The Trump administration’s slapdash immigration enforcement keeps causing federal judges to speak out.
One of the most prominent recent examples came from Minnesota, where a conservative judge demanded that the acting U.S. immigration chief explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt. In that case, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz went out of his way to note that he wasn’t upset with the government lawyers, who he wrote “have struggled mightily to ensure” that officials comply with court orders.
A similarly scathing ruling just came out of Florida, but in that case, the judge ordered the lawyers involved to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned.
Like Schiltz’s order in Minnesota, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton’s ruling in Florida stemmed from the detention of an immigrant. In the latter case, the Obama-appointed Dalton had ordered the release of a high school student named Javier Gimenez Rivero, who had been living in Florida with his family for more than four years after they fled Venezuela. On Monday, Dalton published an order memorializing what he said during a hearing last week when he ordered Gimenez Rivero’s release.
He had a lot to say in his ruling — and it wasn’t good for the government.
For one thing, the judge said the argument that he didn’t have jurisdiction to hear Gimenez Rivero’s petition “beggars belief and appears to deliberately mislead the Court about the law and the record.” The government didn’t fare better on the merits, with Dalton calling its position “similarly ill-informed,” “incoherent” and “simply insupportable on all fronts.”
The judge went further, reasoning that while Gimenez Rivero’s release “provides him with the remedy he deserves,” it doesn’t “remedy everything that happened in this Court.”
He pointed out that judges appointed by every president from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump have said the government’s interpretation of the legal question at issue is wrong. He wrote that the government is free to argue for expanding the interpretation of the law, but that its lawyers “must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations, as lawyers have done since time immemorial: Cite the contrary binding authority and argue why it’s wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.”
The judge concluded that “Members of this Bar have a duty of candor to the Court” but that the government’s conduct in the case “does not meet that standard.” He wrote that U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joy Warner must show cause why they should not be sanctioned. He gave them until Feb. 9 to explain themselves in writing.
The judge wrote that his order “resolves one of many cases flooding the courts in which the Government unlawfully detained a noncitizen who has been present in this country for years.” He wrote, “In this country, we don’t enforce the law by breaking the law.”
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