DOJ accuses Minnesota judges of misconduct over immigration interviews

The Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a judicial misconduct complaint against all but one Minnesota federal judges on active status for interviews they gave to The New York Times that criticized the Trump administration’s handling of immigration enforcement cases in the state.

The DOJ asked the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to force the recusal of all seven judges who spoke with The Times from any case involving the Department of Homeland Security.

The complaint also asks the 8th Circuit, which handles cases arising from the District of Minnesota, to investigate what the DOJ called “the judges’ improper and unethical conduct” in speaking to the newspaper.

The complaint singles out Senior Judge Patrick Schiltz and Senior Judge John Tunheim, who were quoted by name in the article, which ran under the headline “Trump’s Minnesota Surge Threatened Democracy, Judge Warns.”

Schiltz until July 1 had served as chief judge in the District of Minnesota, having succeeded Tunheim in that role in 2022.

Schiltz had issued a Jan. 28 order demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement stop violating orders issued by Minnesota federal judges in cases related to a surge in immigration enforcement actions in the state. Schiltz told The Times that ICE’s violations of the orders “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

Tunheim was quoted by The Times after a paragraph that said the judges considered that most of the detainees whose cases they handled “seemed to be ordinary people with homes and jobs,” and not immigrants who DHS officials claimed were “the worst of the worst.”

“They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,” Tunheim said, according to The Times.

The other judges spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity.

“Judge Schiltz and Judge Tunheim, at least, have flagrantly violated the Code of Judicial Conduct with their improper and unethical comments to the New York Times,” says the complaint by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr.

Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a statement, said, “Seven federal judges in the District of Minnesota talked to the New York Times about cases, some of which are on-going, in a manner that the Department of Justice views as a clear violation of their ethical duties.”

“Their conduct has undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota,” Blanche said.

A spokeswoman for U.S. District Court in Minnesota defended the judges’ contact after CNBC requested comment from Schiltz and Tunheim about the complaint.

“As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, our judges were acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” said Rebeccah Parks, the spokeswoman.

“Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges may “speak[] and writ[e] on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence,'” Parks said. “Our judges acted within this capacity.”