ICE attorney to judge: ‘This job sucks’
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A federal judge and two government lawyers expressed exasperation Tuesday with the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated failure to comply with court orders to release people whom federal agents arrested during the Trump Administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
Attorney Julie Le told U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell that she hates her job, is exhausted and she even asked Blackwell to hold her in contempt so she could get some rest.
On Wednesday, a Justice Department source not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that Le is no longer on special assignment to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, where she’d been helping process a high volume of habeas corpus petitions.
Blackwell ordered Le and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ana Voss to appear in his St. Paul courtroom to explain why DHS missed multiple deadlines to release five detainees who the judge said never should have been arrested in the first place.
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In a document filed ahead of the hearing, Le writes that DHS had released all five from custody starting on Jan. 17. The last to be freed, an Ecuadoran man, was released late Monday night.
Blackwell said that none of the five had criminal records requiring automatic detention under immigration law, but DHS missed multiple deadlines to respond to his release orders and requests for status updates.
“A court order is not advisory, and it is not conditional,” Blackwell said. “It is not something that any agency can treat as optional as it decides how or whether to comply.”
President Joe Biden appointed Blackwell to the bench in 2022 after he served as a special prosecutor in the state murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd.
Blackwell’s admonition follows a similar excoriation of DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement from U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee who served as a clerk to the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 1980s.
Schiltz ordered ICE acting director Todd Lyons to appear in person in his Minneapolis courtroom on Jan. 30 to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt of court for failing to release Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, a 43-year-old Ecuadoran man. Schiltz canceled the hearing after DHS released Tobay Robles, but Schiltz wrote “That does not end the Court’s concerns,” and listed “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases.”
At the Tuesday hearing in St. Paul, Le said that she moved from her job as an ICE lawyer to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office on Jan. 5 to help it respond to a “tidal wave” of civil filings from detainees, known as petitions of habeas corpus. Court records show that immigration attorneys have filed more than 600 habeas petitions in Minnesota since Jan. 1; the deluge began in December with the start of DHS’s targeted enforcement operation in the state.
Le added that getting DHS and ICE to comply with court orders has been difficult work that’s required her attention around the clock.
“The system sucks. This job sucks,” Le told Blackwell. “I wish you would hold me in contempt so I would have a full 24 hours sleep,” the attorney added.
Le said that many DHS officials don’t understand the seriousness of an order from a federal judge.
“It took a long, long, long time, and many orders to show cause to explain and let them know that if you don’t fix it, I’m going to quit and you’re going to be dragging yourself into court.”
Le said that she submitted her resignation, but ultimately chose to stay at the U.S. Attorney’s Office because no one could be found to replace her.
Le also said that after pushing through an order to release a juvenile from detention, she realized that she could affect positive change from the inside.
“Wait Julie, stop,” Le said. “You need to go back and get more people out. That’s why I’m still here. I’m here because I’m trying to make sure that the agency understands how important it is to comply with all the court orders.”
Blackwell did not hold Le or Voss in contempt.
“My goal is not to threaten you or anyone,” Blackwell said. “What we really want is compliance because on the other side of this is someone who should not have been arrested in some instances, who’s being held in jail, put in shackles for days if not a week after they’ve been ordered released. That’s my concern, upholding the rule of law and the Constitutional rights of all concerned.”
“I want to figure out how to get to the bottom of where the issue is,” Blackwell added. “Who is it that’s determining that they’re going to add conditions on a court’s order for unconditional release? Who is doing that?”
“I don’t know that that’s being done purposely at a higher level,” Voss said. “I believe that’s being done operationally by the people who are carrying out the function, and that if anything it represents a lack of training and communication from the supervisors down.”
Blackwell also asked Voss whether the Justice Department or DHS anticipated the large volume of habeas corpus petitions that “Operation Metro Surge” would generate.
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Voss responded.
“I’m sure never in your career have you had such an incidence of having to account to the court for noncompliance from the Justice Department. When have you ever seen anything like it?”
“I have not in my career,” Voss said.
Voss is among the many assistant U.S. attorneys who’ve submitted their resignations en masse over the last month. Asked by reporters after the hearing when she plans to leave the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she declined to comment.
“The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal caseload necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement sent to MPR News on Wednesday morning.
— Matt Sepic, MPR News
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