Civil contempt is a real possibility, and criminal contempt may not be off the table.
to a court on Tuesday, acknowledging that it repeatedly made a “material mistaken statement of fact” while defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of noncitizens. Since August, lawyers at the U.
S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had insisted that ICE was complying with anwhen it abducted and detained migrants as they left immigration hearings. Now the DOJ admitted that this policy “does not and has never applied” to immigration courts—meaning that its core defense of the agents’ conduct had been fabricated all along. On this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the Justice Department’s latest catastrophe and its potentially massive impact on ICE’s authority to continue its courthouse arrests. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity., frequently without consequences for any lawyer who admits to error. And one of the reasons we keep hitting this theme, I think, is because the DOJ has historically at least pretended to behave as though it feels a commitment to tell the truth as a representative of the American people. And when that falls away—as it clearly has—judges don’t know how to find the truth. That leads us to this week’s jaw-dropper.Mark Joseph Stern: Really bad! This admission arose from a case challenging ICE’s courthouse arrests specifically in New York City. We’ve all seen the appalling videos of masked agents ambushing and abducting these migrants in the halls of New York’s immigration court as they’re leaving a hearing. Immigration advocates challenge ICE’s policy governing these arrests, arguing, among other things, that it was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The DOJ has long claimed that the policy was not arbitrary but carefully laid out in a May 2025 email about “Courthouse Arrest Guidance and Case Adjudication.” It claimed that ICE agents were carefully following this “reasoned” guidance when arresting noncitizens at immigration court. And U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel sided with the department on these grounds, holding that the courthouse arrests were not unlawfully arbitrary.to Castel that this alleged guidance about ICE courthouse arrests had never actually existed. It turns out that the Justice Department has been falsely describing a policy that governs arrests atcourthouses, and that policy explicitly excludes immigration courts. As far as anyone can tell, ICE does not even have clearly articulated procedures governing these ambush-arrests at immigration court! Agents don’t appear to be following any known guidance or constraints when they carry them out. So the department had to withdraw large portions of four different briefs filed in this case, retract multiple statements made at oral arguments, and ask Castel to correctrepeating this error. It fully blamed ICE for this screwup, by the way, and stated unequivocally that “this regrettable error” had occurred because ICE counsel repeatedly gave DOJ lawyers false information. The DOJ letter is shocking on its face. But let’s be clear: This is not, by any means, the first time we’ve seen Trump’s Justice Department throw ICE under the bus. In Minnesota, weof DOJ lawyers telling judges that it was ICE’s fault that the government had failed to comply with court decisions ordering the release of noncitizens who had been illegally detained. I think part of the reason this feels so big and momentous is not only because the lie itself was so egregious and so long-running—and even now sweeps in the judge—but also because it could actually reverse the outcome of the case itself.declaring that the “implications of this development are far-reaching” because the department had “withdrawn” its “primary defense to Plaintiffs’ claim that the Immigration Court Arrest Policy is arbitrary and capricious.” They are correct. Remember, the government’s chief argument in favor of these arrests was that they were conducted in accordance with a reasoned policy bolstered by careful analysis and legitimate justifications. Castel endorsed that position when upholding the policy. But the policy never existed in the first place! The DOJ was pointing to different guidance that, by its own terms, didThere are two huge implications that flow from this concession. The first is that ICE’s immigration court arrests were unlawfully arbitrary and capricious all along, because they were never justified with facts or law and adhered to no clear standards. It seems evident at this point that these arrests were haphazard ambushes that followed no consistent rules—ICE just unleashed its agents, with no apparent limits, to go hunt down immigrants leaving their hearings. That’s a quintessential example of an agency action that’s unlawfully arbitrary and capricious.Then, of course, there’s the problem of ICE lying about its policy to the Justice Department, and the Justice Department lying about that to the court in turn. An agency’s justifications for its actions can’t be post hoc or pretextual. And the DOJ has now basically admitted that any defense ICE devises of these arrests will be made up after the fact, making them illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act. Any justificationwill just be an attempt to cover up the reality that these arrests were being done without any known agency guidance in the first place.Two notes: First, I always have to rush in and say that there are real people who were materially harmed here. They were going to court for hearings they had to attend, then getting scooped up under a pretext that itself turned out to be a lie. The stakes for actual people trying to comply with the law could not be higher. Second, we have to spell out the possible consequences here, since for DOJ lawyers it seems that lying without regret or remorse is clearly not its own punishment anymore. Is anyone ever going to face consequences for this? Because this filing reads to me like the lawyers saying:. It’s finger-pointing and shirking responsibility. But a lot of judges have hit the absolute outer boundaries of their tolerance for this.Quite possibly yes—in part because the DOJ desperately wants to shirk responsibility and push it onto ICE. And Castel appears interested in some accountability. On Thursday, he issued a highly unusualin light of the department’s confession. It requires the government to preserve “all communications” in this case, specifically that with the “assigned ICE counsel” who repeatedly gave false information to the DOJ.That’s a pretty clear sign that Castel wants to investigate this debacle and hold those behind it responsible. He wants to see proof that the DOJ was given inaccurate information by ICE before he lets its lawyers off the hook. And he wants to figure out exactly which ICE lawyer allegedly misled the department so egregiously. We don’t yet know the name of that lawyer, but I suspect we will soon. And that person may be the next government lawyer to face serious consequences for misrepresentations to a court.I think civil contempt is a real possibility, and criminal contempt may not be off the table. This lie sat at the heart of the case, and Castel relied on it to deny relief while people were being hunted down outside their court hearings by masked agents acting pursuant to no obvious authority. That’s the kind of total breakdown that makes a court look terrible and, as we’ve seen, carries heinous real-world consequences. So, in this instance, because of these unique and idiosyncratic facts, it really is quite possible that somebody’s head is going to
Donald-Trump Department-Of-Justice Immigration Judiciary Slate-Plus
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Trump DOJ investigating possible race discrimination at UC San Diego, Stanford medical schoolsThe Trump administration said it was investigating alleged racial discrimination in admissions to medical schools at UC San Diego, Stanford and Ohio State University.
Read more »
DOJ to investigate California over housing of trans inmates at women's prisonsThe Trump administration said it had sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom informing him of a federal investigation into two state women's prisons to determine 'if those prisons unconstitutionally provided housing and preferential treatment to biological male prisoners.
Read more »
A Minneapolis woman recounts death of Alex Pretti as lawyers eye a class action lawsuitA Minneapolis woman who confronted federal immigration officers alongside Alex Pretti in January is speaking out about alleged excessive force during the enforcement surge in Minnesota.
Read more »
Epstein's Lawyer and Accountant Claim Ignorance of Crimes, Fueling Questions on DOJ ProbeJeffrey Epstein's lawyer and accountant testified to the House Oversight Committee, stating they were unaware of his sex trafficking crimes despite working closely with him for years. Their claims raise concerns about the depth of the Justice Department's investigation and the extent of Epstein's network.
Read more »
A Minneapolis woman recounts death of Alex Pretti as lawyers eye a class action lawsuitMINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minneapolis woman who confronted federal immigration officers alongside Alex Pretti in January was among a group of potential litigants
Read more »
DOJ investigating race in admissions to UC San Diego's medical school, 2 othersThe Trump administration has opened investigations into how race is considered in admissions at UC San Diego's medical school and two others.
Read more »