ICE have overwhelmed the Minnesota courts – and now they’re openly defying judges’ orders

Mass arrests by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are overwhelming the US court system in Minnesota.

The Trump administration’s massive deportation spree in Minnesota – pompously titled ‘Operation Metro Surge’ – created a corresponding surge in emergency legal cases. This left courts so short-staffed that several top lawyers quit outright. Still others have voiced their intention to follow suit in recent weeks.

The Minnesota US attorney’s office stated that:

The Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in this district has been utterly overwhelmed by the number of recent habeas petitions in Minnesota, during a time when the Office is short staffed.

ICE flouting orders

Justice Department records show massive numbers of legal violations by ICE, including violations of judges’ orders, illegal arrests, and botched court filings.

Minnesota judges are particularly alarmed at defiance from Homeland Security and their Justice Department counterparts in Washington. In particular, ICE is regularly flouting orders to bring their detainees before a judge when ordered – a legal right and duty known as habeas corpus.

Politico described one situation in which:

In one recent case, ICE arrested a man with no criminal record who was residing legally in Minnesota on a rare “T” visa, meant for victims of a severe form of human trafficking or who aided law enforcement in a trafficking investigation. A day after a magistrate judge inquired about the case, the Justice Department said it should be dismissed because the man had been released. Four days later, however, DOJ sent a cryptic filing misidentifying the man as “she” and suggesting he had been relocated to a detention facility in El Paso.

DOJ then blew off the deadline to clarify what had occurred, leading the judge to conclude that “ICE transferred Petitioner from Minnesota to Texas without notice and indeed, from this record it appears that even [DOJ] may not have known about the transfer.”

‘Broken system’

Underscoring the depths of the crisis, on Tuesday 2 February, a judge asked prosecutor Julie Le why his federal court orders were being ignored by ICE. Le, in apparent distress, said:

The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.

She went on to add that:

Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep.

Le argued that ICE officials simply ignore her and other Justice Department lawyers when they tell them to obey the courts. Even simple inquiries went completely unanswered, and Le’s threats of legal repercussions made no impact.

The prosecutor branded the situation a “broken system”, and even revealed that she’d tried to quit – but there was no-one ready to replace her.

Open authoritarianism

However, Trump’s team are denying their responsibility for the situation. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), tried to blame the judges themselves for the crisis:

The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal caseload necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people. It should come as no surprise that more habeas petitions are being filed by illegal aliens — especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.

This line of reasoning is severely faulty. It is a court’s role, when necessary, to determine the legality of an individual’s actions. If the state could ignore a habeas petition on the grounds of an individual being “illegal”, it could simply declare anybody illegal without trial.

This is both clearly a monstrous abuse of power, and precisely what the Trump administration is doing.

A Justice Department spokesperson likewise blamed “rogue judges” for the massive increase in detention cases. They argued that without the judges rulings, there wouldn’t be any “concern over DHS following orders.”

That is to say, if the judges didn’t demand that ICE follows the law, there would be no issue. Again, an openly authoritarian proclamation.

Shock and awe

The fact that Minnesota’s courts are overwhelmed is not a glitch in the system. It’s not a result of the Justice Department being understaffed, or – God forbid – ICE being under-resourced. Rather, this overwhelm is part of the plan.

Trump has always relied on shock and awe tactics. He perpetrates as many open crimes and heinous violations of basic human decency as quickly as possible, such that his opponents barely have time to muster a reaction before the next onslaught.

Because the courts are overwhelmed, ICE and the Trump administration can act with impunity. The administration has said outright that if it’s allowed to break the law, then there won’t be any issues. It intends to break the law; it intends to ignore basic legal rights; it intends to deport anyone it sees fit. This was always the plan.

Featured image via the Canary