Washington — A federal court hearing in Minneapolis on Tuesday provided an extraordinary window into the volume of immigration-related cases overwhelming federal prosecutors in Minnesota amid the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to the Twin Cities, and the frustrations of exasperated judges who have said their orders are repeatedly ignored.
The hearing before U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell was over cases brought by five different immigrants who were arrested in Minnesota and had subsequently challenged their detentions. Blackwell had ordered each of the men to be released from immigration custody, but then had to repeatedly seek information from the government about their locations and statuses.
The proceeding gained widespread attention when the federal prosecutor, Julie Le, invited Blackwell to hold her in contempt of court “so that I can have a full 24 hours sleep.”
“What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” Le said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Le was subsequently removed from her detail with the Justice Department, according to a source familiar with the matter. She told Blackwell she began working with the Justice Department in January after volunteering to move from her post as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer to assist with the influx of cases in Minnesota stemming from the Trump administration’s enhanced immigration operations, dubbed Operation Metro Surge. The person said Le was removed from the detail after her comments Tuesday.
“They are overwhelmed and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly enough to volunteer,” she told the judge of her decision to help the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota with the habeas claims it received. The office has been hit with a wave of resignations in recent weeks.
Le added that she had sought to resign from her Justice Department position, but no replacement had been found. She said she intended to remain on assignment until one was identified.
“If they don’t, then by all mean (sic), I’m going to walk out,” Le told Blackwell. “…I am here just trying to make sure that the agency understand how important it is to comply with all the court orders, which they have not done in the past or currently.”
Le added that she is “not White” and said her family is “at risk as any other people that might get picked up too.”
Asked by the judge whether she was brought into her new role with “no proper orientation or training,” Le said she was.
“We have no guidance or direction on what we need to do,” Le said, adding that the Justice Department will “just throw you in the well and then here we go.”
Blackwell, meanwhile, expressed his own frustrations with what he said was a lack of compliance by the government with his orders.
“A court order is not advisory and it is not conditional,” he said. “It is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply with the court order.”
Blackwell told Justice Department lawyers that in some instances, he had to issue multiple orders asking for information about the status of detainees who were arrested and then ordered to be released from custody.
“Volume, that is, the volume of cases and matters, is not a justification for diluting constitutional rights and it never can be. It heightens the need for care,” Blackwell said during the hearing. “Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign.”
The Justice Department, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and ICE “are not above the law,” Blackwell said.
“What we really want is simply compliance, because on the other side of this is somebody who should not have been arrested in some instances in the first place who is being hauled in jail or put in shackles for days, if not a week-plus, after they’ve been ordered released,” he said. “That’s my concern is for upholding the rule of law and the constitutional rights of all concerned.”
He pressed Le on whether she was making her frustrations known to the Justice Department, DHS and ICE, and Le responded that she sends emails with “big, bold font” in an effort to get their attention.
Still, Blackwell remained critical of the lack of expediency in freeing the men from detention.
“I wholeheartedly embrace the notion of a unitary executive, as in DHS, ICE, the DOJ, all a part of the Executive Branch,” the judge said, referencing a legal theory that is embraced by the conservative legal movement. “And if there’s a problem in the restaurant, I don’t intend to go in the kitchen to try to figure out who makes the bread. And all of it is part of the Executive Branch.”
Before stepping back to her seat, Le said she was doing her best and working toward “fixing a system, a broken system.” But, she added, “I don’t have a magic button to do it. I don’t have the power or the voice to do it. I only can do it within the ability and the capacity that I have.”
Kira Kelly, an attorney for two of the immigrants, then stood up and called the situation “unprecedented.” She said government attorneys “don’t have the power to get their clients under control.”
“An email with bold font is not going to change the widespread, systemic pattern of disregard for court orders and honestly for basic human rights in this situation,” Kelly said.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CBS News in a statement that Le was a probationary attorney, and called her conduct “unprofessional and unbecoming of an ICE attorney in abandoning her obligation to act with commitment, dedication, and zeal to the interests of the United States Government.”
Blackwell is not the first judge in Minnesota to express frustrations with the Trump administration and its response to orders in immigration cases. Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge on the U.S. district court in Minnesota, lambasted ICE last week for violating what he said was 96 court orders issued in 74 cases.
“ICE is not a law unto itself. ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated,” Schiltz wrote in a four-page decision.
In a recent court filing, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said that more than 427 habeas cases were filed in Minnesota alone, and that his office “has been forced to shift its already limited resources from other pressing and important priorities.”
“The burden of this flood of new lawsuits not only falls on the Government, but also on the District Court,” Rosen said, adding that the civil division in his office that typically handles these cases was only at 50% filled.