174 Bipartisan Former Judges Defend Minnesota Judges Who Called Out ICE
October 26, 2026
ICE violated 210 court orders during Operation Metro Surge. The DOJ went after the judges who said so.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a letter released today, a bipartisan group of 174 former federal and state judges urged Eighth Circuit Chief Judge Colloton to immediately dismiss the Department of Justice’s misconduct complaint against Minnesota federal judges. The former judges argue that DOJ’s complaint is baseless because the Minnesota judges’ public remarks about ICE’s defiance of court orders merely reiterated findings their court had already made public.
During last winter’s Operation Metro Surge, ICE violated 210 court orders in Minnesota. Officials moved detainees out of state against judges’ orders and kept people locked up after judges ordered them freed. Some detainees did not get their passports, phones, or work permits back even after courts ordered them returned. In response, Judge Schiltz issued an order warning that “ICE is not a law unto itself.”
On Sept. 30, the DOJ filed an unprecedented judicial misconduct complaint against seven Minnesota federal judges, including Schiltz and Judge John R. Tunheim, over their public comments about the Trump administration’s immigration operations, including the widespread federal noncompliance with court orders and the severe strain Operation Metro Surge placed on the federal courts. The complaint asks for an investigation and seeks to bar the judges who spoke to The New York Times from any cases involving DHS. The retired judges say both requests should be denied.
“The noncompliance Judge Schiltz described was not a matter of private opinion; it was the subject of findings in the public orders of his court,” the former judges wrote in their petition to the Eighth Circuit. The letter continues, “He described what his court had already found, in a published opinion justifying its orders and what the consequences of noncompliance were for the court’s operation. A judge who reports what has already been adjudicated in public is not litigating his case in the newspaper.”
“Instead of dealing with the government’s defiance of judicial orders, the government filed disciplinary charges against the Minnesota judges who lawfully called out their misconduct,” said Nancy Gertner, former United States district judge for the District of Massachusetts. “174 retired judges have signed this letter making it clear that there is no basis for those charges.”
Read the full letter here.
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Featured Image: Lorie Shaull / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-4.0
