A federal judge in Minnesota canceled a contempt-of-court hearing for the leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but took the opportunity to chastise the agency for ignoring at least 96 court orders this month alone.
“This list should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law,” Chief District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said in an order handed down Jan. 28. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
Just two days earlier, Schiltz ordered ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons to appear in court Jan. 30 to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt for continuing to apprehend and detain immigrants without responding to numerous due-process petitions and lawsuits.
Patrick Schiltz
Schiltz cited the case of an immigrant identified in court documents as Juan T.R. On Jan. 14, the judge gave one week to grant the detainee a habeas corpus hearing or release him. The agency did neither.
“This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks,” Schiltz said in his Jan. 26 order requiring Lyons’ court appearance. “The practical consequence of respondents’ failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong),”
Lyons was released from the order to appear in court when ICE subsequently released the immigrant from detention. “That does not end the court’s concerns, however,” Schiltz said, explaining ICE has violated 96 court orders in 74 cases filed since Jan. 1.
“The court warns ICE that future noncompliance with court orders may result in future show‐cause orders requiring the personal appearances of Lyons or other government officials. ICE is not a law unto itself. ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.”
The Trump administration took another legal hit Jan. 28 when the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota temporarily blocked Operation PARRIS, the Department of Homeland Security’s campaign to detain and deport refugees lawfully resettled in the United States but still awaiting promised permanent resident status.
Judge John Tunheim directed that refugees in that situation are not to be arrested or detained unless they have been charged with criminal offenses. And given the severe weather in Minnesota where the operation is currently targeted, refugees are not to be left to fend for themselves in the cold upon release from detention.
“It is also essential to emphasize that the refugees impacted by this order are carefully and thoroughly vetted individuals who have been invited into the United States because of persecution in the countries from which they have come,” the court said.
The administration should remember that the U.S. has historically been “a haven of individual liberties” and that the mistreatment of refugees is an abandonment of that ideal, Tunheim added.
“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully.”
“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully — and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries.”
Trump adviser Stephen Miller, architect of the administration’s mass-deportation efforts, including Operation Post-Admission Refugee Reverification, condemned the ruling.
“The judicial sabotage of democracy is unending,” Miller said in a social media post.
Tunheim’s order came in response to a class-action lawsuit filed against DHS by a group of refugees represented by The Advocates for Human Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, the International Refugee Assistance Project and the Berger Montague law firm.
“For more than two weeks, refugees in Minnesota have been living in terror of being hunted down and disappeared to Texas,” said Kimberly Grano, staff attorney for U.S. litigation at IRAP. “This temporary restraining order will immediately put in place desperately needed guardrails on ICE and protect resettled refugees from being unlawfully targeted for arrest and detention.”
Democracy Forward filed a class action lawsuit Jan. 26 accusing DHS and ICE of subjecting immigrants to especially inhumane conditions and denying constitutional rights at a detention center in Minnesota.
“Individuals who have been detained at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis reveal violent arrests, extreme overcrowding and constant shackling. DHS is further perpetuating these horrific conditions by blocking detainees from accessing legal counsel to seek their freedom,” said Democracy Forward, which is co-litigating the case with the Fredrikson and Byron law firm.
Authorities at the facility also have become notorious for shipping detainees out of state at critical moments in their legal cases, according to the lawsuit. “But at Whipple, defendants are feigning ignorance of these requirements, erecting artificial barriers to access, and preventing many detainees from contacting and conferring with their attorneys.”
Kristi Noem
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons are among the defendants named in the action. Another is David Easterwood, acting field director for ICE in Minnesota and a pastor at Cities Church, the Southern Baptist congregation where anti-ICE protesters disrupted Sunday services earlier this month.
More than 10,000 immigrants have been arrested in Minneapolis, among whom only 3,000 are “criminal aliens,” the lawsuit adds. “The vast majority of those individuals have been transported directly to detention at Whipple.”
Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman described the lawsuit as the continuation of efforts to oppose the “catch me if you can” brand of justice practiced by DHS.
“The administration is detaining people in a federal facility that was never meant for long-term custody, denying them access to counsel, shackling them during secretive transfers, and using fear and exhaustion to pressure them into giving up their rights. This is a deliberate strategy to evade accountability,” Perryman said.
In Florida, meanwhile, a federal judge is speaking up against the warrantless arrests and detentions of immigrants who are in the country legally as their asylum cases play out, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
U.S. District Judge Roy “Skip” Dalton expressed his frustration as he ordered the release of Venezuelans and asylum seekers Daniela Guaiquire, 30, and Javier Gimenez-Rivero, 20, from ICE custody in Central Florida. Neither had been accused of committing any crimes.
In his order releasing Gimenez-Rivero, Dalton said the government “is wrong, and plainly so” in its interpretation of immigration statutes and that the immigrant’s case was handled in an “unlawful” manner. “In this country, we don’t enforce the law by breaking the law.”