Court officials faced near-constant threats of violence amid a surge of immigration raids that brought Minnesota’s court system to its knees during the Trump administration’s crackdown earlier this winter, judges said in a series of interviews published Thursday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in January arrested thousands of individuals and killed two U.S. citizens during Operation Metro Surge. The crackdown overwhelmed the Twin Cities and flooded Minnesota’s federal courts with civil lawsuits and emergency petitions filed to challenge unlawful ICE detentions.
Months later, seven of those judges — including Patrick Schiltz, who served as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota through June — agreed to give interviews to The New York Times, an unusual occurrence for a group tasked with maintaining an impartial legal system.
Caseloads doubled overnight, judges described, while habeas corpus petitions grew a hundredfold. In January alone, ICE violated nearly 100 court orders from federal judges in the state. The pileup in Minnesota’s federal court system, Schiltz told the Times, “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”
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Judges frequently had to reference agents’ noncompliance with the law in court documents. While the failure to follow legal procedure was primarily due to “incompetence and staffing shortage,” Schiltz told the newspaper, he expressed real concern that the Justice Department was not taking the court’s concerns seriously.
“ICE is not a law unto itself,” Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in a January court order.
“Due process is not a game of keep-away,” another judge, Nancy E. Brasel, said in a ruling mandating rights for detainees.
Before long, the district court’s efforts to maintain the rule of law in Minnesota became the subject of fierce scrutiny from conservative media commentators.
The attention drummed up “a deluge” of violent threats against the judges, according to the Times article. Court clerks fielded hundreds of calls and emails each day — some vowing to “kill u soon.”
On one occasion, after Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon maligned Judge Douglas Micko in a media appearance, Schiltz said that Micko and his family had to be “moved to a secure location” for several days due to serious threats on the judge’s life, the Times reported, adding that the administration’s comments were partly responsible for putting Micko in danger.
Judges kept a constant watch on their cell phones and were constantly fearful they’d miss an urgent petition, according to the report, knowing a single missed request could have life-altering consequences for detainees.
A press release the DOJ released ahead of Metro Surge stated that ICE planned to target “the worst of the worst” flocking to Minnesota “because they know sanctuary politicians will protect them.”
Judge John R. Tunheim, a Clinton appointee, told the Times “They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.”
In the seven months since the operation ended — during which President Donald Trump fired Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary — the judges have put most of the cases related to Metro Surge behind them.
In that time, Schiltz has taken “senior status,” an early form of retirement. His retirement has given him the opportunity to reflect on the court’s hostile run-in with the DOJ in January, as the department attempted to sidestep the bench’s legal authority.
“The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body,” Schiltz said. “It is something that you absolutely need to survive, and yet it’s something that people just take for granted.”
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