DOJ Admits to Violating Court Orders in Immigration Cases Over 50 Times Since December — Just in New Jersey

Photo by Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via AP

The Department of Justice admitted in a recent court filing that it had violated over 50 court orders in immigration cases — and that stunning figure was just since Dec. 5 and only included cases in New Jersey.

The tactics used during President Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown have been loudly criticized and sparked nationwide protests and multiple court challenges, especially after two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Good on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24 by Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin announced this week she was resigning, and numerous congressional Democrats have called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to step down or be impeached. Recent polling shows public opinion souring on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, even among Republicans.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on a recent filing from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, a declaration of Jordan Fox. Fox currently holds multiple titles (chief of staff to the U.S. deputy attorney general, an associate deputy attorney general, and special attorney for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey) in the wake of taking the wheel after Alina Habba was forced to step down as as acting U.S. Attorney after the court disqualified her.

In the 11-page declaration and an accompanying letter, Fox admitted that roughly 54 violations had occurred in orders from the court in the 547 immigration cases that his office was handling, taking what Cheney characterized as a “conciliatory approach” that “stood in stark contrast with previous statements” from DOJ and ICE attorneys insisting there had been no wrongdoing and placing the blame on “rogue judges.”

The declaration was completed in response to an order from Judge Michael Farbiarz with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, a Biden appointee.

“[W]e regret deeply all violations for which our Office is responsible,” wrote Fox in his letter to the court. “Those violations were unintentional and immediately rectified once we learned of them…[W]e believe that [the Department of Homeland Security’s] violations were also unintentional.”

He concluded by vowing that he would work with everyone in his office “to ensure full compliance with court orders.”

In the declaration, Fox listed six missed answer deadlines, 12 missed bond hearing deadlines, 17 transfers of detainees that were done after injunctions were issued prohibiting those transfers (several of which the detainees still have not been returned), an additional post-injunction deportation to Peru, three missed deadlines to release ICE detainees, three late releases conducted after a court-ordered deadline, 10 instances of incomplete compliance with evidentiary production, and other miscellaneous missed deadlines and a handful of cases of noncompliance where Fox wrote that the office had been added to the docket late.

On Tuesday, Judge Farbiarz responded to Fox’s filings by praising them as “[c]areful, thorough, and plainly the product of a great deal of work by a great many professionals at the United States Attorney’s Office,” but nonetheless an extremely troubling sign, in light of the sheer number of orders that were violated or complied with after deadlines.

“The sworn materials show that this case is not fully an outlier,” wrote Farbiarz, citing several additional recent orders that had been violated.

“This falls below the relevant standards,” he continued. “Judicial orders should never be violated. And they very rarely are, especially not by federal officials.”

The massive caseload was not an excuse, the judge noted, so even if it is “an accurate diagnosis of the issue,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office still needed to inform the court of “the across-the-board administrative steps the Respondents are taking to ensure 100% compliance with judicial orders.”

Farbiarz ordered them to file an affidavit by Feb. 25 with a detailed description of “the procedures that are in place (or, that will be put in place in the near-term) to ensure that court orders issued by district judges in New Jersey are timely and consistently complied with.”

The crushing immigration caseload has been a widespread problem for Trump administration attorneys. Earlier this month, an ICE attorney who had volunteered to assist the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota complained that “the system sucks, this job sucks” during a hearing and begged the judge to hold her in contempt so she could have “a full 24 hours of sleep.”

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