Trump's ICE Violated 210 Court Orders, by a Federal Judge's February Count

In January 2026, a federal judge in Minnesota found that the government was holding Oscar O.T. unlawfully and ordered him released immediately.¹ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kept him in custody for thirteen more days.² It was no isolated lapse: by late February, the district's chief judge had documented 210 court orders that ICE violated.² Violations like these kept people detained after they had won release and moved them despite orders keeping them within reach of their courts.³⁴

The deportation policy ICE was carrying out was President Trump's, and he had publicly blamed the courts for slowing it: "the courts are holding me from doing it", he said in May 2025.⁵ The evidence does not show Trump personally instructing anyone to violate these orders.⁵⁶⁴ The charge is a failure of presidential responsibility: the immigration authorities serving his deportation policy repeatedly denied people the protection of judicial orders.⁵⁶⁴

Oscar O.T., Thirteen Days to Get the Release He Won

Oscar O.T., a Guatemalan citizen, was released to his father's care as an unaccompanied child in 2021, and that release was never revoked.¹ He had pending applications for asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, and employment authorization approved in November 2025.¹ ICE apprehended him at work on January 10, 2026.¹ On January 15, Judge Jerry W. Blackwell found his continued detention unlawful: the statute the government relied on did not authorize it.¹

Order granting habeas relief (ECF 6)¹

Respondents shall immediately release Petitioner from custody

Blackwell had required the release to happen in Minnesota.¹ The government said Oscar would fly back from El Paso on January 20 and be released on his return.³ Late that night, ICE told his lawyer he was at a stop in Albuquerque and scheduled to reach Minnesota on January 24.³ On January 21, Blackwell recorded that Oscar was still in ICE custody and demanded an explanation, along with his actual location and custody status.³ A later court appendix records how it ended: Oscar was released on January 28, thirteen days after the order to release him immediately.²

What One District Counted

The appendix that records Oscar's release belongs to a larger accounting.² On January 28, 2026, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of Minnesota's federal court attached a list to an order: 96 court orders that ICE had violated in 74 cases.⁶ He said the count almost certainly understated the violations, because busy judges had compiled it in a hurry and left out orders that belonged on it.⁶

When the U.S. attorney challenged the count, Schiltz rechecked it and reported on February 26 that ICE had violated 97 orders in 66 of the original cases.² He attached a second list of 113 more violated orders in 77 additional cases, and wrote that most of those violations occurred after his January 28 order.² The two lists together come to 210 orders in 143 cases.²

Juan T.R.'s case shows what it took to enforce one of those orders: the government missed its deadline to answer his petition, then neither held the bond hearing Schiltz had ordered within seven days nor released him.⁶ Only after Schiltz ordered Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to appear in person did the parties report Juan's release.⁶

Order, habeas proceeding (ECF 10)⁶

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

Called to account, the government offered logistics in one case and mistakes in another.⁴⁷

Fernando T., Released in Texas Without His Belongings

On January 20, Judge Eric C. Tostrud barred immigration officials from moving Fernando T. out of Minnesota while his petition was pending.⁴ ICE was informed of the order that day and assured government counsel that Fernando would stay.⁴ Two days later it transferred him to Texas.⁴ The agency promised to bring him back, but on January 25 it released him in El Paso without his belongings.⁴ His lawyer paid $568.29 for his airfare home.⁴

On February 23, Tostrud found civil contempt and ordered the named federal respondents to reimburse that sum jointly: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and two ICE field directors.⁴

Order, Fernando T. v. Noem, No. 0:26-cv-00445-ECT-EMB (ECF 23)⁴

Respondents acknowledge they violated that Order. Accordingly, I find that Respondents’ conduct constitutes civil contempt, and Respondents (as defined herein) are jointly and severally liable for compensatory civil contempt sanctions

The officials cited a canceled flight, a winter storm, and the need to comply quickly with a later order to release Fernando.⁴ Tostrud ruled that none of this excused the transfer he had already prohibited.⁴ He could not identify which respondent was directly responsible, and his order awarding the airfare was set to take effect March 1 unless the officials requested an evidentiary hearing by February 28.⁴ On March 5, 2026, Trump announced Noem's replacement at Homeland Security in a post saying she had "served us well" and would become Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.⁸

The Government Admitted Another Fifty-Two Failures

In New Jersey the count came from the government itself: 52 compliance failures and 4 possible ones.⁷ Jordan Fox, a Justice Department official, filed the accounting on February 13, 2026.⁷ It covered violations from December 5, 2025, through February 12, 2026, across approximately 547 immigration-habeas matters.⁷ The failures included 17 transfers after no-transfer injunctions and one removal, to Peru, after an injunction.⁷ The count mixed small delays, such as a release nine minutes late, with serious violations, and it counted instances rather than 52 different people.⁷ Fox listed separately, and left out of the office's count, 16 missed status-update deadlines and three missed deadlines attributed to lack of notice.⁷

The government's defense was that the transfers were mistakes, caused by administrative oversight and delays in communicating orders; officials agreed to bring the transferred people back to New Jersey.⁷ Fox said the office found no indication of intentional transfers or intentional violation of the Peru injunction; the person removed to Peru chose to remain there after officials cooperated toward a return.⁷

Judge Michael E. Farbiarz left intent undecided in his March 2 opinion, but warned that repetition could make apparent mistakes look intentional.⁹ Farbiarz said the evidence initially favored inadvertence in Kumar’s transfer, including officials’ prompt efforts to return him, but made no final finding.⁹ He also warned that leaders’ willful blindness to repeated violations could support criminal contempt even if a particular transfer was mistaken.⁹ He declined further contempt fact-finding at that point and required compliance measures first.⁹ He credited the prosecutors with adding resources and changing their procedures.⁹ From ICE, in response to his order seeking a compliance plan, he found no measures, no commitment to act, and no expression of regret.⁹ In Washington, D.C., Judge Beryl Howell found on May 7, 2026, that the Lyons memo's definition of escape risk and omission of community ties violated her injunction, although other challenged portions passed muster on their face; she barred reliance on the memo's probable-cause standard and analytical approach for warrantless civil immigration arrests in the District.¹⁰ In Colorado, Judge R. Brooke Jackson found material violations of a warrantless-arrest injunction on May 12 and required training and arrest records.¹¹ In September 24 compliance comments on disputed submissions, Jackson said a mistaken-identity arrest violated his enforcement order and described an eighteen-year-old passenger injured during his arrest, including a broken wrist and facial lacerations.¹²

Twice the government deported a man to the one country an immigration judge had barred.¹³¹⁴ On November 20, 2025, ICE put Faustino Pablo Pablo on a direct flight to Guatemala, where an immigration judge had found he was more likely than not to be tortured; government lawyers conceded the removal was unlawful, a federal judge ordered officials to facilitate his return, and Talking Points Memo reported that he was back on December 11.¹⁴¹⁵ The government met the court's December 12 deadline, and the court designated Pablo Pablo's contempt motion withdrawn.¹⁴¹⁵ The earlier case reached the Supreme Court, and Trump defended the government's response himself.¹³⁵

Abrego Garcia: Nothing Done, Then a Return

On March 15, 2025, the government deported Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, despite a 2019 immigration-court order barring his removal there.¹³ The government acknowledged to the Supreme Court that the removal was illegal, and the Court's own order describes him as "improperly sent to El Salvador".¹³ The government called the removal an administrative error and argued that his return would threaten public safety because he was an MS-13 member; Abrego Garcia denied gang membership.¹³

The administration's strongest legal defense was that courts must respect executive authority over foreign affairs and cannot dictate another country's actions.¹³ On April 10, the Supreme Court gave it part of what it asked: the district judge's deadline no longer applied, and she had to clarify the command to effectuate a return.¹³ But the Court, with no noted dissent, upheld the duty to facilitate his release.¹³

Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949 (application to vacate)¹³

The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador

On April 15, Judge Paula Xinis found the government had done nothing to help secure his release from Salvadoran custody.¹⁶

Abrego Garcia v. Noem, No. 8:25-cv-00951-PX (ECF 79)¹⁶

the record reflects that Defendants have done nothing at all

Xinis rejected the government's claim that it needed only to remove domestic obstacles to his return: in the past, the government had used embassies, travel documents, and even a government plane to retrieve wrongly removed people.¹⁶ Deference in foreign affairs did not excuse doing nothing, and she ordered expedited discovery into compliance.¹⁶ She identified a risk of grave injury from his continued detention in CECOT, the Salvadoran prison, and allowed inquiry into who controlled that confinement.¹⁶ Citing AP reporting, she noted a $6 million U.S. payment to house detainees pending U.S. decisions about their long-term disposition.¹⁶

The government brought Abrego Garcia back on June 6, 2025, after securing a federal indictment in Tennessee.¹⁷ On May 22, 2026, a federal judge in Tennessee dismissed both charges, finding that the government had failed to rebut a presumption of vindictive prosecution; the government appealed on June 22.¹⁸¹⁹ ABC News reported on October 6, 2026, that the administration was still seeking to deport him to a third country.²⁰

In a later case the administration defeated a request for emergency relief: on September 15, 2025, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan denied it to five people the government had sent to Ghana, although immigration judges had granted them fear-based protection against removal to their home countries, ruling that the plaintiffs had not established jurisdiction and that she could not order the U.S. government to direct Ghana's actions; she did not decide the merits, and wrote that the government's actions appeared to be "part of a pattern and widespread effort to evade the government’s legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly".²¹ The government defended the Ghana removals as lawful under an agreement containing assurances against torture or onward transfer to torture.²¹ Chutkan recounted K.S.'s declaration that he had already been sent to The Gambia and was in hiding; government lawyers acknowledged that Ghana appeared to be violating its assurances.²¹ The Supreme Court stayed a Massachusetts judge's injunction requiring notice and a chance to raise a fear of torture before any third-country removal, and on September 29, 2026, it also stayed the February judgment against the Department of Homeland Security's third-country removal policy and granted review for December argument.²²²³²⁴ On October 6, 2026, Judge John Hinderaker ruled that the department violated Ahmed Soliman's due process by sending him to Equatorial Guinea without notice or a chance to raise fear of removal there, recounted unrebutted evidence of beatings and incommunicado detention, and ordered officials to facilitate his release and return.²⁵²⁶

Trump's Goal and His Administration's Public Response

Trump stated the goal himself on NBC's Meet the Press on May 4, 2025, the interview in which he blamed the courts: he had been elected to remove dangerous people, and giving everyone due process would mean "a million or 2 million or 3 million trials".⁵ Asked whether everyone in the country, citizens and non-citizens, deserved due process, he said he did not know.⁵ When the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked whether he needed to uphold the Constitution as president, he answered "I don’t know", then said his lawyers would follow the Supreme Court while disputing her interpretation of its ruling.⁵ He also expressed respect for the Supreme Court.⁵

On Abrego Garcia, Trump directly defended the administration's response: he denied defying the Supreme Court, praised Attorney General Pam Bondi, and said he could ask for Abrego Garcia's return if the attorney general instructed him that doing so was legal, while saying El Salvador's leader would decide whether to return him.⁵ Plaintiffs in J.G.G. v. Trump, a separate deportation case, stated in a court filing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio re-tweeted Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's post mocking a federal order against deportation flights: "Oopsie… Too late".²⁷²⁸

No figure in these court records shows whether the deportation program met Trump's public-safety goal.¹³⁵ Oscar's case tests the dangerous-people rationale: Blackwell recounted that he had no criminal history warranting mandatory custody.¹

What Trump Must Answer For

Article II says the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" and provides impeachment and removal for high crimes and misdemeanors.²⁹

Congress has used the duty to execute the law in impeachment charges before: against Andrew Johnson over the disputed Tenure of Office Act and in the House Judiciary Committee's 1974 abuse-of-power article against Nixon.³⁰³¹ The Senate acquitted Johnson, 35 votes for guilt and 19 against, one vote short of two-thirds.³⁰

Repeatedly breaking orders that protect people from detention and removal is the opposite of faithful execution.²⁹⁶ By February 26, one judge had documented 210 violated orders in 143 cases.² Oscar was held thirteen days after winning his release.² Fernando's lawyer paid for his flight home from a prohibited transfer.⁴ That is the charge against Trump: the administration carrying out his policy treated court-ordered protections as obstacles, while he publicly complained that the courts stood in its way.⁵⁶⁴