Minnesota chief judge warns prosecutor and ICE: obey court orders or face contempt

Minnesota judge warns prosecutor and ICE on compliance with court orders

Federal Judge Patrick Schiltz issued a stern warning Thursday to Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, and to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, telling them the government must comply with court orders or face criminal contempt charges. Schiltz’s order came after Rosen disputed the judge’s characterization of how much ICE was failing to follow directives, including through an email sent Feb. 9.

Schiltz said the court has repeatedly had to resort to contempt threats to force compliance, writing that the government’s posture has been to respond by attacking the court rather than improving its adherence to orders. He warned that the federal court would continue taking whatever steps it deemed necessary to protect the rule of law, including moving to criminal contempt if required.

The dispute traces to Rosen’s office and ICE’s handling of litigation tied to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota. Schiltz’s warning cited a series of critical statements and rulings by federal judges in Minnesota and elsewhere that found issues in how the administration sought to conduct mass deportations, with judges pointing to concerns tied to due process and humane-treatment standards.

In prior proceedings, Schiltz described ICE as a “serial violator” of court orders connected to the enforcement surge. In a Jan. 28 order, he wrote that other federal judges had identified 96 orders that ICE violated in 74 cases, and he said he had expressed “grave concerns” after that finding.

After Rosen pushed back on Schiltz’s account, Schiltz said he asked his judges and law clerks to review the numbers. Schiltz wrote that the review found some mistakes that cut both ways, but that the revised conclusion was that ICE violated 97 orders in 66 of the cases covered in the earlier tally.

Schiltz also criticized how the government responded to the court’s record, writing that it was “not to do a better job complying with court orders, but instead to attack the Court.” He added that, increasingly, the court had relied on the threat of civil contempt to compel ICE to comply, writing that the court was not aware of another occasion in U.S. history in which a federal court had had to threaten contempt “again and again and again” to get the federal government to comply with court orders.

In the same order, Schiltz attached a list that documented 113 additional order violations in 77 additional cases, mostly after the original tally. He wrote that the judges in the district had been “extraordinarily patient” with the government lawyers, but he also said that Rosen and his superiors at the Department of Justice put attorneys in an “impossible position” by sending 3,000 ICE agents to Minnesota while not making provisions for handling the hundreds of lawsuits expected to follow.

Rosen told Schiltz in his response that his office’s own review of a “statistically strong sample” of 12 cases—drawn from the 74 cases involved in the earlier tally—showed a high compliance rate. Rosen also complained that the count by judges was “far beyond the pale of accuracy for an order that would be wielded so publicly and so sharply,” saying the lawyers in the civil division “didn’t deserve it.”

Separately, a different judge ordered Rosen, the head of his civil division, and ICE representatives to appear for a contempt hearing Tuesday after failures to comply with court orders related to the return of detainees’ property. As part of the broader legal pressure on Rosen’s office, Rosen acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday—his first since taking office in October—that the staff of prosecutors had fallen substantially.

Schiltz closed the warning with a blunt statement that he said the court would keep protecting the rule of law, including by moving to criminal contempt if necessary, and he wrote that “One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.” Neither Rosen nor ICE officials immediately responded to a request for comment, according to the report.