Testy exchanges over immigration cases highlight growing confrontations between judges and DOJ

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge clashed Tuesday with Minnesota’s top federal prosecutor during an unusual contempt hearing that highlighted growing confrontations between increasingly frustrated judges and Department of Justice officials. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan called Tuesday’s hearing to decide whether U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel N. Rosen and others should be held in contempt for not heeding orders to return the personal property of 28 of immigrants who had been detained and then ordered freed. The property ranges from cash to identity documents to clothing. Bryan, who had said in calling for the hearing that there had been “numerous unlawful violations of court orders,” started Tuesday by saying it would be a “historic low point” for the U.S. attorney’s office if he held anyone in contempt. “Your honor has made a remark smearing myself,” Rosen shot back. The judge later called for a break in the hearing to allow for a reset, acknowledging the two had “been a little testy and frosty with each other.” There has been a surge in recent weeks of judges issuing critical and sometimes scathing statements and rulings over fallout from the administration’s attempts at mass immigrant deportations, with the Department of Justice sometimes appearing unable to keep up with the flood of cases from the crackdown. Among other cases across the country, a district judge in Minnesota took the rare step last month of finding an administration lawyer in contempt for failing to return identification documents to an immigrant, and a judge in West Virginia chastised U.S. and state officials for jailing noncitizens indefinitely, saying it violates their constitutional right to due process. “Continued detention without individualized custody determinations, after this court’s repeated holdings that such detention violates the Fifth Amendment, will result in legal consequences,” U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin said in his order. But the chief federal judge for Minnesota has repeatedly grabbed national attention with his warnings. Last week, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz said Rosen and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials must comply with court orders or risk criminal contempt charges. “The Court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders,” wrote Schiltz, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush and is seen as a conservative. The administration has blamed judges for the crisis, accusing them of failing to follow the law and rushing cases.