‘this Job Sucks’: Government Lawyers, Drowning In Immigration Cases, Have Had It

The Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota has exposed a severe rift between the Justice Department and ICE, detonated the already crumbling trust between the administration and the courts and led to the dozens of detentions the courts have said are illegal.

A dramatic breakdown by a Justice Department attorney in a Minneapolis courtroom Tuesday laid bare the crisis roiling the Trump administration as it continues to mass arrest immigrants without the corresponding resources to detain them humanely, process their legal cases and comply with federal court orders.

“The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” prosecutor Julie Le told a judge as he demanded to know why his orders were being defied. “Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep,” she added, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO.

Part of the problem, Le said, is that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials simply don’t respond when she or other Justice Department lawyers try to get them to obey the courts.

“Fixing a system, a broken system, I don't have a magic button to do it. I don't have the power or the voice to do it,” she added.

Shortly after the candid courtroom exchange on Tuesday, Le was removed from her temporary post and returned to the Department of Homeland Security, where she works on immigration cases within the executive branch, said a Justice Department official who was granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

But it’s clear that the cases Le handled are not outliers. Court records and transcripts reveal widespreadmiscommunication, bungling of court filingsand suddenly rampant violations of judges’ orders. The administration's handling of its immigration operation provoked a five-alarm emergency among federal judges in the state, who have grown increasingly frustrated at what they see as overt defiance — caused not by the local prosecutors in Minnesota but by DOJ and DHS leadership in Washington. Contempt threats are now almost routine.

Several top lawyers from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota resigned amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation push, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, leading to a shortage of personnel to handle an unprecedented number of emergency cases. Other attorneys have threatened to resign in recent days.

Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin rejected the notion that the administration was unprepared for the deluge of immigration cases now flooding the courts. And she blamed judges for stoking the increase.

“The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal caseload necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people,” McLaughlin said. “It should come as no surprise that more habeas petitions are being filed by illegal aliens — especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people's mandate for mass deportations.”

A Justice Department spokesperson similarly attacked “rogue judges” for stoking the rise in detention cases and said without their rulings there would be no “concern over DHS following orders.”

But the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office has acknowledged its increasing strain in court.

“The Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in this district has been utterly overwhelmed by the number of recent habeas petitions in Minnesota, during a time when the Office is short staffed,” prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Susan Nelson after missing a court-ordered deadline this week.

‘I’m going to walk out'

Le is a novice prosecutor who was only assigned to Minneapolis last month. She is already listed as government counsel on more than 80 habeas corpus petitions filed by immigrants. She told U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell at a hearing Tuesday she was so overwhelmed that she already attempted to quit.

“I did put in my resignation from the job too, but they couldn't find a replacement,” she said, according to the court transcript.

Le said getting ICE to comply with court orders — or even to respond to her inquiries — was like “pulling teeth.” She said she’d stressed to ICE officials the importance of obeying the orders, often emailing officials in 24-point font and threatening to “put their names” in legal filings.

“So I gave them a specific time … to get it done. If they don't, then by all mean, I'm going to walk out,” Le said.

Blackwell said during the hearing that he had repeatedly heard that failures to comply with court orders often came after DOJ lawyers reached out to their ICE counterparts and got no response.

“The answer cannot be that ‘We called ICE’ and then a shoulder shrug,” the Biden-appointed judge said.

Le, 47, who was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the U.S. in 1993, also indicated she was troubled by allegations that at least some ICE detentions have been driven by racial profiling.

“I am not white, as you can see. And my family's at risk as any other people that might get picked up too, so I share the same concern, and I took that concern to heart,” she said.

A pattern of defiance

Similar issues have cropped up for weeks in the form of missed deadlines, dropped or glitchy attachments to crucial court filings, conflicting or incomplete information —and even lost detainees.

In one recent case, ICE arrested a man with no criminal record who was residing legally in Minnesota on a rare “T” visa, meant for victims of a severe form of human trafficking or who aided law enforcement in a trafficking investigation. A day after a magistrate judge inquired about the case, the Justice Department said it should be dismissed because the man had been released. Four days later, however, DOJ sent a cryptic filing misidentifying the man as “she” and suggesting he had been relocated to a detention facility in El Paso.

DOJ then blew off the deadline to clarify what had occurred, leading the judge to conclude that “ICE transferred Petitioner from Minnesota to Texas without notice and indeed, from this record it appears that even [DOJ] may not have known about the transfer.”

Minnesota’s chief federal judge, Patrick Schiltz, briefly threatened to hold acting ICE director Todd Lyons in contempt, but backed off after DHS released a man who had been unlawfully held more than a week after Schiltz had ordered him to be freed. Schiltz was careful to praise the Minnesota federal prosecutor’s office, placing the blame on their national leadership for failing to provide them with the resources to comply with the court.

DHS officials in Washington mocked Schiltz for rescinding his contempt threat and called the George W. Bush-appointed judge an “activist.” The department has similarly attacked other federal judges who have ruled against it — including a Trump appointee.

Notably, however, the White House announced Wednesday it would be pulling 700 of its roughly 3,000 federal agents from the Twin Cities, potentially easing the pressure on the courts, prosecutors and ICE by slowing the number of arrests and detentions.

Searching for accountability

“My goal in any of this is not to threaten you or anyone. What we really want is simply compliance, because on the other side of this is somebody who should not have been arrested in some instances in the first place who is being haled in jail or put in shackles for days, if not a week-plus, after they've been ordered released,” Blackwell said to Le at Tuesday’s hearing.

He stressed that the whole executive branch must follow judges’ orders, and that officials from every relevant agency have to answer for noncompliance. “If there's a problem in the restaurant, I don't intend to go in the kitchen to try to figure out who makes the bread,” he said.

Ana Voss, the chief of the civil division in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office, appeared in court with Le and sought to explain her office’s efforts to handle the infusion of immigration cases. She agreed that the “entirety” of the executive branch is responsible for the failures. But when pressed, she spoke specifically about problems coordinating with the local ICE field office, blaming a “lack of training and communication” for the recurring issues.

As he addressed Le and Voss, Blackwell said he was sure Voss had never in her career had to account for the Justice Department’s noncompliance with court orders.

“When have you ever seen anything like it?” he asked.

Voss replied, “I have not in my career, your honor.”