\n An Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney detailed to Minnesota to help handle the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities has been removed from her post after telling a judge that the job \u201csucks\u201d because of the crushing workload and the government\u2019s apparent inability to comply with court orders.\n <\/p>\n
\n The attorney, Julie Le, was sent back to her job at ICE, according to a source familiar with the matter.\n <\/p>\n
\n In an extraordinarily candid exchange with a federal judge on Tuesday, Le, who had been asked to explain why the administration was not promptly complying with a slew of court orders stemming from immigration cases she\u2019s handling, admitted that the government did not have enough lawyers on the ground to adequately keep up with Operation Metro Surge and that trying to get errors fixed is like \u201cpulling teeth.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThey are overwhelmed and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly (volunteered),\u201d she told US District Judge Jerry Blackwell, who is threatening to hold her and another lawyer in contempt for repeated violations of orders he\u2019s issued in immigration cases.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cSometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep. I work days and night just because people (are) still in there,\u201d Le said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAnd, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I\u2019m trying to fix it,\u201d she continued. \u201cI am here with you, your honor. What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Le and the other administration lawyers working on immigration cases in Minnesota since the crackdown began have been facing intense scrutiny from the judges there over a slew of missteps in the cases. Last week, the chief judge of the state\u2019s federal trial-level court said ICE \u201chas likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence\u201d and specifically called out nearly 100 court orders he said had been violated in recent weeks.\n <\/p>\n
\n Among those orders are ones requiring the government to immediately release immigrant detainees whom judges determined were being held unlawfully in Minnesota or Texas, where many of them were flown after being arrested in the Twin Cities. Judges, including Blackwell, were also frustrated by release conditions ICE had imposed on some immigrants since the court had not specifically allowed the agency to fashion such conditions.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt takes 10 e-mails to get a release condition to be corrected,\u201d Le told Blackwell on Tuesday. \u201cIt take two escalation and a threat that I will walk out for that to be corrected.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Though Blackwell said he thought Le and Justice Department attorney Ana Voss, who is also facing a contempt threat, were \u201cworking in good faith and under difficult circumstances,\u201d he warned them that \u201ca court order is not advisory and it is not conditional.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply with the court order,\u201d the judge said.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cHaving what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign,\u201d Blackwell added.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney detailed to Minnesota to help handle the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-448930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}