The DOJ filed an ethics complaint Wednesday targeting federal judges in Minnesota over remarks they made to the New York Times about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The complaint seeks to disqualify those judges from handling civil or criminal cases involving the Department of Homeland Security. This move deepens the administration’s ongoing conflict with the federal judiciary, which has previously challenged executive priorities and questioned government compliance with court orders.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the demand follows the judges’ “obvious bias” in their statements. The issue stems from a September report in which seven Minnesota federal judges, nominated by both Democratic and Republican presidents, discussed how a winter enforcement drive produced thousands of arrests and a surge of cases. One judge, Patrick Schiltz, accused the government of ignoring roughly 100 court orders and stated that ICE is “not a law unto itself.”
Schiltz, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and nominated by President George W. Bush, told the newspaper that the winter surge posed a “grave threat to the rule of law.” In a statement, he maintained that his comments were within the ethical rules that allow federal judges to speak on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence, citing a February advisory opinion from the Committee on Codes of Conduct.
The complaint was delivered to the chief judge of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which supervises Minnesota federal courts. The Republican administration has repeatedly criticized what it calls “activist judges” for allegedly blocking Trump’s agenda, even though some of the most critical rulings have come from judges nominated by Trump and other Republican presidents.
