Feds seek to boot Minnesota judges from immigration cases after public comments
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The Justice Department is seeking to disqualify two Minnesota federal judges from a pair of immigration-related cases. The move comes on the heels of ethics complaints the DOJ filed against Judges Patrick Schiltz, John Tunheim and five of their colleagues after they spoke to the New York Times for a Sept. 17 story about the Trump Administration’s wintertime immigration operation and its effect on the federal courts.
In one of the cases, which is assigned to Schiltz, the government is seeking to revoke the citizenship of Salah Osman Ahmed, a Somali American man who pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge in 2009 and received a three-year prison sentence.
In the other case, over which Tunheim is presiding, prosecutors allege that Hester Sophia Weihmann, a legal permanent U.S. resident from South Africa, voted illegally in the 2024 election. Weihmann is among at least 11 people charged in Minnesota with voting as a non-citizen.
In separate motions, Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodard Jr. argues neither judge can be impartial because they’re quoted in a story Woodard characterizes as a “partisan critique of the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis.”
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Tunheim told the newspaper immigration agents were not “arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.”
Schiltz, who was Minnesota’s chief federal judge during Metro Surge, is quoted more extensively. He said ICE’s violation of hundreds of court orders threatened the rule of law.
“If you don’t have it, you have either anarchy or you have authoritarianism. You have Russia or you have China or you have North Korea,” Schiltz told the New York Times.
In a Sept. 30 statement to MPR News, Schiltz said that he was acting “well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times. Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges may 'speak[] and writ[e] on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence.’ That is exactly what I did."
Later that day, a court spokesperson sent a similar statement on behalf of Minnesota’s federal bench.
In an email Tuesday, Schiltz told MPR News that he is unable to comment on the status of the ethics complaint because the proceedings at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals are confidential.
However, Schiltz is continuing to speak out about threats to the rule of law during Operation Metro Surge.
Two days after the DOJ filed the ethics complaint, he appeared at a University of St. Thomas School of Law symposium on Metro Surge and repeated many of the same things he told the Times.
Schiltz told the gathering he was unable to set aside work because he had to make time-sensitive decisions on many of the hundreds of lawsuits that ICE detainees had filed challenging their detention.
“The difference between me going to a movie and turning my phone off for two hours and me checking my phone regularly either at the movie — that makes you popular in the theater — or not going to the movie, could literally be someone being sent to New Mexico or someone being sent to Texas.
The DOJ cited Schiltz’s comments from the symposium in its recusal motion.
Schiltz and Tunheim will decide on the motions themselves, St. Thomas law professor Greg Sisk said in an interview with MPR News on Wednesday. If the judges don’t recuse themselves, the Justice Department could ask other district judges to rule.
Beyond that, Sisk said, the law makes it difficult to get an appeals court to force the judges off the cases.
“I would imagine that they’re doing it in large part to send a message to every other federal judge,” Sisk said. “If you make public statements about the rule of law in a manner that’s critical of this administration’s Department of Justice, then we will be filing similar motions to recuse against you and questioning your impartiality as well.”
Minneapolis attorney Daniel Gerdts, who represents Ahmed in the denaturalization case, said in an email to MPR News on Wednesday that he has occasionally disagreed with Schiltz’s decisions but has never questioned his impartiality. Gerdts called the Justice Department’s arguments for recusal “contrived and baseless.”
“And who precisely do they think would be a better choice for them on such a weak case? Judge Schiltz is the epitome of a principled, call-it-like-he-sees-it judge who knows the rules of evidence and applies them equally to both sides,” Gerdts said.
