As the fight against the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity continues on the streets of Minneapolis, many significant legal battles are taking shape inside Minnesota’s federal courts. An MS NOW analysis of Minnesota federal court cases has found that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is losing many of them.
The state and the Twin Cities are engaged in closely watched cases focused on Operation Metro Surge, especially in the wake of two fatal shootings of civilian protesters by federal agents involved in the immigration crackdown. While Minnesota state investigators are fighting to preserve evidence from the Alex Pretti crime scene before one court, another court is hearing the Justice Department’s attempt to criminally charge protesters and the journalist Don Lemon for allegedly interfering with St. Paul churchgoers’ freedom of religion. Then there’s the biggest fight: the one challenging the constitutionality of ICE’s presence there in the first place.
Quietly in the background and without the attention of those other cases, individual immigrants stuck in ICE detention have brought a flurry of equally urgent actions before the court. And they’re winning nearly all of them.
MS NOW studied the 61 cases challenging immigrants’ detention — also known as habeas corpus petitions or habeas cases — that were decided in the week between Jan. 20 and Jan. 27. All but one of the detainees won.
Documents show that judges ordered 40 of those immigrants to be released from federal custody, either immediately or within days. The orders came from judges nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents.
In 18 of the cases in which judges ordered release, they also ordered that the Justice Department confirm that the detainees have, in fact, been released. In one case, court records show the government did not comply with that order, drawing a sharp rebuke from Judge Jeffrey Bryan. Bryan, a Biden nominee who previously served in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office and also as a county judge, then ordered the DOJ to confirm within hours its compliance and to state a reason for the delay in the first place.
MS NOW brought the findings to Scott Shuchart, a senior official for policy at ICE during the Biden administration, who noted that the number of habeas filings is up across the country, in part because the Trump administration has changed longstanding policy toward immigrants already living in the U.S. and detained many of these immigrants without warrants or a bond hearing.
“The level of filings and the rate of success seem extremely high relative to what we usually see with immigration-related habeas petitions,” Shuchart said.
But the Minneapolis judges seem to be batting back this influx of petitions when there’s lack of due cause. In 60 of the 61 cases reviewed by MS NOW, the judges’ decisions reveal ICE’s willingness to flout prior court interpretations of the law and to proceed against even those immigrants who appear to have grounds to remain in the U.S.
- In one case decided by Judge Kate Menendez, a former public defender and Biden nominee, a Kenyan woman had no criminal history or final order of removal but was arrested outside a CVS while picking up her seizure medication.
- In another case decided by Senior Judge John Tunheim, a Clinton nominee who served as a Minnesota state prosecutor for more than a decade, ICE detained a Salvadoran man who has had lawful status since 2015 under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The man, a so-called Dreamer, also has no criminal history and was arrested without a warrant as he was leaving his home.
- A third case, overseen by Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump nominee and former civil litigator and law professor, was brought by an Ecuadorian man who asserted an asylum claim upon entering the U.S. with his wife and children. The man, who also represented that he has a work permit and no criminal history, and that he had been diligent about responding to all filing requirements and court appearances in support of his pending asylum claim, was detained on Jan. 13 amid Operation Metro Surge.
Others who successfully challenged their detention include a Russian man admitted to the U.S. as a refugee and who disappeared so quickly that his family feared he had been kidnapped, and a Mexican man who has been in the country for almost three decades and who has qualified for work authorization and protection against his deportation as a survivor of domestic abuse.
The sole immigrant detainee who lost his bid for release from custody last week in Minnesota entered the U.S. as a refugee and became a lawful permanent resident more than a decade ago. He was since convicted of felonies including aggravated robbery and assault with a deadly weapon and is now in custody, awaiting next steps on his deportation.
For some immigrants whose petitions were granted, winning in court hasn’t been enough to allow them to leave a detention center. According to an order issued by Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush nominee and two-time clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in at least a dozen cases in the past few weeks, the Trump administration has defied the court’s orders to release these detainees.
On Jan. 14, Schiltz himself granted a habeas petition and ordered a bond hearing for an individual named Juan T.R. The order stated that ICE must provide Juan with a bond hearing within seven days or he “must be released from detention.” On Jan. 23, however, Juan’s counsel notified the court that he did not have a hearing and remained in detention.
On Monday night, Schiltz then ordered acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to appear in person — unless Juan is released by Friday — to explain why he should not be held in contempt for violating Schiltz’s order that Juan be released.
“The Court’s patience is at an end,” Schiltz wrote. “The court acknowledges that ordering the head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step, but the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary and lesser measures have been tried and failed.”
Juan T.R. was reported to have been released on Wednesday. His attorney did not immediately respond to MS NOW for comment. If he has, in fact, been released, Friday’s hearing could be canceled.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Schiltz himself has come under attack. According to Fox News, Schiltz made a contribution in 2019 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, something at least one current DOJ official, Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon, has suggested violates judicial ethics rules.
In a statement to Fox News, Schiltz acknowledged his “many years” of contributions to both the Immigrant Law Center and Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, saying simply, “I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation.”
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.