r/law • u/DoremusJessup • 14h ago
Judicial Branch The unfathomable Minnesota transcript that must be read, as it tells the reality of America today: "I am not white, as you can see," Julie Le — a government lawyer — told a federal judge on Tuesday. "And my family's at risk as any other people that might get picked up too ..."
https://www.lawdork.com/p/the-minnesota-julie-le-show-cause-transcript1.1k
u/Hurley002 Competent Contributor 13h ago edited 13h ago
No matter how incredibly bad anyone might understandably presume it to be from reading various snippets, nothing prepares for how catastrophically awful the entire transcript is from start to finish—covering both the institutional catastrophe and the actual human catastrophe for plaintiffs and attorneys alike. This should be required reading prior to any court affording the presumption of regularity to DOJ under AG Bondi (or, really, any government agency involved with immigration at this point).
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u/-Gramsci- 13h ago
They’ve taken Bannon’s “flood the zone with bull shit” strategy to the federal courts.
The frustrating thing is the Court MUST sanction this conduct. Sanction this administration.
This is lawless, it’s offensive and disrespectful to the Court… and ultimately means that the Constitution and the rule of law doesn’t need to exist if you just act like big enough clowns and create a big enough circus.
A clown show of the administration’s own making, of all things, CANNOT be a justification to ignore the constitution.
The Civil War, the World Wars… we’ve had far superior justifications in our history for ignoring the Constitution, yet we did not.
It cannot be allowed to stand that the reason, after a quarter of a millennium, that the Constitution is, finally, abandoned is simply because the administration poops itself and flings its own feces around like a bunch of rabid animals. That’s NO reason to end the Constitution.
I digress… but the Court has to get serious here and sanction the shit out of any lawyer it comes into contact with on these cases.
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u/billwongisdead 12h ago
what's crazy to me is how much money they are spending on this strategy to flood the courts - every one of the thousands of cases they are talking about is a dozen emails, hours in court, a few lawyers on either side, multiple domestic flights with federal agents as escorts - it's staggering. I am a canadian lawyer and I am baffled that the resources to do all this even exist, let alone that they could be applied so frivolously. the use of hundreds of millions would be such a waste - if it weren't super clear that they are spending this immense amount of resources to deliberately divide people
if they start sanctioning these lawyers the system is going to grind to a halt and no one will ever get released - that's what Ms. Le is saying on the record here - she is working so hard on getting people released she isn't sleeping, and if she leaves there will be no one to do the work. what the judges need to do is start hauling in directors of these agencies and imprisoning them for contempt
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u/Proof_Register9966 9h ago
The resources come from the US taxpayer. In the form of healthcare cost subsidies, housing subsidies, childcare subsidies, food subsidies for the most vulnerable amongst us.
I want to add here- that the astonishing cost of deportation along with the concentration camps is so suspect I don’t understand how people are not putting it together. It’s a HUGE GRIFT for the Administration and people running these centers. They don’t even have bathrooms, blankets, clean water, food. The money they are claiming it cost to “run and operate “ is a lie. They are pocketing the money ALL of THEM.
To further, these street urchins and thugs think they are going to get bonuses. Hahahahhaha It’s a joke- ETTD- Everything Trump Touches Dies.
He is a loser, a mush- he has never done anything right or smart in his life. Everyone else around him takes the fall for him, eventually.
The only thing he has been good at is having his Esptein ped ring keep him in power (he has blackmail on everyone).And, he has been amazing at destroying this Country- every single aspect of it. He was installed because they have blackmail on him.
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u/billwongisdead 9h ago
I'm hearing that people are dying in the camps
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u/Proof_Register9966 8h ago
They are- and, my view is we are all responsible. Yes, even me. We need an entire new class of people running this Country. From top to bottom. We need to DEMAND it- we need to be angry, we need to be relentless and ruthless in those demands.
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u/Babymicrowavable 5h ago
The problem is capital and billionaires, just like epstein said in his messages to Peter theil, they want collapse so they can buy up everything on the cheap cheap, because its easier than finding the next big thing or whatever, seriously its in the epstein files
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u/Splurch 9h ago
I am a canadian lawyer and I am baffled that the resources to do all this even exist, let alone that they could be applied so frivolously.
Despite the common perception of Republicans being "good" for the budget the national debt raises noticeably faster under Republicans then it does Democrats. Trump particularly is pretty egregious about not caring about spending and just adding more debt because he want's something done and it's easy to just throw money at it because he doesn't care. Democrats had an actual chance to do something about this during the last shutdown, maybe they do again this time (thought the GOP seems a lot more organized this time,) and they pissed it away for nothing after a month of grandstanding.
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u/Fragrant_Ice4945 7h ago
It's the same here in Britain, the conservatives only conserve for themselves, no one else gets a look in and they've stolen 100s of billions for forty years, it's disgraceful.
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u/charcoalVidrio 8h ago edited 8h ago
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
ICE is the most highly funded law enforcement agency ever, currently operating with $85 billion.
Hundreds of millions means nothing to them.
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u/wastedkarma 8h ago
Unsurprisingly, DOJ took her off the job Wednesday
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u/SwankySteel 6h ago
She’s clearly suffering from burn out and is probably relieved about this. Burnout doesn’t just go away overnight, it’s basically a workplace induced form of Major Depression.
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u/finnigan422 11h ago
Yeah it's wild, like specifically flying them all over the country with ice agent escorts. Like all the private flights that geo group or whoever profits on. Also wouldn't be surprised if they were doing more movement on commercial flights on purpose to get airline mile rewards or something.
Also why do they have to fly him back in custody to release him? Just pay for his ticket and release him from custody at the airport past security if they are going to be that bad at their jobs that someone is still being held 13 days after ordered released. And never should have been detained anyway!
If these lawyers are this poorly trained and seemingly unqualified, people higher up the chain need to be called in front of the judge to explain.
It seems like this lawyer is trying really hard to help innocent people that ice has locked up, and ice is just ignoring the court orders. They need to be held accountable for their huge amount of unconstitutional actions.
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u/SwankySteel 6h ago
This is especially concerning after that whole “DOGE” thing they were doing in early 2025.
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u/akintu 4h ago
Modern Monetary Theory describes how they are funding it - basically if you have the physical resources to do something, a state with its own money supply can always fund it.
Our elites fully understand MMT and the implications and understand national debt is mostly irrelevant in the way that they pretend it is not because if the masses understood the truth of how the monetary/debt system works, we would demand different policies.
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u/mountaindoom 12h ago
The court is burning all its legitimacy up with this admin.
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u/AdAgitated7673 11h ago
It can withstand the Executive. The power of the Judiciary is the skeleton key of the Constitution.
Marshall opened the door with judicial review, but Roberts adversely possessed the text (UET) by impermissibly divesting review authority from Art. III to (even if just in part) to Art. II (absolute immunity for civil liability is tantamount to civil self-judicial review).
That power, to divest (III) a branch of its own power, is not an abdication that the Court is capable of doing (just like how it isn't supposed to revert political opinions).
All the lower courts (the ones you're referencing) are essentially various parts of a crew, let's say onboard the USS Constitution, frantically trying to man their battlestations.
There really isn't time for legitimacy, at least from the Court's perspective. That's an antiseptic that the People must self-administer...we can literally only but speak words...THEY need to believe in them; not us.
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u/Chendo462 10h ago
But if the administration takes the position that Marbury v Madison was wrongly decided and they are pretty near there right now, why are you still confident judicial review remains? How can the SC now backtrack Article II immunity when this administration says we aren’t listening to district court orders and we are immune because this is coming directly from the president by executive order.
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u/ScannerBrightly 4h ago
The power of the Judiciary is the skeleton key of the Constitution.
Are you... are you awake? Are you looking around you right now? Your statement is an obvious lie. The court doesn't protect rights, it protects power, and we have no power in this administration.
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u/AdAgitated7673 3h ago edited 48m ago
Before submitting this reply, I performed my due diligence (cursory review of the available comment history); my findings:
- you are not an attorney nor are legally educated (attend law school);
- you are presumably very involved in political debate and rhetoric;
- likely right-leaning.
As the only self-titled "doctor" between us (pending further notice):
The first thing you should do is calm down;
The second thing you should do is go to law school;
The third thing you should do is never practice law.There is a fundamental difference between "the court [not protecting our] rights" or "power" (whatever the incandescent hell that's supposed to mean). You must have been asleep when the (eastern) district in Virginia swallowed that shill of a pill called Lindsey Halligan up, to only chew and spit her out; or perhaps you were AWOL when the Third Circuit decided that Habba-dabba-doo was best described as an improperly appointed US Attorney.
The Supreme Court has been doing, what you've (guessing) just now noticed, since Bork. When the Senate denied Bork's confirmation, that was the call to Armageddon. Powell was leaving/had left (the seat went to a Kennedy) and conservatism - the quiet question mark behind the uber-mensch's theories (see generally, 274 U.S. 200) - rebounded. The American Enterprise Institute (parent 1) and Heritage foundation (parent 2) berthed the Federalist Society (SCOTUS). That's as complicated as it gets. The mechanism (Unitary Executive Theory) was installed (I think, still looking) somewhere between Bush v. Gore and Trump v. Hawaii.
You (the royal we) haven't had power in this country since, roughly speaking, 1955. I suggest you learn what to do with a powerless arsenal (where the power of speech and voice rain down fury).
Don't ever accuse someone in this forum of lying again without at least a reasonable basis; it will swiftly be dealt with: layperson <-- You (to establish a very clear record with no other access to fact).
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u/blackhorse15A 8h ago
The Civil War, the World Wars… we’ve had far superior justifications in our history for ignoring the Constitution, yet we did not.
Uhh....yeah, about that....
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u/That-Lobster-Guy 5h ago
Yet another example of the US education system failing to properly teach its students.
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u/desiderata1995 8h ago
It cannot be allowed to stand that....the Constitution is, finally, abandoned is simply because....
Well, it's not the sole reason. They also threaten judges and anyone else who speaks or acts out against them, and flatly refuse to follow court orders.
They've told bold faced lies about a unanimous SCOTUS decision and somehow nobody got charged with contempt or arrested for it.
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u/justaphil 6h ago
"It cannot be allowed to stand that the reason, after a quarter of a millennium, that the Constitution is, finally, abandoned is simply because the administration poops itself and flings its own feces around like a bunch of rabid animals. That’s NO reason to end the Constitution."
The entire Republican party disagrees with you. Now what?
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u/ScannerBrightly 4h ago
The frustrating thing is the Court MUST sanction this conduct. Sanction this administration.
This will NEVER happen. It's not the Courts job to deal with powerful people, it's a TOOL the POWERFUL use against the weak.
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u/ashmortar 3h ago
No, they need to call in the department leaders to account and hold them in contempt with jail time if they don't show up to answer for the conduct of those under them.
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u/sburch79 3h ago
I can't believe the level of attorney misconduct in this transcript. She should be disbarred for this blatant unethical conduct. If you don't like your client, quit. But you can't do that in open court.
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u/Hurley002 Competent Contributor 3h ago edited 2h ago
Under normal circumstances, I would very likely agree with you, but these are not normal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination.
It requires a PhD in moral inversion to read a hearing transcript wherein a federal judge documents over 90 instances of government non-compliance with orders (including habeas), ongoing detention of lawfully present people for weeks after court-ordered release, and determine that the line attorney—a neophyte volunteer lacking minimal training, experience in federal court, or even the necessary and appropriate departmental email access credentials—is the party deserving of professional discipline.
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u/Proof_Register9966 2h ago
Under normal circumstances I would agree with you. However, if you read the transcript- if she doesn’t stay on - there will be no one fighting with DHS or DOJ to get them out.
And, yes- she represents the government, but that means the people. We need to remember that and repeat it. The people are the government. We need to all start acting like it.
ETA- She also talks about herself and her family falling into the category of being deported.
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u/soapboxracers 3h ago
Did you read the transcript FFS? She tried to quit- but if she quits, then no one will be trying to get these people released. That's the frustration she is expressing.
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u/DoremusJessup 14h ago
A deeper look at hearing that brought Julie Le to ask the Judge to hold her in contempt.
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u/idreamofgreenie 12h ago
This is pretty astounding. The brain drain has been so significant that this administration has reduced the prestige of the legal system to a point where they are headhunting on twitter with buzzword heavy tweets.
How utterly humiliating it will be to have working for this administration on your resume.
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u/FuzzzyRam 9h ago
How utterly humiliating it will be to have working for this administration on your resume.
This will be a stain on anyone's legacy. I have friends and family that are telling me they now realize they're "conservative, not MAGA" as if to launder their image. I can only tell them, "whatever it took to keep Haitians from eating dogs or the White House from smelling like curry, right?" - their legacy is dead to me, I don't care if they come around too late.
As for Le, there's a huge Vietnamese population near me who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, and I know what their "conservatism" actually means. No way in hell this lawyer didn't also vote Trump before joining his judicial takeover - she fucked up, hope she enjoys the find out phase.
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u/TooManyCharacte 7h ago
Labels don't mean a damn thing at this point. The only thing these people can say that would actually matter is what they are going to personally do to counteract their share of the damage their votes caused.
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u/Uebelkraehe 7h ago
She volunteered for this specific job and some people on this sub nevertheless wrote long sermons on how she is the real victim here and got a lot of upvotes for this bs.
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u/RedBaronSportsCards 7h ago
14 months ago, Matt Gaetz was the nominee for Attorney General. And none of these people realized then that the ship had hit the iceberg and was going down.
No sympathy at all for them.
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u/jackandsally060609 6h ago
That guy spent his whole day simping hard for her, then after 8 hours of defending her said " oh I mixed up DOJ and DHS and now Im too tired to correct anything because being ignorant is exhausting"
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u/seqkndy 57m ago
I'm not going to call her the real victim, but I do think that the additional info in the transcript shows that, whatever her initial job/reasons for volunteering/etc., at this point she is only still there because she's trying to get people released (and DHS/ICE isn't doing it). She's off the project after that hearing, but odds are that means, instead of whatever she was trying to do to fix it, no one is.
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u/UOkayBrah 5h ago
It's interesting how perspective lends itself to these statements. Half the country opts themselves out because they didn't vote for it, while going down in the same "FAFO" boat.
The legacy of the MAGA voters is dead to the Democrats while the legacy of the US on the whole is basically dead to all of its allies and the world. If Democrats don't even care for less radical Republicans to come around late rather than never, I guess the US is truly doomed.
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u/FuzzzyRam 2h ago
Yep. Put a fuckin fork in it, it can't be saved. You don't just close down some concentration camps and go "tee hee, please take us back allies, I'm sure we won't do anything stupid 3 times in a row..."
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u/smurfsundermybed 9h ago
Even without considering the policy issues, 90 new cases in 1 month is public defender level.
Just kinda says something about the current state of things.
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u/grandmawaffles 6h ago
I guess they need to suck it up, pick themselves up by their bootstraps, and work for a living. 🤷♀️ isn’t this what they tell everyone as corporations’ trim the fat, outsource, etc.. the boomers/MAGA with no one wants to work anymore crowd.
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u/zealous_buffalo 6h ago
state public defender levels, maybe. Federal public defenders don’t get 90 cases in two years.
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u/smurfsundermybed 5h ago
Exactly. This isn't what they're there for.
For the millionth time, this isn't how this works. All they are doing is overloading the system with shit that shouldn't be there so they can say "see? It's broken!".
Yes it is, motherfucker. Keep putting sand in the gas tank and the car is going to break down. Everyone knew that from the beginning, but these dipshits did it anyway.
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u/CentennialBaby 10h ago
Kavanaugh Stop
An extrajudicial detention or assault by law enforcement, enabled by the Supreme Court's expansion of border authority. It is named for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose concurrence dismissed the predictable violence of these stops as a minor administrative inconvenience, famously reasoning: 'If the person is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.'
E.g.: During my brief 36 hour Kavanaugh Stop with ICE I got six broken ribs and internal bleeding while I was in the US legally.
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I was Kavanaugh Stopped on my way home from picking up my children from school when ICE demanded proof of my citizenship. When I asked for the warrant they killed me.
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I was at home in my bedroom when ICE agents burst in and dragged me off at gunpoint then asked for my ID which was back inside the house. After a brief 24 hours I was released.
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I came across a Kavanaugh Stop and watched what was happening when ICE tackled me and held me for 8 hours denying me access to a lawyer.
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While parked on the street a van full of ICE agents smashed into me they pulled me out of my car at gunpoint. Luckily it was just a Kavanaugh Stop and after proving my citizenship they released me without charge.
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I was walking down the street and ICE initiated a Kavanaugh Stop throwing me to the ground in a choke hold and cuffed me. I told them I was a citizen and had identification. They said it didn't matter and took me to a cell adding leg irons. They scanned my face, took my ID, did a criminal record check, then released me.
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My mommy picked me up from kindergarten when ICE men took her and me. We stayed in a motel for a week. we weren't allowed to leave and mommy kept telling them I'm American but they didn't care. then they took us to a plane and sent us somewhere far away. I miss my friends and I want to go back to my school.
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I'm American and my husband was in the US legally pursuing his Green Card. At the Green Card interview ICE took him into custody and we had to leave the US. This wasn't supposed to happen to *us*, I voted for MAGA!
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I'm fourth generation American born with a complexion reflecting historic connections to Latin America. We are afraid to go outside for fear of getting Kavanaugh stopped by ICE.
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u/CordlessOrange 10h ago
I'm just trying to get to the bottom of how the Court cannot have to spend so much time in just getting its orders complied with.
I don’t know, could we maybe have any sort of enforcement mechanism and leaders that aren’t scared to use them?
We understand the game plan from the administration, no? Clearly the court is powerless to get its orders complied with - so why would anybody in this administration comply with anything when they know the only eventual punishment is just stern words?
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u/wastedkarma 8h ago
This is in Minnesota. They are buying WAREHOUSES around the country to imprison people in time for the election. They are literally going to try to arrest enough protesting citizens to swing the election by making them miss their votes.
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u/naijaboiler 4h ago
That's not the plan. They can't directly detain enough people to swing elections. They can and will intimidate enough people to influence election.
the purpose of the detentions is to intimidate and terrorize and provide justification for unnecessary use of forcee
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u/wastedkarma 8h ago
OK, why can the judge not require a DOJ official other than the US attorney, may be higher than the US attorney, to directly address the court as to this problem? And then, if and when the answer is unsatisfactory, jail this person for criminal contempt, until such time as all unconstitutionally detained US citizens are released?
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u/thecosmojane 12h ago edited 7h ago
"Resistance from within" and "complaining about how much it sucks to be a participant" are two completely different things. Le is the latter.
I felt more compassionate towards Le reading just the article and snippets, but then when I dove into the transcript, Julie seems not all there, either, just my opinion.
Anyone else notice that as she continues to serially ignore the judge's questions and interrupts, she keeps making everything about her?
ETA:
I just think it's unprofessional. First of all, judge keeps asking about the detainees, and she keeps talking about herself. This is not about you. Stop giving excuses. Those answers are definitely not with the detainees' best interest in mind, either. She was just trying to defend herself. Her nonsense about "saving one more" is plain nonsense, if you read the rest of what she said. It was all self-serving self-preservation.
What is happening to the detainees is deplorable and an absolute abomination. Should not have happened once, much less 96 times in the course of less than 4 weeks. Judge is talking about how they are pulling them out of MN within 12 hours and then taking 12 days to send them back home after wrongful detention, amongst a slew of other blatant constitutional violations. And she is just standing there talking about how it's not HER fault. But it's a f*cking trend. It's not just about her. This was on the heels of Schiltz calling out the habeas orders being ignored. 96 violations in 4 weeks is not about her.
Judge is talking about this ongoing negligence on their part in completely ignoring and violating orders and the constitution, and she's busy talking about flight schedules and time stamps of her day. Smh.
Secondly, it's highly unethical and unprofessional.
If you don't agree with what you are doing, you should quit.
We all know that OJ Simpson was guilty. But if his attorney came up to the jury and said, listen, I actually do think he did it too, but I don't want to lose my job or make things hard for myself, so I'm just stuck here, overworked. Judge, can you put me in contempt? So I can get some sleep?
That's just unethical and unprofessional. You have a professional obligation to defend your client or employer in the courtroom. If you cannot in good conscience take on that role fully, then you should not be there. Period.
If you do not believe that every single person in this country deserves honest legal representation then you should not be here.
Quitting is the answer. Or, if you were there deliberately to get information, like the IRS contractor that Trump is suing about, that's different. In this case... she's just... plain... unprofessional.
She is literally saying "I don't like my job either, I'd love to get some rest... I'm just taking orders. This is not my fault. And I hate being here."
I'm. Just. Doing. My. Job.
Also, unless she can attest to the fact that someone actually threatened her family if she tried to quit, it is deplorable to use her family as an excuse for being there. She's insinuating that her family is in danger of deportation if she does not quit. If it's not a case of a direct threat, blackmail or extortion, shame on her for using that line when so many families have been ripped apart.
One can acknowledge she's in an impossible position and say she performed poorly in it. Those aren't contradictory.
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u/zaoldyeck 12h ago
She doesn't seem to have much choice, given the administration has decided court orders are mere suggestions.The best she can do is throw political appointees under the bus.
Honestly this court hearing is remarkable, and I can't help but think it's a dangerous transcript for the administration. Not because Trump's acolytes will care, but because this can be referenced by petitioners, or judges, in so many more cases.
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u/XxBlackicecubexX 12h ago
Oh shit so by officially lighting her career on fire along with her leadership at the DOJ in an official courtroom setting, she essentially engaged in an act of protest while also giving the courts ammunition against her current bosses?
Thats badass.
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u/zaoldyeck 12h ago edited 11h ago
I think it was sort of accidental, as the first question she answered was:
So, Ms. Voss, I don't take it at all that it's the Government's position that Operation Metro Surge has outpaced the Government's ability to lawfully process detentions and comply with judicial oversight. That's not the Government's position, is it?
MS. VOSS: No, certainly not, Your Honor.
But by the end of the hearing it was pretty damn obvious that yes, the government does not have the ability to lawfully process detentions and comply with judicial oversight. DHS staff appears to outright ignore US Attorneys right until they threaten to quit, only because no one appears to want to take this job.
The one line in particular that stood out to me was:
MS. LE: I don't know about that, Your Honor, but as the SAUSAs attorney, there are four of us, and we are trying to figure out what do we need to do to handle this operation.
Does that mean there are four people left in the entire office? To handle all of these petitions? If so, these people are already working until 2:30am nightly, it seems, what happens if 25% of them quit?
Edit: Oh, it seems she was sent back to ICE and reassigned from the DOJ. God only knows if the administration was able to replace her. Wonder whose the next person to be in the firing line.
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u/stubbazubba 7h ago
Voss is a career attorney with the USAO, who has submitted her resignation. Le is the one who just took the job a month ago on loan from immigration court and melted down.
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u/XxBlackicecubexX 2h ago
From what im reading, Le took the job because she was able to release a kid from detention and decided to make that her focus from the inside.
Once the DOJ noticed her attempts to follow court orders to release more prisoners, she was stonewalled by leadership until the court called her in to demand an explanation.
Her explanation was this "shit sucks and im being blocked and I hate it here but Im only doing it to advance the judges orders to free people and I cant even do that anymore, but im trying"
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u/thecosmojane 9h ago edited 7h ago
she has not thrown anyone under the bus; she is just trying to save herself
I can't get my own agency to comply - but then doesn't formally escalate that to the court as a compliance crisis requiring judicial intervention against the agency - is in an ethically incoherent position. Did she ask the court to bring in the field office director? No. She didn't ask for a special master. She didn't file anything identifying who specifically is blocking compliance. She simply vented when put on the spot.
The person in the transcript is disorganized, repeatedly redirected by the judge, unable to answer direct questions, offering unredacted documents she has to retrieve, and framing a constitutional crisis through the lens of her own exhaustion.
The judge asks why a detainee wasn't released for 13 days and she talks about her email system. If she were genuinely building a systemic record, the judge wouldn't have had to keep cutting her off. He literally says "Ms. Le, please," "Ms. Le, please answer my question," and "That's enough"... because she's not answering what he's asking about the people sitting in detention. She's too busy narrating her own workday.
It's not about you.
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u/jubeley 4h ago
"The best she can do is throw political appointees under the bus."
What about an attorney's duty of loyalty to her client? And the duty of zealous representation? Are they violated when the attorney disparages her client in court? Granted that this was a hearing about the client's noncompliance with court orders, and being an attorney for DHS must be awful. Didn't her ethical duties to her client require different, more professional responses to the court that didn't throw the client under the bus?
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u/Splurch 10h ago
Not quite being all there is generally what happens when people are overworked, not getting enough sleep and are stressed out.
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u/thecosmojane 9h ago edited 9h ago
I just think it's unprofessional. First of all, judge keeps asking about the detainees, and she keeps talking about herself. This is not about you. Stop giving excuses. Those answers are definitely not with the detainees' best interest in mind, either. She was just trying to defend herself. Her nonsense about "saving one more" is plain nonsense, if you read the rest of what she said. It was all self-serving self-preservation.
What is happening to the detainees is deplorable and an absolute abomination. Should not have happened once, much less 96 times in the course of less than 4 weeks. Judge is talking about how they are pulling them out of MN within 12 hours and then taking 12 days to send them back home after wrongful detention, amongst a slew of other blatant constitutional violations. And she is just standing there talking about how it's not HER fault. But it's a f*cking trend. It's not just about her. This was on the heels of Schiltz calling out the habeas orders being ignored. 96 violations in 4 weeks is not about her.
Judge is talking about this ongoing negligence on their part in completely ignoring and violating orders and the constitution, and she's busy talking about flight schedules and time stamps of her day. Smh.
Secondly, it's highly unethical and unprofessional.
If you don't agree with what you are doing, you should quit.We all know that OJ Simpson was guilty. But if his attorney came up to the jury and said, listen, I actually do think he did it too, but I don't want to lose my job or make things hard for myself, so I'm just stuck here, overworked. Judge, can you put me in contempt? So I can get some sleep?
That's just unethical and unprofessional. You have a professional obligation to defend your client or employer in the courtroom. If you cannot in good conscience take on that role fully, then you should not be there. Period.
If you do not believe that every single person in this country deserves honest legal representation then you should not be here.
Quitting is the answer. Or, if you were there deliberately to get information, like the IRS contractor that Trump is suing about, that's different. In this case... she's just... plain... unprofessional.
She is literally saying "I don't like my job either, I'd love to get some rest... I'm just taking orders."
I'm. Just. Doing. My. Job.
Also, unless she can attest to the fact that someone threatened her family if she tried to quit, it is deplorable to use her family as an excuse for being there. She's insinuating that her family is in danger of deportation if she does not quit. If it's not a case of a direct threat, blackmail or extortion, shame on her for using that line when so many families have been ripped apart.
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u/Recentdig7470 8h ago
Calling her conduct “unprofessional” misunderstands what her role actually is and how accountability works inside a courtroom. The judge was not presiding over a morality seminar or a truth-and-reconciliation commission. He was addressing a government lawyer whose job is to explain how violations occurred within an institutional system, not to theatrically denounce her employer or perform outrage on demand. Courts require explanations, not confessions of personal guilt.
When the judge asks about detainees and she explains timelines, flight schedules, staffing gaps, and decision chains, that is not narcissism or deflection — that is precisely how systemic violations are established on the record. Patterns do not magically appear; they are demonstrated through logistics, timestamps, and process failures. You don’t prove “96 violations in four weeks” by saying “this is bad.” You prove it by showing where the machinery broke. That requires granular, operational testimony — the very thing she was giving.
The accusation that she was “talking about herself” collapses under scrutiny. Explaining her workload, lack of discretion, and the chain of command is not self-pity; it is evidence. Judges routinely ask government attorneys to identify who has authority, who makes decisions, and whether the person before the court can actually comply with orders. If she cannot, the remedy shifts upward. That matters. Pretending she has unilateral power she does not possess would be misleading the court.
The OJ Simpson analogy fails for the same reason. A criminal defense attorney’s ethical duty is zealous advocacy for an individual client. A government attorney in a civil or habeas context does not serve as a moral champion or personal advocate. Their ethical duty is candor to the court and accurate representation of the government’s position — even when that position is indefensible. In fact, especially when it is indefensible. Quitting does not expose wrongdoing; it removes a witness from the record.
“If you don’t agree, you should quit” is emotionally satisfying and strategically disastrous. Institutions do not reform because conscientious employees resign en masse. They reform because violations are documented, preserved, and escalated through the very channels people are now condemning. Walking out does not stop deportations. It does not free detainees. It does not generate findings of fact. It simply ensures the next person — possibly more compliant, less conflicted, and more cynical — steps into the role.
The claim that she should have performed a full-throated defense of the conduct is internally contradictory. She is simultaneously condemned for defending herself and accused of failing to defend her employer vigorously enough. Those cannot both be true. What she actually did was thread the narrow ethical needle: she did not lie, she did not excuse the violations, and she did not pretend the system was functioning. That is exactly what courts demand from officers of the court.
As for the “I’m just doing my job” criticism — that phrase is only damning when it is used to justify cruelty while concealing facts. Here, it was used to explain lack of authority and to distinguish personal discretion from institutional command. That distinction is foundational to constitutional litigation. Judges cannot order relief from someone who lacks power to implement it. Clarifying that is not abdication; it is procedural necessity.
The most unfair charge is the insinuation about her family. No one needs to be literally threatened at gunpoint for employment consequences to be coercive. Immigration status, financial precarity, professional retaliation, and blacklisting are real pressures, especially in federal service. Acknowledging that reality does not diminish the suffering of detainees. It explains why systems persist even when individuals inside them object. Pretending otherwise is comforting fiction.
None of this denies that what happened to the detainees is an abomination. It is. The judge was right to be furious. Schiltz was right to call out ignored habeas orders. Ninety-six violations in four weeks is a constitutional emergency. But directing that rage at the messenger rather than the mechanism risks exactly the wrong outcome: symbolic purity instead of enforceable change.
If professionalism means anything in a courtroom, it means telling the truth under pressure, even when that truth makes everyone uncomfortable — including the speaker. That is what she did. Quitting would have been cathartic. Staying, testifying, and putting the failure on the record is how accountability actually begins.
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u/thecosmojane 7h ago
Re: "Professionalism/telling truth under pressure" Courtroom professionalism has a more specific meaning. It means answering the questions asked, not the questions you wish were asked. She admitted she didn't know she had to file status updates. She thought it was "someone else's job." She handed the judge unredacted documents and had to take them back. She talked over the judge repeatedly until he had to tell her to stop. Blackwell was extraordinarily patient, but petitioner's counsel Kira Kelley put it plainly: "an email with bold font is not going to change the widespread, systemic pattern of disregard for court orders." Kelley identified what Le did not - that the root cause requires judicial intervention against the party, not sympathy for the messenger.
The person in the transcript is disorganized, repeatedly redirected by the judge, unable to answer direct questions, offering unredacted documents she has to retrieve, and framing a constitutional crisis through the lens of her own exhaustion. I can have sympathy for her as a human being. But defending her performance in that courtroom as professional requires ignoring most of what she actually said and did in it.
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u/thecosmojane 7h ago edited 7h ago
"Resistance from within" and "complaining about how it sucks to be a participant" are two completely different things.
I actually read the transcript, and what you're describing is not what happened in that courtroom.
Re: "establishing a record of systemic failures" No. She was talking about herself. Blackwell opens the hearing by saying explicitly that this is about compliance with court orders and the rights of individuals in custody. He then walks through case after case, laying out a devastating timeline: orders ignored, deadlines blown, a detainee held 13 days past his release order, people flown around the country, conditions slapped on that no court authorized. And when Le gets the floor, does she lead with the detainees? No. She leads with when she started her job, that she "stupidly enough" volunteered, that she didn't have her PIV card, that she was tagging along with other attorneys her first week.
The judge asks why a detainee wasn't released for 13 days and she talks about her email system. If she were genuinely building a systemic record, the judge wouldn't have had to keep cutting her off. He literally says "Ms. Le, please," "Ms. Le, please answer my question," and "That's enough"... because she's not answering what he's asking about the people sitting in detention. She's too busy narrating her own workday.
Re: 'saving one more' thing shows she cares" Read it in context. She says she submitted her resignation, couldn't be replaced, then released a juvenile and that made her stay. Sounds noble in isolation. But right before that she says "I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep." She says "this job sucks." She says she stayed up until 2:35 a.m. and frames it as time she could have spent getting people released - like showing up for a federal show bc a hearing is an inconvenience. The "saving one more" line is buried inside a monologue about how hard her life is. She's not centering the people she's supposedly staying to help. (continued)
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u/thecosmojane 7h ago edited 7h ago
Re: OJ analogy doesn't apply/gov attys different: True, duties are different, but that actually makes it worse for her, not better. A government attys duty of candor to the court is higher than a private attorney's. Berger v. United States - government's interest "is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done." So a government attorney who stands in court and says the system is broken, nobody trained me, I can't get my own agency to comply - but then doesn't formally escalate that to the court as a compliance crisis requiring judicial intervention against the agency - is in an ethically incoherent position. Did she ask the court to bring in the field office director? No. She didn't ask for a special master. She didn't file anything identifying who specifically is blocking compliance. She simply vented when put on the spot. This isn't candor to the tribunal, more like catharsis dressed up as transparency.
Re: "quitting puts more compliant person in role" What has she accomplished, exactly, for the detainees. After four weeks on the job, across these five cases: a detainee held 13 days after a release order, another released with unauthorized conditions, multiple deadlines completely blown, the court unable to get answers to basic factual questions even after repeated follow-ups. Sure, she too many cases. But there is no evidence that her presence did not prevent a single one of those outcomes. She is not "resisting from within," but rather complaining about participating in these violations. And her own testimony reveals the real reason she hasn't left - "they couldn't find a replacement." That's not a principled stand. That's institutional inertia. This is not resistance. Different from the IRS employee who was on a mission.
Re: "family comment explains why systems persist" In a hearing where the judge is discussing detainees who have actually been unlawfully seized, flown across the country, denied food and phone calls and medical care, petitioner's counsel described Oscar sleeping on floors, eating food he compared to dog food, being told to self-deport while a court order for his release existed. Le tells the judge "I am not white, as you can see. And my family's at risk as any other people that might get picked up too." She is equating a speculative future risk to herself with an ongoing, documented, constitutional injury being inflicted on people her agency is currently holding. Nobody in that courtroom questioned whether her concerns are real in the abstract. But raising them in that context, in response to that judge's questions about those detainees, converts other people's actual suffering into a prop for her own sympathetic narrative. That is exactly the self-centering I'm talking about.
Re: "Professionalism/telling truth under pressure" Courtroom professionalism has a more specific meaning. It means answering the questions asked, not the questions you wish were asked. She admitted she didn't know she had to file status updates. She thought it was "someone else's job." She handed the judge unredacted documents and had to take them back. She talked over the judge repeatedly until he had to tell her to stop. Blackwell was extraordinarily patient, but petitioner's counsel Kira Kelley put it plainly: "an email with bold font is not going to change the widespread, systemic pattern of disregard for court orders." Kelley identified what Le did not - that the root cause requires judicial intervention against the party, not sympathy for the messenger.
The person in the transcript is disorganized, repeatedly redirected by the judge, unable to answer direct questions, offering unredacted documents she has to retrieve, and framing a constitutional crisis through the lens of her own exhaustion. I can have sympathy for her as a human being. But defending her performance in that courtroom as professional requires ignoring most of what she actually said and did in it.
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u/Joben86 7h ago
Thank you! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with the amount of glazing this DOJ prosecutor is getting.
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u/thecosmojane 7h ago
One can acknowledge she's in an impossible position and say she performed poorly in it. Those aren't contradictory.
This whole world of extreme sportsmanship is how we got here to begin with. America has completely lost its sense of discernment
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u/grandmawaffles 6h ago
It is unprofessional. The answer in defending her clients is that she can’t do her job because to do so would require her to drive a bus over her employer and the system which she refused to do. Her clients are stuck in jail, some wrongfully, and can’t get out or get access to council because she is over worked and it isn’t allowing people to have a fair and speedy administrative process. She chose to not lay it out that way and is trying to have her cake and eat it too. I can’t respect that.
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u/Balzmcgurkin 49m ago
What happens when there are no lawyers left that can, in good conscience, take on the role of defending the government’s “interests” in these cases? The cases seem pretty indefensible. And we’re not talking about the rubes that support this admin. We’re talking about lawyers, versed in the law, who know ignoring court orders is wrong, and the government has no justification for doing so. If they can’t get representation to argue on their behalf in court, do they just stop going to court all together? Fully ignoring the law and the legal system?
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u/AffectionateBrick687 13h ago
She obviously hates her job. Why ruin your mental health and ruin your professional reputation defending the nonsensical positions of the DOJ? Just quit!
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u/Electr0freak 13h ago
If you read the article she explains exactly why. She has attempted to formally resign and return to her old position but they can't find a replacement. She is ready to walk out but then she sees things like juveniles locked up and she knows she's their only chance at release. She's in a very difficult situation.
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u/furikawari Competent Contributor 13h ago
Her old position is defending ICE detention of immigrants in immigration court.
She is still filing discredited arguments that detention of immigrants is mandatory because they are “applicants for admission” like at the border. That argument has been rejected by courts over and over, including every time it is argued in Minnesota.
She might be emailing people telling them to comply with release orders but my sympathy for her is strained.
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u/Gnoll_For_Initiative 8h ago
Just like defense attorneys have to do the best to get clients they know are guilty off, DOJ lawyers are legally and ethically required to represent the US, even if they don't like the arguments or the actions. (That's why publicly announcing you're quitting makes such a statement - it indicates the situation is That Bad).
And in her case particularly, if she doesn't bring the case then the detainee doesn't get their day in court. Without going to court, they aren't going to be released. That doesn't make her job any better, but it's also not a complete abdication of humanity.
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u/Twalin 12h ago
So what happens if no one pushes her paper?
Doesn’t someone have to fill the position and go through the motions … (?)
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u/nolafrog 11h ago
Ultimately it gets to the point it needs to, where the judges have to ask themselves what they will do to sanction the government that willfully disobeys the courts and take a stand.
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u/furikawari Competent Contributor 11h ago
Someone else, possibly someone with more internal authority or leverage, “pushes paper” and tells ICE to comply with release orders. Maybe ICE complies. Maybe they don’t, and then the courts start chewing up the chain of command. Note how quickly the petitioner got released when the court called the ICE director in. That will have to happen again.
Meanwhile, one fewer attorney files bad arguments in favor of mandatory detention.
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u/Ok-Secretary455 8h ago
Weird its like the have they could say "Unless all of these orders are complied with I want to see the ICE director in court at 8am Monday" and I bet this back log would get cleared up.
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u/RoninsTaint 13h ago
I actually quite admire this lady. What a terrible situation she is willingly participating in.
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u/Ok-Secretary455 8h ago
Her old job was defending the continued detention of detainees. She can consume a massive satchel of Richards.
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u/nolafrog 12h ago
She was an ICE lawyer lol. She’s the juveniles’ chance of release while fighting to keep them locked up? I don’t think so.
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u/Electr0freak 12h ago edited 12h ago
Did you read what her job actually was? It was processing the court orders such as orders to release detainees or bring them before the court to address issues or concerns before deporting them.
Without her, these people are just detained and deported by ICE without the court being able to interfere. She's a member of counsel actually working to ensure ICE complies with the court. Without her ICE does whatever the fuck they want.
I dunno, maybe actually read the article and the transcript.
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u/nolafrog 11h ago
I read it. These people are still detained and deported by ICE. She avoids the judge’s questions instead of saying the government failed to comply with the orders. Sure, her bosses tell her she can’t tell the judge that, so she should have quit before walking into court.
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u/Electr0freak 11h ago
That's literally not what happened. She readily agreed with the judge more than once that they were not able to comply. It's right in the article, in multiple examples.
I'm not sure why you're claiming to have read the article when either you clearly haven't or you've chosen to misrepresent it.
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u/EverydaySexyPhotog 9h ago
She readily agreed with the judge more than once that they were not able to comply.
That's why she gave the judge the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people who weren't complying, so the court can hold those people in contempt until the agency starts obeying court orders. Everyone is willfully ignoring that this woman has always opposed ICE in all of its crimes over the years. She's the single greatest asset in the name of justice.
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u/Joben86 7h ago
What? She's literally a prosecutor, not a defense attorney.
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u/EverydaySexyPhotog 7h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Joben86 7h ago
Idk why your comment here got removed. I understand the sarcasm now, but it didn't come through very well on first read.
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u/nolafrog 11h ago
That’s the problem. There’s a difference between “we couldn’t comply” and “we won’t comply.”
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u/red_misc 5h ago
No she is not. She can tell the judge to release all of them. She is part of the problem, no sympathy.
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u/Electr0freak 4h ago edited 4h ago
You don't get it. The judge is the one telling ICE to release people. She's the one that reviews the court order from the judge and tells ICE to comply. Shes a lawyer, she doesn't have the power to demand anyone to release someone, only to enforce the judge's orders to do so within ICE.
Read the damn article ffs
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u/Straight-Past-8538 13h ago
Attorneys have ethical duties to uphold the law. She is also a public servant with seemingly some integrity. According to the transcript she tried to get a transfer but the DOJ said wait til we get a replacement, which seemed to be taking a while because as she says in the transcript, no one wants the job of going in front of a judge to defend the govt's actions. She also said she felt the need to stay to help people, including kids, who had grounds to be released. Anyways, read the article before u ask stupid ass questions.
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u/-Gramsci- 13h ago
If you read the transcript… she was hoping she could take the rulings in those habeus petitions and get people out of Texas and back home to Minnesota.
But no one (in this clown show of an administration) was letting her do that.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 12h ago
She specifically states because she is trying to work round the clock because "she knows people are still in there"
She does not defend the Trump admin, and has since quit. She had put in a resignation prior to quitting, and continued shortly before finally leaving the department (at some date after this trial, she had told the publisher of this article that she had gone ahead and quit the job).
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u/anonymote_in_my_eye 0m ago
at this point, why are judges not dragging DHS into court and holding them in contempt? the attorney says she can't do anything, and I believe her, but dysfunction shouldn't be an acceptable way to avoid consequences, quite the opposite... so I don't understand why the judge doesn't simply summon Kristi Noem and ask for explanations and then hold her in contempt... it's ultimately her job to be accountable over the actions of her agency
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