Federal Judge Finds ICE Violated 96 Court Orders in Minnesota

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a blistering order finding that ICE violated at least 96 court orders across 74 cases in Minnesota during January 2026 alone. Schiltz stated that ICE “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” The judge acknowledged that his “hurriedly compiled” list was incomplete and that “undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted.”

The violations stemmed from ICE’s practice of rapidly moving detainees to out-of-state detention centers and failing to return them to Minnesota for court-ordered bond hearings. In one case, the U.S. Attorney’s office revealed it was taking ICE four days to return a detainee to Minnesota. When ICE missed a court-ordered deadline to hold a bond hearing or release Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, Schiltz scheduled a contempt hearing and ordered Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to testify. ICE released the immigrant the day before the scheduled hearing, which Schiltz then cancelled.

Schiltz warned: “ICE is not a law unto itself. ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.” The judge noted the violations caused “significant hardship” to numerous detained aliens, “many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong.” DHS responded by attacking Schiltz through Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who dismissed “the diatribe from this activist judge” and said the department “will not be deterred by activists either in the streets or on the bench.” [Corrected 2026-08-31 — see the CORRECTION section below; the previously-carried “just another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans” is NOT what was said.] University of Minnesota expert Tim Johnson called the pattern of defiance “unprecedented.”

CORRECTION — 2026-08-29, body text repaired 2026-08-31. The DHS quote originally carried here was NOT VERBATIM.

2026-08-31 update: the correction below was written 2026-08-29 and was accurate and thorough — but it was appended while the body text above still asserted the fabricated quote. For two days this entry stated the wrong quote in its narrative and disclaimed it in an appendix. Anything reading the body first — a person skimming, a grep, a worker pulling context — got the error.

The body is now corrected in place. A correction notice below the error does not fix the error; it only documents it. Fix the assertion, then keep the notice as the record.

This entry carries: DHS called Schiltz “just another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans.”

A primary-source fact-check pass (2026-08-29) fetched Fox 9’s article — the cited source — and found a different statement. The actual quote, from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, by name:

“Despite the diatribe from this activist judge… We will not be deterred by activists either in the streets or on the bench.”

“just another activist judge” is not what was said. The phrase “safety of the Minnesotans” does not appear in the source at all. CNBC, also cited, separately notes ICE/DOJ did not respond to its requests for comment that day.

Use the McLaughlin quote, attributed to her by name and title. It is stronger than the paraphrase it replaces — “activists either in the streets or on the bench” is the actual claim being made, and it says more than the invented version did.

How this propagated, which is the part worth learning from

A prior fact-check pass “CLEARED” this quote for a draft by checking it against THIS ENTRY. The draft’s own log reads: “DHS’s ‘just another activist judge’ quote. CLEARED against cascade-kb 2026-01-28 event verbatim.”

That is the exact failure the standing rule exists to prevent: verify against sources, not the KB. Checking a quote against our own note does not verify it — it launders the error into a “verified” fact, and here it did so across four artifacts and one published piece.

Corrected downstream (2026-08-29):

• drafts/drafts/dhs-surveillance-integration-ai-inventory.md — caught by the primary-source pass; readiness: revision-needed
• drafts/drafts/crimes-against-humanity.md — carries the SHORT form, “just another activist judge.” Still not verbatim. Flagged.
• substack-published/2026-02-20--guards-compressed-his-neck-until.md — PUBLISHED, carrying the short form: “DHS responded by calling him ‘just another activist judge.’” This is live and needs Mark’s decision. The paraphrase is close to the sense of McLaughlin’s actual words (“this activist judge”) but it is inside quotation marks, and a quotation mark means verbatim.