A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump lambasted the administration for surging federal officers into Minnesota without accounting for basic due process protections for thousands of people they arrested.
Immigration authorities violated their rights by stashing them into a severely overcrowded federal facility without access to attorneys, according to District Judge Nancy Brasel.
“It appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees,” she wrote Thursday.
“The government suggests — with minimal explanation and even less evidence — that doing so would result in ‘chaos,’” she added. “The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement was ordered to immediately restore meaningful access to legal support for people detained in Minnesota, marking a major victory for human rights groups and detainees who sued over conditions that the judge said “all but extinguish a detainee’s access to counsel.”
In response to Judge Brasel’s order, a spokesperson for Homeland Security said that “no lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States”
Thursday’s order arrived hours after the Trump administration’s announcement that federal officers would begin withdrawing from Minnesota in the coming days.
White House border czar Tom Homan — who was deployed to the state after officers fatally shot two citizen protesters and the apparent removal of Border Patrol “commander-at-large” Greg Bovino — said Thursday that “a small footprint of personnel” will remain in the state to supervise the transfer of “full command and control” of immigration enforcement back to the ICE field office in Minneapolis.
A class-action lawsuit from The Advocates for Human Rights alleges widespread violations at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, where detainees are “shackled” and “secretly” moved to ICE detention centers as far as away as Texas without a chance to call a lawyer or family member.
Detainees are “moved frequently, quickly, without notice, and often with no way for attorneys to know where or how long they will be at a given facility,” according to the judge.
ICE refused to let attorneys meet with their clients, who were routinely “pressured” to sign self-deportation forms, according to plaintiffs.
“All of these barriers make it difficult — if not impossible — for attorneys to effectively represent their clients,”Judge Brasel wrote.
The judge ordered the government to provide written notice to detainees’ access to legal services and provide them with free, private and unmonitored access to telephones.
Attorneys also must be allowed to visit clients seven days a week, and ICE must inform them if their clients are being moved out of the facility, with a chance for the detainees to call their legal counsel or family.
“When the government deprives people of liberty, it cannot avoid its constitutional responsibilities because it finds them inconvenient,” according to Michele Garnett McKenzie, executive director of The Advocates for Human Rights. “It’s appalling that we required a court ruling to defend this fundamental right.”
The ruling is the latest blow to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts in Minnesota, after a wave of rebukes from federal judges who accused ICE of routinely violating court orders, including ignoring orders to release detainees and illegally moving them around the country.
Judges have also issued similar court rulings over the conditions inside makeshift ICE facilities in Chicago and New York, where detainees similarly lacked access to legal counsel and were stuffed into overcrowded cells.
