The Trump administration’s sloppy immigration enforcement continues to rattle federal judges.
One of the most prominent recent examples comes from Minnesota, where a conservative judge asked the acting U.S. immigration chief to explain why he should not be held in contempt. In that case, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Hiltz made a point of noting that he was not unhappy with government lawyers, who, he wrote, “went to great lengths to ensure” that officials complied with court orders.
Florida just issued a similarly harsh ruling, but in this case the judge ordered the attorneys involved to explain why they should not be sanctioned.
Like Hiltz’s order in Minnesota, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton’s ruling in Florida stemmed from immigration detention. In the latter case, Dalton, an Obama appointee, ordered the release of a high school student named Javier Jimenez Rivero, who had been living with his family in Florida for more than four years after fleeing Venezuela. On Monday, Dalton issued an order commemorating words he said during a hearing last week ordering the release of Jimenez Rivero.
He had a lot to say in his ruling, but it was not good for the government.
On the one hand, the judge said the argument that he did not have jurisdiction to hear Jiménez Rivero’s petition was “implausible and appears to have been a deliberate attempt to mislead the court about the law and the record.” The government’s performance on the merits was not much better, with Dalton calling its position “equally ill-informed,” “incoherent” and “unsupportable in every respect.”
The judge further noted that while Jimenez Rivero’s release “provides him with the remedy he deserves,” it does not “remedy what happened in court.”
He noted that judges appointed by every president from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump have said the government’s interpretation of relevant legal issues was wrong. The government is free to argue for expanded interpretations of the law, he wrote, but its attorneys “must make those arguments in a manner consistent with their professional obligations, just as lawyers have done since time immemorial: cite contrary binding force and argue why it is wrong. Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore overwhelming persuasion as if it won’t be discovered. And don’t send a lamb to the slaughter standing in court with a handle. There are many cases where they don’t apply and there are no compelling arguments to explain why they should apply.”
The judge concluded that “members of the bar have an obligation to come clean to the court” but that the government’s conduct in this case “failed to meet that standard.” He wrote that U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joy Warner must show why they should not be sanctioned. He gave them until February 9 to provide an explanation in writing.
The judge wrote that his order “resolves one of a long line of cases before the court in which the government unlawfully detained a noncitizen who has lived in this country for many years.” “In this country, we do not break the law to enforce the law,” he wrote.
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Post-Florida judge slams Trump Justice Department’s “incoherent” immigration stance and threatens sanctions.
This article was originally published on ms.now