Minnesota’s chief federal trial judge has had it with the Trump administration’s immigration officials.
“The Court’s patience is at an end,” Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote in an order Monday.
The three-page filing is remarkable both for the government lawlessness it calls out and for how routine that lawlessness has become in Donald Trump’s second term. The reality reached a breaking point for the judge, who clerked for conservative icon Antonin Scalia and was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush.
It led the judge to take the admittedly “extraordinary step” of ordering Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to appear personally at a hearing Friday to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt.
The order came in a case in which the government had failed to provide a bond hearing or to release a person from custody as it had been ordered to do.
Schiltz explained that the issue extends far beyond this single case, noting that it was “one of dozens of court orders” with which the government has failed to comply in recent weeks.
He wrote that he had been “extremely patient” with officials, even though they “decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.” He wrote that officials “have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward.”
“Unfortunately, though, the violations continue,” Schiltz wrote.
It’s against that backdrop that the judge ordered Lyons to appear personally to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt of court. Schiltz acknowledged that doing so is an “extraordinary step,” but said that “the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed.” The judge noted that he’d cancel the Friday hearing if the government releases the person in question from custody by then.
The judge’s order follows immigration officers’ latest fatal shooting of a Minnesota citizen and comes amid an array of litigation stemming from both that incident specifically and the government’s enforcement operation in the state more broadly.
Schiltz himself featured in other recent high-profile litigation in the state, regarding the Trump administration’s failed bid to arrest former CNN anchor Don Lemon and other individuals over their actions at a church service earlier this month. In that litigation, too, the GOP appointee felt the need to call out what he saw as unprecedented government behavior.
The pattern highlights how the previously unheard of has become the norm and raises the question of what, if anything, will be done about it.
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