DOJ Gets Green Light to Appeal Contempt Order in ICE Case (1)

The Justice Department may contest a judge’s decision to briefly hold a government lawyer in contempt over US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to follow a court order, a federal appeals court ruled.

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit declined a request to toss an appeal Monday of a contempt order against special assistant US attorney Matthew Isihara. Isihara is a military lawyer who assisted the Minnesota US attorney’s office as prosecutors fielded a surge of detention challenges related to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the state.

The appeals court denied the motion to dismiss Isihara’s appeal in a one-page order without explanation. The appeals court also granted a request by attorneys for an immigrant, who brought the underlying case to challenge his detention, to have a third-party defend the contempt order.

A Justice Department spokesperson and attorney representing the immigrant both declined to comment.

Judge Laura M. Provinzino of the US District Court for the District of Minnesota held Isihara in civil contempt in February, after a detained immigrant was released in the wrong state and without his identification documents as was required.

Isihara told the judge during a contempt hearing that he failed to forward the court’s order to ICE’s legal office after the judge entered it. He apologized and said that the case had “slipped through the cracks” amid an increased volume of cases, according to a court transcript.

“I concede that I personally dropped the ball in this case,” Isihara said, per the transcript.

Provinzino ordered Isihara to personally pay $500 a day until the identification documents were returned. The documents were returned the next day, purging the contempt and shielding the lawyer from paying any fines.

Isihara, represented by the Justice Department, nonetheless appealed Provinzino’s order. Attorneys for the released immigrant, Rigoberto Soto Jimenez, asked the appeals court to dismiss the appeal, arguing Isihara didn’t face any concrete injury since he was no longer in contempt and didn’t pay any fines.

DOJ lawyers responded in a brief that Isihara shouldn’t have been punished because government lawyers don’t “personally guarantee” an agency’s compliance with court orders.

Provinzino’s sanction came as the Trump administration faces wider criticism by judges over failures to fully comply with court orders in habeas cases brought by detained immigrants, who have been held longer in custody as a result of the administration’s decision to reinterpret laws governing detention.

Minnesota’s chief US District judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, in February criticized ICE and threatened to hold the agency in contempt for violating orders more than 100 times in cases brought by immigrants in his court.

The Justice Department has sought to downplay Isihara’s responsibility over ICE’s failure to release the immigrant in the correct state and with his property, in briefs submitted to the appeals court.

Isihara admitted during the lower court hearing that he failed to forward the court’s order to ICE’s legal office. However, the issues with the release “were not attributable to any action or inaction by Mr. Isihara” because a lawyer for Soto Jimenez also sent the order to ICE, the government argued in an April 17 brief.

The Justice Department lawyers also took issue with other instances when Minnesota federal judges have threatened to penalize attorneys with the US attorney’s office based on ICE’s alleged failures to comply with court orders, despite the “recent tsunami” of habeas petitions challenging immigration detention.

They called on the Eighth Circuit to “provide clear guidance that district courts may not impose personal consequences on government attorneys to influence the conduct of federal agencies.”

“The hard-working professionals of the U.S. Attorney’s Office deserve better,” the government wrote.

The case is Soto Jimenez v. Isihara, 8th Cir., No. 26-1327, 4/20/26.