Judges across the country are growing “increasingly furious and exhausted” as the Trump administration continues to openly defy court orders on mass immigration enforcement, prompting courts to proactively threaten to hold Trump administration officials in contempt, Politico reported Tuesday.
“These petitions are filed due to the illegal actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” wrote U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, in a particularly scathing memorandum this month.
“Despite hundreds of similar rulings in this and other courts resoundingly in favor of the ICE-detainee petitioners, ICE continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary.”
And, Politico wrote, Trump's lawyers are pushing the courts into imminent action.
"As a result, judges have issued more detailed and prescriptive orders to head off potential loopholes or hair-splitting results. And when all else fails, they threaten to hold administration officials in contempt," the outlet wrote.
The Trump administration has been hard at work at its mass deportation efforts, having already arrested more than 328,000 migrants, more than 73% of whom have no criminal history, despite President Donald Trump’s past pledge to only target the “worst of the worst.” To achieve those numbers, the White House has instituted a daily arrest quota of 3,000, and has frequently defied orders by courts in an attempt to meet it.
The Trump administration’s defiance of the courts appears calculated, with detainees often transferred out of state shortly after their arrest, making it difficult for them to acquire legal representation or sue the district where they’re being held. These transfers also frequently take place after a judge has ordered immigration enforcement officials not to move a detainee.
When successfully sued over an immigration-related arrest, the Justice Department often doesn’t respond, missing deadlines and ignoring orders to release detained individuals. And, when a judge does order detained individuals to be released, ICE will sometimes take weeks to comply, an open act of defiance described by one federal judge as a "constitutional injury.”
“Detention without lawful authority is not just a technical defect, it is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it,” said U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell in a hearing on Tuesday, Politico reported.
“The individuals affected are people. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds seen by this Court have been found to be lawfully present as of now in the country. They live in their communities. Some are separated from their families.”