Federal Judge Slams ICE for Violating Nearly 100 Court Orders: ‘ICE is Not a Law Unto Itself’

An escalating conflict between the federal judiciary and the Trump administration led a frustrated judge in Minnesota to release a list Wednesday of nearly 100 court orders he says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated over the last month.

“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Patrick J. Schiltz, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, wrote in a court order Wednesday.

Schiltz found that ICE had violated a previous order to immediately release a man being held in an immigration detention center and schedule a bond hearing for him. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Schiltz attached an appendix to his order of 96 court orders that ICE had violated in 74 different cases in the district. The list, Schiltz wrote, was almost certainly an undercount and “should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law.”

“ICE is not a law unto itself,” Schiltz continued. “ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.”

Earlier this week, Schiltz ordered the acting chief of ICE, Todd Lyons, to testify at a contempt hearing regarding the violations of his orders, but ultimately canceled the hearing and released the appendix instead.

It’s highly unusual for federal judges to issue such direct accusations and contempt threats against the government. However, an increasing number of judges have become exasperated by the Trump administration’s noncompliance with their orders in immigration cases. Earlier this week, a federal judge in Florida ordered two Justice Department lawyers to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for the legally deficient arguments in the case of a high-school student who was unlawfully detained. And in Maine, federal judges have granted numerous emergency petitions freeing detainees, only to see some of those orders violated after petitioners were transferred out of state.

The Trump administration insists that it can arrest anyone present in the country unlawfully without a warrant and hold them in mandatory detention without a bond hearing. This interpretation of the law abandons a precedent that has been in place for nearly 30 years. In response, immigrant detainees have flooded courts with emergency relief petitions, claiming their due process rights are being violated.

The overwhelming majority of federal judges who’ve ruled on the issue say the administration’s statutory interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which governs immigration structure and enforcement, is flatly wrong, and that ICE is unlawfully holding certain classes of aliens, such as asylum seekers. A Politico analysis of these cases found 347 judges across the country rejected the administration’s arguments in more than 2,400 cases. Just 20 judges agreed with the administration.

But the administration has continued to claim that authority in case after case, even in front of the same judges. It has repeatedly violated court orders to release detainees, and it has disregarded the growing chorus of court opinions against it.

In January, the top U.S. immigration judge sent a memo instructing other federal immigration judges, who are employed by the Justice Department and not part of the judicial branch, to ignore rulings by U.S. district judges in California and Massachusetts holding that denying immigrant detainees bond hearings was unlawful.

The result of all this is that judges find themselves batting down the same specious arguments from the Justice Department over and over. In Florida this week, U.S. District Judge Roy B. Dalton granted a temporary restraining order barring the government from detaining a high school student whose parents fled to the U.S. from Venezuela seeking asylum.

“This Court does not have the power to impede removal proceedings, but it does have the power to ensure that the Government follows the law when it detains people,” Dalton wrote. “It did not, so the Court ordered Petitioner’s immediate release. In this country, we don’t enforce the law by breaking the law.”

Dalton called the government’s interpretation of the INA “plainly incoherent” and “simply insupportable on all fronts.”

Dalton found the government’s arguments so offensively deficient that he took the extraordinary step of ordering two Justice Department attorneys, identified by name in his order, to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for failing their ethical “duty of candor to the Court.”

He continued:

If the Government is going to argue for expanding the interpretation of a law or maintain a widely rejected position to preserve its appellate rights, it may do so. But its lawyers must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations, as lawyers have done since time immemorial: Cite the contrary binding authority and argue why it’s wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.

A similar pattern is playing out in Maine, where the Trump administration recently launched an immigration enforcement surge. Federal judges have freed at least eight detained immigrants in response to habeas corpus petitions. 

The judge’s orders in several of those cases note that the government conceded its position was contrary to local precedent, but continued to assert its legal authority without introducing any new facts or legal arguments.

In some cases, detainees were transferred out of state before their attorneys could file petitions, and in at least two instances, detainees were transferred out of Maine in violation of judges’ orders, court records show.

The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Maine, which has been involved in filing emergency petitions on behalf of detainees, said in a press release this week that at least eight Maine residents had been taken by ICE and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.

“One man reported to his family that he is in a group of approximately 100 men, sleeping in tents next to or on an active tarmac. They each have one blanket and very little food. ICE agents are harassing and coercing them to self-deport to end the suffering, pointing at the tarmac. Lawyers are not able to communicate with the men held there.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.