At least 3,000 federal agents have spent the last several months roving through Minneapolis-area neighborhoods, abducting anyone they accuse of being an immigrant, and brutalizing anyone who gets in the way. And as arrests have surged, so too have court cases that aim to get detainees released. But as of January 28, the administration has violated at least 96 court orders in at least 74 of these cases. On Tuesday, federal district court judge Jerry Blackwell held a hearing to remind the government that following court orders is not optional, and to demand that the Trump administration answer for its noncompliance.
The lawyer representing the administration, Julie Le, responded by telling Blackwell that she is very tired. “The system sucks, this job sucks,” she said. “Sometimes I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours sleep.”
Le went on to explain that she was new to the job: An ICE attorney within the Department of Homeland Security, she had decided to volunteer—“stupidly,” she told Blackwell—to work with the local U.S. Attorney’s Office because they were “overwhelmed” by habeas cases, and she wanted to help. As Chris Geidner reported at Law Dork, this past January, there were 253 federal habeas petitions filed in Minnesota’s federal district court. Last year, in January 2025, there were six.
But since volunteering in early January, Le said, she had received “no guidance or direction” from the Justice Department on litigating in federal court. She was nevertheless assigned to more than 80 cases in the past month, according to NBC News. “When you showed up, they just throw you in the well, and then here we go,” she told Blackwell.
Blackwell did not grant Le’s request for a nap, and noted that, as overwhelmed as she may be, the detainees have it worse. “On the other side of this is someone who should not have been arrested in some instances, who’s being held in jail, put in shackles for days if not a week after they’ve been ordered released,” he said.
Le’s courtroom breakdown reflects a Justice Department that is coming apart at the seams, hemorrhaging attorneys at the same time as Trump’s immigration policies are causing caseloads to explode. Six federal prosecutors resigned from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in mid-January in response to the administration’s immigration directives, including instructions to block a state investigation of the immigration officer who killed Renee Good, and to open a federal investigation into Good’s widow instead.
Another eight prosecutors left that office just a couple weeks later, when the Trump administration again asked them to stymie an investigation—this time, into the immigration officer who killed Alex Pretti—and again asked them to file criminal charges against protesters without evidence of any crimes. There are usually at least 50 lawyers working on criminal cases in the office, according to The Minnesota Star Tribune. Now there are fewer than 20.
To shore up its capacity, the Trump administration has been reduced to soliciting new hires on social media. On Saturday, former DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle posted on Twitter that the Justice Department needs “good prosecutors” and is “hiring across the country.” He encouraged lawyers who “support President Trump and anti-crime agenda” to send him a DM. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller retweeted the post, and similarly asked “patriots” to “reach out.”
On Monday, the Justice Department made another attempt to fix its staffing problems, this time by requiring federal prosecutors to assign a couple prosecutors to “emergency jump teams.” According to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg, prosecutors assigned to “jump teams” would be on call to go to other states to provide “urgent assistance due to emergent or critical situations.”
The Justice Department’s application-via-DM-slide posts on Saturday and call for loaning out attorneys from elsewhere on Monday adds context to Le’s courtroom struggles on Tuesday. Le said she started working with the Justice Department to make sure that the agency “understands how important it is to comply with all the court orders, which they have not done in the past or currently.”
She has had limited success. “It takes 10 emails from me for a release condition to be corrected,” said Le to Blackwell. “It takes me threatening to walk out for something else to be corrected.” It does not appear that her confessions went over well with the powers that be: As of Wednesday, Le is no longer assigned to the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, which means the administration will once again be scrambling to find attorneys willing to do its dirty work.
