Florida US Attorney at Risk of Sanction Over Immigrant Detention

A federal judge in Orlando has threatened sanctions on the district’s top prosecutor for the way his office argued in favor of mandatory detention for noncitizens.

In a scathing order, Judge Roy Dalton Jr. of the Middle District of Florida said the Trump administration’s reading of the Immigration and Nationality Act is “incoherent” and prosecutors failed their duty of candor while trying to support it.

The government is free to advance an unpopular legal theory, Dalton wrote, but “its lawyers must make those arguments in a way that comports with their professional obligations.”

“Cite the contrary binding authority and argue why it’s wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found,” he wrote. “And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should.”

US Attorney Gregory Kehoe and Assistant US Attorney Joy Warner must respond in writing by Feb. 9 to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned, Dalton ordered.

The underlying case is one of a raft of habeas corpus petitions challenging the administration’s view that nearly all noncitizens are subject to mandatory detention after arrest by immigration officials.

District court judges, flooded with habeas petitions, have almost uniformly rejected that stance—some in particularly strong terms.

For decades, immigration law was interpreted such that noncitizens arrested in the interior of the country, as opposed to those coming in at the border, were entitled to bond hearings before immigration judges.

The Trump administration last year decided that under its reading of the law, nearly all noncitizens are subject to mandatory detention without a chance to argue for release on bond.

Among the judges who have rejected that interpretation is Judge Sunshine Sykes of the US District Court for the Central District of California, who declared that a nationwide class of noncitizens has the right to a bond hearing.

But immigration judges, which are under the executive branch, have still declined to hold bond hearings, raising “serious separation of powers concerns,” Sykes said in court last week.

And on Monday, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz of the District of Minnesota ordered acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement boss Todd Lyons to appear in court in person to explain why officials haven’t complied with immigration-related court orders.

“The Court acknowledges that ordering the head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step, but the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed,” Schiltz wrote.

The case is Gimenez Rivero v. Mina, M.D. Fla., No. 6:26-cv-00066, order 1/26/26.