A Trump-appointed judge delivered a humiliating blow to the Department of Homeland Security in a courtroom showdown over detained migrants in Minnesota.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled on Thursday that immigration enforcement agencies “violated noncitizen detainees’ constitutional” rights by blocking their access to lawyers. It was the 45th ruling against the president’s mass detentions by a judge he nominated, per a tally by Politico.
The state became the epicenter of President Trump’s heavy-handed immigration crackdown that resulted in the death of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37. On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it would retreat from the state capital, Minneapolis.
Trump and his DHS underlings swamped the Twin Cities with immigration foot soldiers without accounting for “the constitutional rights of its civil detainees” held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as the force is better known.
“The government suggests—with minimal explanation and even less evidence—that doing so would result in ‘chaos,’” wrote Brasel, who was nominated by Trump in February 2018 before being confirmed by the Senate six months later. “The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.”
Her order referred to the Whipple Federal Building in Saint Paul, where many Minnesota ICE detainees are holed up. Brasel demanded a revamp of conditions in the ill-equipped, overcrowded facility. She ordered officials to grant detainees regular, unmonitored access to telephones, including the opportunity to notify attorneys and family members at least one hour before any out-of-state transfer.
Lawyers from the non-profit organization The Advocates for Human Rights gained access to the building on Monday and found filthy conditions and a lack of privacy.
Hanne Sandison, the immigration and legal services director for the organization, was shown an area with showers that did not have doors that ran from the ground to the ceiling, and described just two changing rooms, one of which she said was “blocked by a bunch of junk.”
Sandison said the tour was then cut short by DHS. She said an employee became “agitated” and told Sandison and her colleagues that they were “interfering with operations.”
Brasel said that before the Trump administration swamped the city with ICE goons, detainees at the Whipple Building were afforded their rights and allowed to meet in person with their attorneys.
In her Thursday ruling, Brasel tore apart the administration’s excuses for ignoring detainees’ rights.
“Defendants allocated substantial resources to sending thousands of agents to Minnesota, detaining thousands of people, and housing them in their facilities. Defendants cannot suddenly lack resources when it comes to protecting detainees’ constitutional rights,” she wrote.
She also reminded Trump and Whipple Building officials of the obvious. “The United States Constitution—not Whipple’s operational capacity or internal ICE policies—is what sets the floor for reasonable access to counsel," she said.
The order follows a class-action lawsuit filed last month on behalf of immigrant detainees against defendants including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
A DHS spokesperson disputed that there are poor conditions inside the Whipple Building in a statement to Axios. The spokesperson claimed that detainees are quickly processed, given access to phones and lawyers, and “treated better” than all lawbreakers “in the history of human civilization.”
“ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” the spokesperson added.
