Today In Court

What a prosecutor in Minnesota said

Julie Le volunteered to help with the flood of cases filed by immigrants arguing they had been improperly detained during Project Metro Surge in Minneapolis. On Tuesday, Le was the lawyer sent into court to explain the Department of Homeland Security’s failure to comply with court orders requiring the immediate release of detainees to Judge Jerry Blackwell.

Judge Blackwell, who was one of the prosecutors in the case against former police officer Derek Chauvin, which resulted in his conviction for George Floyd’s murder, had some questions for Le. Judge Blackwell’s 4-page document on the federal district court’s website, titled “Practice Pointers and Preferences,” leaves one with the sense that this is a judge who does things by the book and demands that lawyers who appear in front of him follow the ethical rules that bind lawyers. Follow the rules, he admonishes litigants who appear before him at multiple points, don’t try to be cute and bend the rules.

He was all business with Le in court today, when he asked why court orders were being disobeyed.

Paul Blume with Fox9 in St. Paul reported on what happened next: “SHOCKING FEDERAL COURT MOMENT: DOJ attorney Julie Le, "The system sucks, this job sucks" to Judge Jerry Blackwell who pressed her on why so many court orders are being ignored by ICE/Trump admin. She asked to be held in contempt just so she could get 24 hours of sleep.”

Blume continued, “Judge Blackwell had ordered the SHOW CAUSE hearing because he was frustrated that in 5 Habeas cases he was presiding over, he felt his orders were being ignored, leaving immigrant detainees unconstitutionally locked up for days. Ms. Le said that govt lawyers just cannot keep up.”

“I am here to make sure the agency understands how important it is to comply with court orders,” Le, who reportedly became “visibly emotional,” said during the hearing. She told the Judge new procedures are being put in place to bring ICE into compliance with court orders, but acknowledged “it has been like pulling teeth and has required non-stop work in an already depleted office.” Points for candor to the court.

I’m told Le is not a career federal prosecutor, called an Assistant United States Attorney or AUSA. She is a Special Assistant United States Attorney (SAUSA). Her status is unclear—SAUSAs are often hired into temporary positions or to increase manpower in a specific area, but they can also come into a U.S. Attorney’s Office on a detail from another federal agency or even as unpaid volunteers. There is reporting that Le had been working as an attorney for ICE in immigration and volunteered to help the U.S. Attorney’s Office last month when the number of petitions in which immigrants challenged their unlawful detention exploded as a result of Operation Metro Surge.

Le graduated from a local law school in 2019 and was doing workers’ comp hearings and civil immigration work at a small firm before she went to the government. It’s not clear what she meant by “The system sucks,” but it’s easy to see how overwhelming this situation has become.

The Minneapolis U.S. Attorney’s office has lost much of its senior tier of leadership. Previously, the New York Times reported that six prosecutors resigned because of demands that they open a domestic terrorism investigation into the wife of ICE shooting victim Renee Good, while refusing to let them proceed with an investigation into the shooting. One of them was Joseph H. Thompson, a career federal prosecutor who was the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota after the Biden U.S. Attorney resigned. Thompson led the extensive fraud investigation that Donald Trump had used to portray Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community as full of criminals, although American citizens have been charged in the fraud cases, as well.

Obviously, it is not business as usual at the Justice Department.

But Minnesotans, who seem to understand the mission, continue to support their Somali and other immigrant neighbors. “People (were) saying that Minnesota Somalis are as Minnesotan as tater-tot hotdish,” Suleiman Adan, the deputy executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in December. “We belong.”

We’re in this together,

Joyce