Category: judge
Biden Judge Rejects Minnesota’s Request To End ICE Operation
Biden Judge Rejects Minnesota’s Request To End ICE Operation
Activist judge who downplayed Don Lemon’s church antics, summoned ICE director donated to pro-illegal-alien group
The Minnesota-based federal judge who declined to issue arrest warrants for Don Lemon and several of the radicals accused of storming into Cities Church on Jan. 18 demanded on Tuesday that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons “appear personally before the Court and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of Court.”
Despite U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz’s portrayal in the liberal media as a conservative-minded and “mild-mannered George W. Bush appointee,” it appears that Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s characterization of Schiltz as “just another activist judge” is more apt.
‘Another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans.’
Bill Melugin of Fox News revealed this week that Schiltz is linked to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a liberal activist outfit that provides free legal representation to illegal aliens, low-income migrants, and so-called refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota.
The ILCM routinely criticizes the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accusing them of occupation, racism, “Islamophobi[a],” and engaging in “execution-style murders.”
After Schiltz’s name was found among the donors and volunteers listed in the ILCM’s 2019 annual report, the judge — dubbed the “latest hero to the anti-Trump resistance” by Politico — admitted to Fox News Digital that he has “donated for many years to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.”
“I have also donated for many years to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation,” added Schiltz, who has served as a delegate at Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party conventions.
The donor to the illegal alien support group noted in a Monday court filing that his “patience is at an end” and ordered Lyons to explain on Friday why he should not be held in contempt for supposedly violating an earlier order.
Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Schiltz indicated that Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, an Ecuadorian national who illegally entered the U.S. in 1999 and was detained by immigration agents on Jan. 6, should have been provided with a bond hearing or released earlier this month.
The Bush judge indicated in his Tuesday order that if Robles was released before the hearing, Lyons would not be required to appear. A lawyer for the Ecuadorian told the Associated Press that his client was released Tuesday afternoon.
“Judge Patrick J. Schiltz is just another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans,” stated DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Does this judge really think Director Lyons should take time out of his day leading ICE to target the worst of the worst criminal illegals including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists into our country to testify at a hearing for one illegal alien’s removal proceedings?”
While Schiltz evidently figured that swift and decisive action was required in the case of Robles, he took an entirely different approach in the case of the radicals who assembled on Jan. 18 for a so-called “ICE Out Action,” then stormed a Christian church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
After the church invasion, the Trump Justice Department promptly filed a criminal complaint in the District of Minnesota charging eight of the suspected invaders with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.
The DOJ’s pursuit of accountability was frustrated at the outset when Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko — whose wife reportedly works for Minnesota’s anti-ICE attorney general, Keith Ellison — declined to support all but three of the requested arrest affidavits.
After Micko threw up additional roadblocks, the DOJ turned to Schiltz for a review of the magistrate’s no-probable-cause finding in hopes that he might issue the warrants.
In an angry and sarcastic Jan. 23 letter to the Eighth Circuit’s chief judge, Steven Colloton, Schiltz downplayed the church invasion, glossed over the invaders’ intimidation tactics, cast doubt on whether arresting them would deter copycats, emphasized that “there is no emergency,” and noted that if the petition filed by the government seeks an immediate decision, “the petition is frivolous.”
In a separate letter, he suggested there was “no evidence that [Don Lemon and his producer] engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”
Sure enough, Schiltz indicated that he would not issue arrest warrants until conferring with his colleagues — a meeting that was supposed to happen last week but was delayed.
Over the weekend, a three-judge Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied the government’s petition to review the magistrate’s refusal to sign the warrants.
While U.S. Circuit Court Judge Steven Grasz, an appointee of President Donald Trump, recognized that the complaint and affidavit “clearly establish probably cause for all five arrest warrants” and that “there is no discretion to refuse to issue an arrest warrant once probable cause for its issuance has been shown,” the government had “failed to establish that it has no other adequate means of obtaining the requested relief.”
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Activist Obama judge throws lifeline to deported Venezuelan gangsters
President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring that Tren de Aragua is “a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization” aligned with the Venezuelan Maduro regime that “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
Within hours of invoking the AEA, the Trump administration deported over 130 suspected Venezuelan gangsters — many of whom were credibly accused of murder, robbery, rape, and other crimes — to El Salvador, where they were placed in a Salvadoran prison for terrorists.
In July, the administration had Venezuelan deportees who were imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center repatriated to Venezuela, where they were welcomed home by Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
‘Chief Judge Boasberg has compromised the impartiality of the judiciary.’
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the Obama appointee who tried unsuccessfully to stop the illegal aliens’ March 15 removal from the U.S., certified the Venezuelan deportees as a class on Monday and ordered the administration to offer them legal relief abroad, though stopping short of ordering their return to the United States.
“The Court finds that the only remedy that would give effect to its granting of Plaintiffs’ Motion would be to order the Government to undo the effects of their unlawful removal by facilitating a meaningful opportunity to contest their designation and the Proclamation’s validity,” wrote Boasberg.
“Otherwise, a finding of unlawful removal would be meaningless for Plaintiffs, who have already been sent back to Venezuela against their wishes and without due process.”
RELATED: Judges break the law to stop Trump from enforcing it
Accused gangster at the Counter Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.
“Expedited removal cannot be allowed to render this relief toothless,” continued the activist judge. “If secretly spiriting individuals to another country were enough to neuter the Great Writ, then ‘the Government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.'”
Boasberg — the activist judge who helped the Biden FBI spy on Republican lawmakers’ phone records, ordered in August the release of a woman accused of repeatedly threatening Trump’s life, and mandated a right to Medicaid for able-bodied adults without work requirements — gave the government a deadline of Jan. 5 to “submit its proposal either to facilitate the return of Plaintiffs to the United States or to otherwise provide them with hearings that satisfy the requirements of due process.”
The Obama judge indicated that the Venezuelans needn’t demonstrate that the president’s AEA invocation was unlawful but rather that their designation as alien enemies was incorrect.
“The merits of Plaintiffs’ due-process claim are easily resolved,” he wrote. “Even if the AEA was properly invoked as a general matter, it is beyond cavil that designated ‘alien enemies’ under that act must be afforded some process to contest their designation. … Here, Plaintiffs received none.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the suspected foreign gangsters, said in a statement, “This administration cannot escape judicial scrutiny of its policies, which has been its goal all along.”
The ACLU noted further that “this is an important ruling for these men who were tortured, and for the rule of law.”
Blaze News has reached out to the White House for comment.
Rob Luther, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, said in response to the ruling, “I predict that in 2026, Judge Boasberg will make history as the 16th judge impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg on Nov. 4, stating, “Chief Judge Boasberg has compromised the impartiality of the judiciary and created a constitutional crisis.”
A simple majority is needed to pass articles of impeachment for a judge in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority.
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‘Dismay And Disgust’: Federal Judge Rage Quits, Blasting ‘Existential Threat’ Trump Over ‘Angry Attacks On The Courts’
‘As I watched in dismay and disgust from my position on the bench, I came to feel deeply uncomfortable operating under the necessary ethical rules that muzzle judges’ public statements and restrict their activities’
