Trump admin. attorney leaves Minnesota after telling judge her job ‘sucks’ amid crush of immigration cases

By Devan Cole, Tierney Sneed, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney detailed to Minnesota to help handle the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities has been removed from her post after telling a judge that the job “sucks” because of the crushing workload and the government’s apparent inability to comply with court orders.

The attorney, Julie Le, was sent back to her job at ICE, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In an extraordinarily candid exchange with a federal judge on Tuesday, Le, who had been asked to explain why the administration was not promptly complying with a slew of court orders stemming from immigration cases she’s handling, admitted that the government did not have enough lawyers on the ground to adequately keep up with Operation Metro Surge and that trying to get errors fixed is like “pulling teeth.”

“They are overwhelmed and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly (volunteered),” she told US District Judge Jerry Blackwell, who is threatening to hold her and another lawyer in contempt for repeated violations of orders he’s issued in immigration cases.

“Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep. I work days and night just because people (are) still in there,” Le said.

“And, yes, procedure in place right now sucks. I’m trying to fix it,” she continued. “I am here with you, your honor. What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.”

Le and the other administration lawyers working on immigration cases in Minnesota since the crackdown began have been facing intense scrutiny from the judges there over a slew of missteps in the cases. Last week, the chief judge of the state’s federal trial-level court said ICE “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence” and specifically called out nearly 100 court orders he said had been violated in recent weeks.

Among those orders are ones requiring the government to immediately release immigrant detainees whom judges determined were being held unlawfully in Minnesota or Texas, where many of them were flown after being arrested in the Twin Cities. Judges, including Blackwell, were also frustrated by release conditions ICE had imposed on some immigrants since the court had not specifically allowed the agency to fashion such conditions.

“It takes 10 e-mails to get a release condition to be corrected,” Le told Blackwell on Tuesday. “It take two escalation and a threat that I will walk out for that to be corrected.”

Though Blackwell said he thought Le and Justice Department attorney Ana Voss, who is also facing a contempt threat, were “working in good faith and under difficult circumstances,” he warned them that “a court order is not advisory and it is not conditional.”

“It is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply with the court order,” the judge said.

“Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all, is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign,” Blackwell added.

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