A Minnesota judge threatened the Trump administration with criminal contempt on Thursday over repeated ignoring of court orders.
Judge Patrick Schiltz issued a scathing order Thursday, warning that he may pursue criminal contempt charges against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after finding a pattern of defiance he called unprecedented in American history. The order was flagged on Bluesky by Law Dork's Chris Geidner.
The judge said ICE had violated 97 court orders in 66 cases, and that an additional 113 violations across 77 more cases occurred largely after the government promised to improve compliance.
The ruling rebuked Daniel Rosen, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, who emailed the judge directly, accusing his Jan. 28 order of being "far beyond the pale of accuracy." After directing his clerks to independently verify every case, Schiltz concluded his original findings were essentially correct, and said Rosen's "statistically strong sample" was just the first 12 cases on a list of 75.
Schiltz noted that several government attorneys who had worked in good faith to achieve compliance — including civil division attorney Ana Voss — had since resigned.
"If anything is 'beyond the pale,' it is ICE’s continued violation of the orders of this Court. Increasingly, this Court has had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with orders. 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," wrote Schiltz.
He 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."