Inset: Minnesota U.S. District Judge John Tunheim (U.S. Courts). Background: President Donald Trump gestures during a reception for Republican members of Congress in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
The Trump administration has moved to disqualify a federal judge in a criminal case where a noncitizen is accused of trying to vote by falsely claiming citizenship, according to a Wednesday court filing.
The indictment in the case was filed in late September.
But the Department of Justice has issues with the behavior of U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, a Bill Clinton appointee, roughly one week before the charges were filed in Minnesota federal court.
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The motion to disqualify takes stock of a New York Times article “ridiculing the Administration’s immigration enforcement priorities.” The article in question was published in mid-September.
In that article, the judge criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the state of immigration dockets in the Land of 10,000 Lakes following “Operation Metro Surge.”
Beginning in December 2025, thousands of ICE agents began to sweep the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for immigrants in a massive series of often violent roundups. Later, the Trump administration boasted this controversial campaign was “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out.”
“Specifically, Judge Tunheim is quoted as stating ‘[t]hey weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,'” the motion to disqualify reads. “That is not the law (or even about the law). But the law prohibits voting illegally.”
Now, the government says Tunheim should have nothing to do with the criminal voting fraud case because the law “compels recusal when a judge’s partiality might reasonably be questioned.”
“[I]n the light of his unethical statements to the New York Times, the American people will undoubtedly question whether Judge Tunheim can be impartial this case,” the nine-page motion reads.
The DOJ argues the judge’s statement “must be understood in the context of the overarching article: a partisan critique of the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement operation.”
The motion, as evidence of the alleged partisan context, goes on to note that another judge quoted in the article referred to the government’s immigration policies and practices as reminiscent of foreign “authoritarian” governments like “Russia” and “China.”
“[E]choing Judge Tunheim’s express statement, the article paraphrases ‘the district’s judges’ as having ‘said most of the detainees who appeared on their dockets seemed to be ordinary people with homes and jobs,'” the motion continues.
The motion cites appeals court precedent to establish that the standard for disqualification is a question of “whether the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned by the average person on the street who knows all the relevant facts of a case.” In other words, “the existence of actual bias is irrelevant,” the DOJ argues.
To that end, the government says Tunheim’s comments were both “factually inaccurate” and “an unvarnished political opinion.”
“Judge Tunheim jumped directly into the fray by criticizing the Administration’s approach to immigration enforcement in cases that came before him based on his subjective policy impressions,” the motion goes on. “Notably, although pandering to the press about even the legality of the Administration’s actions would be improper, Judge Tunheim’s statement is legally irrelevant (and thus purely political).”
The upshot of those comments makes Tunheim exceedingly unfit to oversee a case involving an immigrant, the DOJ claims.
“In sum, Judge Tunheim’s statements and participation in the New York Times article, at a minimum, give rise to the appearance of bias in immigration-related cases,” the motion continues. “Judge Tunheim should therefore recuse from this case.”
Also on Wednesday, the DOJ filed a disqualification motion notice in a case overseen by U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz — the George W. Bush-appointed jurist who made the aforementioned comments about the Trump administration acting “authoritarian.”
The post ‘Appearance of bias’: Trump admin moves to disqualify judge who criticized ICE for conduct during Minnesota deportation raids first appeared on Law & Crime.
