An Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney detailed to Minnesota to assist deal with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown within the Twin Cities has been faraway from her put up after telling a judge that the job “sucks” as a result of of the crushing workload and the federal government’s obvious incapacity to adjust to courtroom orders.
The attorney, Julie Le, was despatched again to her job at ICE, based on a supply accustomed to the matter.
In an awfully candid trade with a federal judge on Tuesday, Le, who had been requested to clarify why the administration was not promptly complying with a slew of courtroom orders stemming from immigration cases she’s dealing with, admitted that the federal government didn’t have sufficient attorneys on the bottom to adequately sustain with Operation Metro Surge and that making an attempt to get errors mounted is like “pulling teeth.”
“They are overwhelmed and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly (volunteered),” she instructed US District Judge Jerry Blackwell, who’s threatening to carry her and one other lawyer in contempt for repeated violations of orders he’s issued in immigration cases.
“Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep. I work days and night just because people (are) still in there,” Le mentioned.
“And, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I’m trying to fix it,” she continued. “I am here with you, your honor. What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.”
Le and the opposite administration attorneys engaged on immigration cases in Minnesota for the reason that crackdown started have been going through intense scrutiny from the judges there over a slew of missteps within the cases. Last week, the chief judge of the state’s federal trial-level courtroom mentioned ICE “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence” and particularly referred to as out almost 100 courtroom orders he mentioned had been violated in current weeks.
Among these orders are ones requiring the federal government to right away launch immigrant detainees whom judges decided have been being held unlawfully in Minnesota or Texas, the place many of them have been flown after being arrested within the Twin Cities. Judges, together with Blackwell, have been additionally pissed off by launch situations ICE had imposed on some immigrants for the reason that courtroom had not particularly allowed the company to style such situations.
“It takes 10 e-mails to get a release condition to be corrected,” Le instructed Blackwell on Tuesday. “It take two escalation and a threat that I will walk out for that to be corrected.”
Though Blackwell mentioned he thought Le and Justice Department attorney Ana Voss, who can be going through a contempt menace, have been “working in good faith and under difficult circumstances,” he warned them that “a court order is not advisory and it is not conditional.”
“It is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply with the court order,” the judge mentioned.
“Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign,” Blackwell added.