US prosecutors are exhausted by the immigration crackdown campaign

President Donald Trump’s administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota is exposing a serious rift between the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), shattering already shaky trust between the government and the courts, and leading to dozens of arrests that judges have declared illegal.

The frank confession of a Justice Department prosecutor at a trial in Minneapolis on February 3 further exposed the crisis, in the context of the government continuing to carry out a campaign to arrest mass numbers of immigrants, while not having enough corresponding resources to detain them, process legal documents or execute orders from federal courts.

“This whole system is bad. This job is bad. And I’m trying my best to be able to give you what you need,” Julie Le, a Vietnamese-born prosecutor in the Minnesota office, told federal judge Jerry Blackwell when he asked to explain why at least five orders to release his people were ignored. “Sometimes I just wish you’d put me in jail for contempt of court so I could sleep a full 24 hours.”

According to Le, part of the problem is the lack of response from ICE officials when she or other Justice Department prosecutors try to get them to comply with court orders to release people.

“I don’t have a magic button to fix a broken system. I don’t have the power or voice to do that,” she said angrily in court.

Le, 47, worked for ICE as an attorney in immigration court, then volunteered to participate in an assignment to Minnesota as a prosecutor in early January.

Immediately after the confrontation in court, Le was said to have been suspended from his position as prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice. But in reality, what she experienced was not unique. Court records and transcripts show widespread information congestion, proceedings being handled awkwardly and judges’ orders being widely violated.

Vietnamese-origin prosecutor is frustrated about being overloaded when working for ICE

The way President Donald Trump’s administration conducts its immigration campaign has caused federal judges in Minnesota to sound a warning. They are increasingly dissatisfied with the open defiance not from local prosecutors but from the leadership of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

Many senior prosecutors at the US attorney’s office in Minnesota have resigned as the Trump administration steps up its mass deportation campaign. This leads to a shortage of personnel to handle the unprecedented number of immigration and deportation applications. In recent days, many other prosecutors have also threatened to quit.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin denied that the administration was unprepared for the wave of immigration cases flooding the courts. She blamed judges for exacerbating the situation.

“The Trump administration is thoroughly prepared to handle the amount of legal work necessary to carry out President Trump’s deportation program,” McLaughlin said. “It’s no surprise that petitions for protection rights are being filed more frequently by illegal immigrants, especially after a series of ‘activist-style’ judges tried to prevent President Trump from carrying out the mass deportation mission entrusted to him by the American people.”

The right to self-defense is a fundamental right in American law that protects an individual from being unjustly or illegally detained.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice also made similar accusations against “corrupt judges” for increasing delays in case processing. However, the prosecutor’s office in Minnesota has acknowledged the growing pressure on them in court.

“The Civil Division of the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota has been completely overwhelmed by the number of recent requests for protection of life and body, while the agency is short on personnel,” prosecutors told federal judge Susan Nelson after missing a deadline issued by the court last week.

In Minneapolis, Le was assigned to handle 80 protection claims filed by immigrants. At the hearing on February 3, Le told Judge Blackwell that he was so overloaded that he tried to quit his job. “I actually submitted my resignation but they couldn’t find a replacement,” she told the court.

According to Le, getting ICE to comply with the court order or even respond to her questions was “as difficult as pulling teeth.” She said she stressed to ICE officials the importance of complying with court orders, regularly emailing them in 24-point font and threatening to “name” them in legal filings.

At the trial, Judge Blackwell also said he frequently heard reports of violations of court orders that occurred after Department of Justice lawyers contacted ICE but received no response.

“The answer can’t just be ‘we called ICE’ and shrug it off,” he said.

Le also said she felt uneasy about accusations that at least some of ICE’s immigration arrests had racial elements. “I’m not white, as you can see. And my family faces the same risks of arrest as anyone else, so I share that concern and I’m really concerned about this,” she asserted.

In addition, a series of other problems also arise related to the processing of immigration complaints, such as late filing deadlines, faulty documents, inaccurate or conflicting information provided to the court, or even cases of incorrect information about people being detained.

In a recent incident, ICE arrested a man who had a clean record and was legally residing in Minnesota on a “T” visa. This is a rare visa for victims of serious human trafficking rings or those who have assisted police in investigating human trafficking crimes.

A day after the judge questioned the incident, the Justice Department said the case should be dismissed because the man had been released. However, four days later, the Department of Justice sent a confusing dossier, confusing the person’s gender with “female” and saying he had been transferred to a detention center in El Paso.

The Justice Department then ignored the deadline to explain the facts, leading the judge to conclude that “ICE transferred the petitioner from Minnesota to Texas without notice and the facts from the record show that even the Department of Justice was probably not aware of the transfer.”

Federal judge in Minnesota Patrick Schiltz once warned of “contempt of court” against acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, but withdrew that decision.

Department of Homeland Security officials in Washington mocked Judge Schiltz for backtracking on the threat, sarcastically calling him an “activist.” The department also made similar attacks on other federal judges who ruled against them.

However, a notable development is that the White House just announced on February 4 that it will withdraw 700 of about 3,000 immigration suppression agents from Minnesota. This move could reduce pressure on courts, prosecutors and ICE by slowing the wave of immigration detention.

“My goal is not to threaten you or anyone. What we really want is simply to uphold the law. Because behind these things are people who should not have been arrested in the first place, or are being imprisoned and chained for many days, even more than a week, even though there has been a release order,” Judge Blackwell told prosecutor Le at the trial on February 3.

He emphasized that the entire executive branch must comply with orders from judges and that officials from all relevant agencies must be held accountable for violations. “If the restaurant has a problem, I don’t have time to go into the kitchen to find out who made the cake,” he said.

Ana Voss, head of the Civil Division at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, joined Le in court to explain the office’s efforts to handle the spike in immigration cases. She admitted “the entire” executive branch was responsible for these failures. However, when pressed, she spoke specifically about difficulties in coordinating with ICE’s local field office, blaming “lack of training and poor communication” for the recurring problem.

Judge Blackwell said he was certain that throughout his career, Voss had never had to answer for the Justice Department’s failure to comply with a court order.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” he asked.

“Never in my entire career,” Voss replied.