The chief judge, a George W. Bush appointee, said the administration had repeatedly violated or slow-walked court orders in Minnesota.
Minnesota’s chief federal judge has ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, to appear in his courtroom Friday and threatened to hold him in contempt for what he says has been repeated defiance of judges’ orders in the state.
“The court’s patience is at an end,” U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said in a three-page order issued Monday night, demanding the acting director explain himself “personally.”
Schiltz’s frustration has been boiling for weeks amid Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s massive immigration enforcement action in the Twin Cities. The operation has flooded the courts with emergency lawsuits brought by immigrants who say they have been illegally arrested or detained. The judges in the district have agreed nearly every time, ordering their immediate release from custody and warning, in increasingly alarming terms, about rampant violations of the law.
This is the problem. They threaten and threaten and threaten but never do anything.
The judge is a Republican so of course they talk big and have no idea about what justice actually is unless the offender is a minority or poor.
Finally judicial consequences that will stop ICE from ignoring court orders! U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz will give Todd Lyons a very stern look and may even scold him!
U.S. courts have become a bad joke. Administration officials will start obeying the law only after one of them spends a few weeks in jail after ignoring court orders. With our court system and cowardly judges they’ll never start obeying the law.
You have to at least make the effort, in good faith, that rules are going to be observed. Not following those orders opens up a new level of efforts that can be achieved, right up to arresting them at home or at work and dragging them before the judge. They can’t start there because A. There is no where to escalate to, and B. Optics. Let them break the law and ignore summons, that just ups the ante and triggers more severe actions. “Legally”
Good faith is meaningless when dealing with clear, repeated violations. By this point the courts are well aware of the abuses going on and these Trump goons are being held to a much lower standard than anyone else. “Good faith” has become nothing but a delay tactic that lets these assholes get away with violence, illegal deportations and terror for months without consequences. If we had a functional judicial system, rulings would rarely be ignored because of there would be immediate and severe consequences to those doing so no matter who those people were.
Can you imagine how differently this would play out if it were you or I, or even a private security firm ignoring clear court orders? We’d be slapped with fines and jail time almost immediately instead of being handled with kit gloves.
Please, please, please, hold them to account, in the harshest terms possible. Get the leaders off the streets and in court rooms, desperately trying to avoid accountability. They’re all cowards, so it will be interesting to see what a cornered pig will do.
Stop threatening. Start breaking their knees with a scaffold poles.
May this be the first domino to rot in prison.
I thought King Trump I decreed that ICE had total immunity from any eartly matters?
