Minnesota Judge Threatens ICE With Contempt for Order Violations

A Minneapolis judge admonished US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for its non-compliance with over 100 court orders and threatened the use of criminal contempt.

Judge Patrick J. Schiltz’s tough words come just a month after he sharply criticized ICE for violating 96 court orders in 74 cases. The government challenged the previous figures, and after Schiltz’s law clerks double-checked them, they found it was 97 violations in 66 cases, Schiltz said in a supplemental order Thursday. The judge then provided an additional count of 113 more court orders violated in 77 more cases.

“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,” Schiltz said for the US District Court for the District of Minnesota.

The case is one of dozens of suits filed by people seeking release from detention amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge, as its known, led to thousands of arrests and protests across the nation following the shooting deaths of two US citizens by federal agents. The administration’s “border czar” Tom Homan announced the end of the operation on Feb. 12.

The district court has had to increasingly resort to the threat of civil contempt to “force ICE to comply with orders,” and will continue to do what’s required to “protect the rule of law, including, if necessary, moving to the use of criminal contempt,” Schiltz said. “One way or another, ICE will comply with this Court’s orders.”

Schiltz’s order rebuts US Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel N. Rosen’s email that accused the district court of “wildly overstating the extent of ICE’s noncompliance with orders” after the judge originally criticized the agency’s non-compliance. Schiltz previously acknowledged the January order reporting these figures undoubtedly contained mistakes based on the list being hurriedly compiled but pointed out how the district court “continues to be overwhelmed with the legal work created by Operation Metro Surge.”

Rosen claimed his attorneys “didn’t deserve” Schiltz’s January order being “wielded so publicly and so sharply.” But Schiltz countered that the federal attorneys didn’t deserve the Trump administration “sending 3,000 ICE agents to Minnesota to detain people without making any provision for handling the hundreds of lawsuits that were sure to follow.”

He pointed out that some DOJ attorneys, such as Ana Voss, have resigned amid the current situation. He said the district court has been “extraordinarily patient” with the government attorneys due to the “impossible position” Rosen and the US Department of Justice have put them in.

Ojala-Barbour Law Firm represents the petitioner, Juan Hugo Tobay Robles.

The case is Robles v. Noem, D. Minn., No. 0:26-cv-00107, supplemental order 2/26/26.