Two federal judges are raising concerns about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s use of social media to publicize a string of arrests tied to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
In a recent order, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster said Bondi’s posts on X – which included names and, in many cases, photographs of defendants shortly after their arrests – “violated a court order” sealing the cases, Politico reported Friday. The criticism came in connection with the prosecution of Nitzana Flores, who is accused of attacking two Border Patrol agents during a scuffle.
Foster said the government “failed to respect Ms. Flores’s dignity and privacy, exposed her to a risk of doxxing, and generally thumbed its nose at the notion that defendants are innocent until proven guilty.”
“The post also directly violated a court order sealing the case,” the judge wrote. “Notwithstanding, the government now seeks an accommodation from the Court that it blatantly failed to give Ms. Flores and her codefendants.
She added that the government’s request for court-order discretion was “eyebrow-raising, to say the least.”
In a separate Minneapolis case, Magistrate Judge Shannon Elkins directed prosecutors to address whether Bondi’s public posting of arrest photos violated another sealing order, according to the Politico report. The government initially missed a response deadline before receiving an extension that pushed the deadline until Monday, the report said.
Justice Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.