Minnesota judge threatens to hold US immigration chief in contempt

In a plea presented on Monday, which became known this Tuesday, Schiltz summoned Lyons this Friday to appear before him and explain why ICE has not on several occasions granted judicial hearings for the possible granting of bail to detained immigrants despite the orders issued by multiple courts in Minneapolis, a city that has been the scene of massive migrant raids in January and two civilian deaths at the hands of federal agents within the framework of these operations.

“This court has been extremely patient with defendants, even though defendants decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision to deal with the hundreds of habeas corpus petitions and other lawsuits that would surely result,” Judge Schiltz wrote in his brief, in which he threatened to open contempt proceedings against Lyons.

The Department of Homeland Security, which directs ICE operations, has not commented on whether Lyons will appear or whether the Federal Government will try to block the subpoena in court.

The request comes at a time marked by the death of Alex Pretti, a citizen of Minnepolis who died on Saturday due to multiple shots fired by immigration agents, the second incident of this type in the city in less than three weeks after the death of Renee Good on January 7.

The Donald Trump government has considered that local authorities have encouraged the population to interfere in the work of immigration agents and He has branded the judges “activists” for trying to question their strategies.

The death of Pretti, who, without offering violent resistance, was assaulted by several agents who They shot him in the back after disarming himhas led the White House to take a turn and relax its operation, which has involved the deployment of some 3,000 agents in the city after Trump focused on cases of embezzlement of federal funds involving the city’s Somali community.

On Monday, the president spoke with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, to defuse tension and announced that he would send border czar Tom Homan to be his interlocutor.

Homan thus replaces Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol officer who had directed the large deployment and had earned the growing antipathy of the public.

Frey assured that he expects some agents of the operation to leave the city this Tuesday.