to be conscientiously trying to comply with judicial orders, despite confronting an overwhelming number of immigration cases.
Judge Farbiarz is one of several federal judges grappling with how to address a pattern of government noncompliance in immigration cases.
On Thursday, Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, whose courtroom is in Trenton, N.J., said that the U.S. attorney’s office was intentionally violating immigration-related orders. He said that if the Trump administration were to continue to justify its immigration arrests under a rationale that judges have said is legally unacceptable, it would lead to hearings in which he would plan to call top administration officials to testify.
“Efforts by the court in this district to protect detainees’ rights have been largely frustrated by the government,” Judge Quraishi wrote, adding that officials from the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey had said they violated more than 70 orders from judges in the state.
Jordan Fox, a prosecutor who is part of the New Jersey office’s three-person leadership team, said in a court filing that the violations had “occurred inadvertently due to logistical delays.”
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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