Seven Minnesota judges are the subject of an ethics complaint after speaking publicly about the US president’s immigration crackdown.
Published on September 30, 2026
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a misconduct complaint against seven federal judges in Minnesota who spoke publicly about the pressure their courts faced during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The justices spoke to The New York Times this month about handling a flood of cases during Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests in the Minneapolis-St Paul area from December to February.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 elementsend of list
The Justice Department says it crossed an ethical line by speaking publicly about these cases.
Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the judges of showing “obvious bias” against the Trump administration and called on them to recuse themselves from any cases involving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“When we are in a situation like the one we have now, where you have a judge, a few judges, who not only violate the canons in our opinion but also show bias in what they say, we have no choice but to act,” Blanche told reporters.
The judges say they did nothing wrong. A spokesperson for Minnesota’s federal court system said legal experts found the judges were “well within the ethical guidelines” when speaking to the newspaper.
The complaint is the latest in a series of clashes between the Trump administration and the judiciary, which has blocked some of the president’s policies and, in several cases, accused government lawyers of failing to follow court rulings.
One of the judges named in the complaint, Patrick Schiltz, alleged that the government failed to comply with nearly 100 court orders related to immigration enforcement in January alone.
In a ruling, he wrote that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “is not a law unto itself.”
Schiltz was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and previously served as an assistant to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
He later told the New York Times that what happened in Minnesota’s federal courts during the crackdown “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”
Schiltz also pointed to guidelines issued by a federal judicial ethics committee in February, saying judges can speak publicly on issues such as the rule of law and judicial independence.
“That’s exactly what I did,” he said.
Gn usa
