Left: Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota). Right: President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
With his patience clearly running low, the top federal judge in Minnesota threatened criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for violating hundreds of court orders, with no apparent end in sight, in immigration cases.
The six-page beatdown delivered Thursday by Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, was a window into the increasing frustration of federal judges who keep ordering ICE to provide bond hearings or release detainees, only to be ignored.
The same day in New Jersey, another federal judge ripped into the U.S. Attorney”s Office formerly headed by Alina Habba for “objectively appalling” serial violations of court orders in mandatory detention cases.
It’s an issue that Schiltz slammed weeks ago, but also one that was laid bare for all to see when attorneys temporarily assigned to work for the DOJ were dressed down in Minnesota for basic failures to comply after “Operation Metro Surge.”
At one hearing, a beleaguered attorney caused a stir when she said she was not adequately trained to handle a mountain of habeas corpus petitions in federal court and that “this job sucks.”
Schiltz appeared to be sympathetic to the government lawyers contending with astonishing caseloads and resource challenges at an office roiled by mass resignations, but he stated that is no excuse for some 200 violations of court orders and counting.
The judge, noting that the courts themselves continue to “be overwhelmed with the legal work created by Operation Metro Surge,” emphasized that jurists have actually been “extraordinarily patient” and that neither judges nor lawyers “deserve” the “impossible” situation DOJ “superiors” have unleashed.
“The judges of this District have been extraordinarily patient with the government attorneys, recognizing that they have been put in an impossible position by [U.S. Attorney Daniel] Rosen and his superiors in the Department of Justice (leading many of those attorneys—including, unfortunately, Ana Voss—to resign),” Schiltz remarked. “What those attorneys ‘didn’t deserve’ was the Administration sending 3000 ICE agents to Minnesota to detain people without making any provision for handling the hundreds of lawsuits that were sure to follow.”
By Schiltz’s count, ICE has violated 210 court orders, and “[i]f anything is ‘beyond the pale'” it’s that. Not seeing civil contempt threats as sufficient to enforce government compliance, the judge opened the door to criminal contempt — and he is not the first judge to do so.
“The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again and again and again—to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” Schiltz added. “This Court will continue to do whatever is required to protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt. One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.”
Read the filing in full here.
