ICE Is Systematically Defying Court Orders Against its Violent, Illegal, and Unconstitutional Tactics in Minneapolis

The lawlessness of the administration’s occupation of Minneapolis was highlighted recently when a judge listed almost 100 court orders that ICE and Border Patrol have defied.

Politico reports:

Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz tore into the agency in a Wednesday order for what he characterized as a pattern of unprecedented defiance—violating dozens of court orders in ways that abused the rights of immigrants facing deportation proceedings.

“ICE is not a law unto itself,” Schiltz said in a four-page order.

Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, appended a list of nearly 100 court orders he said the immigration agency had violated in the past month solely involving immigrants detained in the Twin Cities area as part of Operation Metro Surge.

“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law,” the judge wrote. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” …

Schiltz’s initial order came in the case of an Ecuadorian man, Juan Tobay Robles, whose release from ICE detention the judge ordered earlier this month. Schiltz lit into the agency for violating the order after officials failed to release the man for days despite the court directive.

This is consistent with the Trump administration attitude toward the law—to always push everything to the limit and require other institutions to push back with maximum force, in the hope of wearing them down and getting away with as much as possible.

Just as the people of Minneapolis are engaged in a mass act of public civil disobedience, hoping to wear down ICE and Border Patrol by adding friction to their every action, so the Trump administration is waging a campaign of official disobedience against the law itself by a refusal to complying with the judiciary except under the most extreme pressure.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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