DHS Puts DOJ In The Firing Line With Judges
Sooner or later, somebody's gotta get held in contempt
Justice Department lawyers in Minnesota are trapped between a rock and a stupid place.
On the one side: federal judges who expect their orders to be obeyed and are out of patience with routine defiance by the Trump administration.
On the other: the Department of Homeland Security — an unruly client bent on juicing arrest statistics and posting mug shots on social media, which treats court orders as advisory suggestions from “rogue” judges.
This would be unpleasant for line attorneys under the best of circumstances, and these are anything but. US Attorney’s Offices across the country have been hollowed out as experienced prosecutors quit or get fired rather than participate in ethically dubious, politically motivated prosecutions. The situation in Minnesota is particularly dire, as much of the senior leadership resigned rather than attempt to file charges against Renee Good’s widow. The office is now down to half its regular roster of attorneys.
That’s especially inconvenient when, as here, the district is drowning in habeas corpus cases because DHS insists on misinterpreting the law, no matter how many hundreds of times courts tell them not to.
Judges in Minnesota are increasingly frustrated with the government’s failure to plan for the avalanche of cases that were guaranteed to be filed as a result of their massive immigration dragnet.
“Defendants allocated substantial resources to sending thousands of agents to Minnesota, detaining thousands of people, and housing them in their facilities,” Judge Nancy Brasel wrote two weeks ago. “Defendants cannot suddenly lack resources when it comes to protecting detainees’ constitutional rights.”
So Attorney General Bondi and her minions put their heads together and came up with a plan. What if they raided the ranks of the Judge Advocate General Corps and various executive branch immigration lawyers and parked them in whichever Democratic city ICE and CBP were currently laying siege to? Then they could fill in the gaps for the missing US Attorneys. Easy peasy!
Or … not.
