A federal judge in Minnesota has taken the rare step of ordering the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to personally appear in court this Friday to explain why the agency has repeatedly failed to comply with judicial orders in recent weeks.
In a sharply worded filing on Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons must show cause why he should not be held in contempt after ICE missed a deadline to provide a detained immigrant with a timely bond hearing, defying a direct court order.
Schiltz said his patience has “come to an end” after what he described as the agency’s repeated refusal to honour “dozens” of judicial mandates.
The central case cited by the judge involves an immigrant who was ordered to receive a bond hearing within seven days of a January 14 ruling — a requirement that was still unmet as of Monday, leaving the individual in detention. Schiltz said he would cancel the Friday hearing if the detainee is released before then.
The judge criticized the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration operation in Minnesota, noting that ICE deployed thousands of agents without establishing adequate procedures to handle the resulting surge in habeas petitions and other legal challenges.
“This court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result,” Schiltz wrote. “The court’s patience is at an end.”
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the court order.
The action occurs amid public protests over ICE’s tactics in the state, where enforcement operations have been highly controversial.
The contempt threat underscores mounting tensions between the federal judiciary and the administration’s immigration enforcement strategy in Minnesota.
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