DHS Attorney Removed from Post After Telling MN Judge That “This Job Sucks”

A DHS Attorney in Minnesota who said yesterday in front of a judge that it was like “pulling teeth” in order to get the government and her own agency to follow the law and obey court orders is apparently feeling the immediate wrath of the Trump administration, and has reportedly been removed from her post in opaque fashion. A local news reporter attending an immigration hearing captured some truly jaw-dropping quotes from the intensely frustrated attorney Julie Le, who was being grilled at the hearing by U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell over the federal government’s persistent failures to acknowledge or obey court orders in Minnesota, part of a wider federal trend of ignoring judge’s rulings. Le’s response was an instant classic: “The system sucks. This job sucks. I wish you could hold me in contempt so that I could get 24 hours of sleep.”

Now that is one hell of a quote, from a clearly very weary person. Julie Le, according to an NBC News review of court records, had been assigned up to 88 cases in less than a month despite not feeling properly trained for the role, even as she watched numerous other prosecutors (and DOJ officials and her own co-counsel) in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota quit in protest of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, or resign in the face of impossible levels of overwork. Just yesterday, the Associated Press reported that after it was reported that an initial half dozen attorneys had resigned from the office, eight more have quit or are expected to quit in the immediate future, with more likely following them. Speaking to Judge Blackwell, Le said it was like “pulling teeth” to get DHS, ICE and the Justice Department to respect and follow court orders, saying “it takes 10 emails from me for a release condition to be corrected. It takes me threatening to walk out for something else to be corrected.”

Le’s assignment to the U.S Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota “was now over” in the immediate wake of the comments, according to a “official familiar with the matter” cited by NBC News. Where will they stick the poor woman now? Maybe she’ll actually have a chance to grab that 24 hours of sleep in the chaos. After a chance to rest, one wonders if she’ll regret having criticized her government employers in front of a judge in a public hearing, or if she’ll simply decide like so many other lawyers that continued employment representing the likes of DHS isn’t worth needing to compromise whatever values she once placed in American law. Anger over the injustice of the killings of two American citizens by ICE and Border Patrol in Minnesota, along with the federal government’s unprecedented attempts to shut Minnesota state investigators out of the subsequent investigations of those incidents, has clearly contributed to severe morale issues in the remaining lawyers working for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Blackwell was specifically questioning Le over the continuing detention of “five different people he ordered to be immediately release, but then were either moved around or continue to be detained for up to two additional weeks.” He is reportedly still weighing punitive actions to be taken against the DHS for his ignored court orders.

The feds, meanwhile, have made a big show this Wednesday morning of announcing that they’ll be withdrawing up to 700 immigration agents from the state of Minnesota, likely in an effort to be perceived as easing up on the gas in terms of the brutal campaign of oppression said agents have carried out against not only their intended immigrant targets but against any American citizens they encounter in the field. Trump’s so-called “border czar” Tom Homan, dispatched to Minneapolis after former “Commander at Large” Gregory Bovino was sacrificed following the Alex Pretti shooting, cited “unprecedented cooperation” from local police as the reason why immigration agents could now be withdrawn, although the most important thing to note here is that after those 700 agents leave, there will still be more than 2,000 immigration agents in the state, also according to Homan. The Trump administration is most likely hoping that people will merely see these headlines, interpret them as “ICE is leaving Minnesota,” and that the remaining agents will be able to continue their campaign with less protest and resistance.

Of course, if the entire U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota walks out of their jobs, perhaps there won’t be anyone left to prosecute any cases at all.