A federal judge reprimanded Donald Trump’s administration for claiming that an immigrant seeking his release from custody was convicted for marijuana possession in 2009 — when he was 4 years old.
To support arguments for the man’s ongoing detention and removal from the country, government lawyers attached a document from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they “indicated” was related to his criminal history.
They submitted the document in court filings “despite the differences in birthdate, birthplace, parents’ names, and immigration status,” West Virginia District Judge Irene Berger noted in her order to release him on Tuesday.
“This sloppiness further validates the Court’s concerns about the procedures utilized by the Respondents depriving people present in the United States of their liberty,” she wrote.
The viral rebuke, first reported by Politico, is the latest in a string of losses for Department of Justice lawyers and Homeland Security officials who are failing to keep up with court orders after thousands of arrests under Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Judges within the last week have held at least two government attorneys in civil contempt for failing to follow orders in immigration cases, according to documents reviewed by The Independent.
Last week, Minnesota District Judge Laura M. Provinzino held a federal prosecutor in civil contempt for “flagrant disobedience of court orders” in the case of a noncitizen swept up in Trump’s surge of immigration officers in the state.
Provinzino ordered Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Isihara to pay $500 a day until the government returned a man’s identification documents after his release. The contempt was purged after his documents were returned.
This week, Trump appointee Judge Eric C. Tostrud of Minnesota found the administration in civil contempt for transferring an ICE detainee to Texas in violation of his order and then releasing him without his belongings.
The judge ordered the administration to refund him $568 for the cost of a plane ticket home.
The administration’s attempts to arrest and deport tens of thousands of people from the country — without giving them much of a chance to fight their cases before they’re indefinitely jailed in immigration detention centers — have triggered an avalanche of lawsuits that are overwhelming courts and prosecutors.
Dozens of new habeas corpus petitions — the lawsuits immigrants have filed to challenge the constitutionality of their arrest and detention — are hitting court dockets every week. Government attorneys are overwhelmed or quitting in droves under pressure to fight them at an unsustainable pace.
Judges have argued that it’s a crisis of the administration’s own making.
Officials “have chosen to avail themselves of these exact circumstances of which they now complain,” wrote California District Judge Sunshine Sykes, whose order this month commanded the government to let detainees challenge their detentions.
