The department claimed that seven Minnesota judges breached their judicial ethics
The US justice department has lodged a complaint against seven Minnesota-based federal judges after the judges in question provided comments to the New York Times regarding the immigration crackdown, reported The Associated Press.
The complaint was filed on Wednesday September 30 with the chief judge of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The department claimed that the judges breached their judicial ethics by disclosing to the media details of their experience handling the influx of immigration cases in the state earlier this year as a result of Operation Metro Surge.
Attorney general Todd Blanche told the media that the department was calling for the judges to self-recuse from all civil or criminal cases involving the Department of Homeland Security. He cited what he described as the “obvious bias” in the judges’ comments to the Times.
In January, one of the judges, Patrick Schiltz, had called out the US administration’s noncompliance with almost a hundred court orders, saying in a decision (a snippet of which was published by AP News) that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is not a law unto itself.”
Schiltz told the Times that the situation in Minnesota federal court “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” per a statement published by AP News.
“When we have a situation like we have now, where you have a judge, a couple of judges, just not only violating the canons in our view, but also showing bias in what they’re saying, we have no choice but to act to defend not only our prosecutors, but also DHS,” Blanche said in a statement published by AP News.
A Minnesota court spokesperson said in a statement published by AP News that per legal experts, the judges’ comments to the Times were “well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges.” Schiltz added that his remarks were not in breach of ethics; he pointed out that the Committee on Codes of Conduct had released an advisory opinion in February reinforcing that federal judges could express their takes on the rule of law and judicial independence.
The complaint escalates the feud between the justice department and the federal judiciary over the US administration’s policies, high-profile prosecutions, and government lawyers’ compliance with court orders. The judges targeted in the complaint are a mix of nominees made by Democrat and Republican presidents.
