Fox 9 reports,
After ICE ‘overwhelmed’ federal courts, Chief Judge reflects on emotional toll
The “emotional toll.” So you can forget about justice dispensed “without fear nor favor.”
Judge Schiltz, nominally a George Bush appointee, was interviewed about the more than 1,200 habeas corpus cases filed in Minnesota before, during, and after Operation Metro Surge. Each case sought the release of one or more illegal aliens detained by ICE in anticipation of their deportation. Nearly all cases resulted in the eventual release of the subjects.
His Honor tells Fox 9,
If I went to a movie for two hours or just wasn’t near my iPhone for two hours, that could be the difference between somebody being put on a plane and sent to Texas or somewhere else and someone being ordered released and returning to their family that night. So, there was kind of an emotional toll as well as just the work and the time.
If only the judge and his colleagues would offer such a concierge-level of service to actual American citizens. Their sympathies lie elsewhere. The judge laments that he couldn’t do more to help,
Anytime you were doing something that was not work, you kind of felt guilty, like you should be working, because somebody might really be harmed by the fact that I went to the movie, or I went out to dinner with friends.
The judge adds,
And whether they are the ‘best of the best’ or the ‘worst of the worst’ doesn’t matter to me…I have to decide whether your rights have been violated.
As Adam Smith once wrote, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” The judge goes on to complain,
ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
To be clear, ICE has not violated a single court order. Not one. Not in January 2026. Not ever. Every single detainee ordered released was eventually released. In a few cases, the detainees had to be released in Texas as judges did not allow enough time before their deadlines to fly the detainees back to Minnesota. It was a Catch-22.
All the other examples of “violations” involved the federal court’s “lost and found” operation, where detainees, already released, claimed to be missing personal property, such as shoelaces, a pack of cigarettes, and alleged “work permits.” If a former detainee’s allegedly missing property was declared “lost,” that accounts for the bulk of the “violations” cited by Judge Schiltz.
From Fox 9,
A March ruling from a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the government does have the right to detain many of the immigrants released in Minnesota.
After the ruling, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen told the FOX 9 Investigators that “federal judges in this district were flatly wrong.”
Schiltz assessed the ruling and its fallout differently.
“So, ‘wrong’ is not a word that we really use to discuss rulings,” said Schiltz. “They disagreed with our rulings. They’re the bosses, they’re the appellate court, we’re the trial courts, and now we are complying with the Eighth Circuit’s ruling.”
But you are not, Judge Schiltz, you are not complying with the 8th circuit’s ruling. Since the March 25 ruling by the appeals court, Judge Schiltz has been personally assigned four individual habeas cases. The judge released an Ecuadoran citizen, in direct defiance of the court’s ruling (Case No. 26-cv-2048). A second case was transferred out of district, and the other two remain pending.
To be clear, at least two judges in the district are following the 8th circuit’s ruling exactly as written. A few others, like Schiltz, are in open defiance of the “misplaced” (his word) ruling. Another group of judges is sidestepping the ruling, finding alleged technical violations by ICE or inventing new constitutional rights, for noncitizens only, to justify the release of detainees notwithstanding the clear language of the applicable law, “shall be detained.”
It could well be the case that the local district court has now defied an appeals court ruling more times in April 2026 than in the entire history of the judicial branch, going back to the 1790’s.
…And justice for all.
