By Brian Martucci, Minnesota Reformer
‘The court’s patience is at an end.’
Minneapolis, MN – U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released the detainee at the center of a growing rift between the Trump administration and Minnesota courts Tuesday, bowing to pressure from the chief judge of the federal district court here.
On Monday, Judge Patrick Schiltz took what he admitted was the “extraordinary step” of ordering ICE’s acting director to release the man, who is identified in court documents as Juan T.R. — or face contempt proceedings.
“The court’s patience is at an end… the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed,” Schiltz wrote in a brief order.
Schiltz said acting ICE director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE’s top local official, David Easterwood, had failed to comply with “dozens” of court orders in recent weeks.
Schiltz is a noted figure in conservative legal circles, making his sharp order all the more notable. He was appointed by former President George W. Bush and clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an originalist firebrand who died suddenly in 2016.
The last straw for Schiltz was the officials’ failure to follow a Jan. 14 order to grant a timely bond hearing for a petitioner identified in court documents as Juan T.R., who Schiltz said remained in custody as of Friday. The Monday order excoriated Lyons and his colleagues for causing “significant hardship” for Minnesota residents caught up in the federal dragnet, many of whom “have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong,” he emphasized.
Schiltz described scenarios in which detainees were held longer than necessary; removed to detention facilities elsewhere in the country; or released hundreds or even thousands of miles from home with no arrangements made for their return. He ordered Lyons to appear in his Minneapolis courtroom on Friday afternoon “to show cause why he should not be held in contempt” — unless the government affirmed that it had released Juan T.R. beforehand.
Juan T.R.’s attorney, Graham Ojala-Barbour, told NBC News on Tuesday that his client had been released in Texas. Ojala-Barbour identified the man as Juan Tobay Robles, an Ecuadorian national who entered the U.S. as a minor nearly 30 years ago.
Schiltz’s order came amid a flurry of legal and political developments related to Operation Metro Surge, the ongoing federal law enforcement offensive in Minnesota.
Late Tuesday, the Ecuadorian government filed a protest with U.S. officials after an ICE agent attempted to enter its consulate in Minneapolis in apparent violation of international law. It’s unclear whether the incident is related to the Juan T.R. case.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Monday that President Trump told them some federal agents would leave the Twin Cities this week. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, replaced Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino as the top Washington-based immigration official on the ground in Minnesota and met with Walz and Frey.
Frey and Walz both said they would work with Trump and federal agencies on legitimate law enforcement matters.
Also Monday, the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul asked a different federal judge to halt Operation Metro Surge in a lengthy hearing. Judge Katherine Menendez, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, did not immediately issue a ruling in that case.
Meanwhile, Washington Democrats and the labor union representing more than 800,000 federal workers dialed up pressure on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others associated with the administration’s hardline immigration policy, following the killings this month of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The American Federation of Government Employees demanded the resignation last night of Noem and Stephen Miller, the longtime White House advisor seen as an architect of polarizing policies like Trump’s first-term “Muslim ban” and the the current mass deportation effort. New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the U.S. House, threatened Noem with impeachment if Trump does not fire her first.
Two Republican senators — Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — also called on Noem to resign, with the former referring to Noem’s “amateurish assistant-manager-sort of thought processes,” NBC News reported.
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