Last week a federal prosecutor stood before a judge and proclaimed, “The system sucks. This job sucks. I wish you could hold me in contempt so that I could get 24 hours sleep.”
She may as well be speaking for the country as a whole.
The prosecutor in question, Julie Le, works for the Department of Homeland Security. She volunteered to transfer from a unit in immigration court to one working against habeas corpus cases in federal court. The former is an administrative proceeding where the rules are comparatively lax and the judges — those still left after a Trump administration purge — work for the same agency as the prosecutors. The latter is an Article III position where the judges hold their seat for life and expect their orders to be followed.
And that is the rub. It is also the most frightening step toward autocracy our country has taken so far.
According to the transcript of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell had been grilling Le on the government’s failure to comply with court orders. To be precise, Blackwell noted that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had violated 96 court orders in 74 different cases — in Minnesota alone.
Let that sink in, ICE has violated 96 court orders. In 74 cases.
There is no faster way to anger a federal judge than to fail to follow their orders. Anyone who has been in federal court knows they generally do not take kindly to even the slightest deviation. To be outright ignored is tantamount to inviting an explosion.
That is where Le found herself last week, in the crosshairs of Blackwell questioning her about ICE’s failure. She did not have any good answers. Effectively, she explained that despite repeated emails and communications to ICE on her part, she could not seem to get them to abide. Effectively, they ignored what their own counsel told them they had to do.
That is how democracies break down.
With the Trump administration ruling through executive order and assembling its own army of armed, masked agents, the only potential protections rest in Congress and the judiciary. Republicans in Congress have either capitulated or embraced Trump’s takeover — Democrats do not have a majority to block it. That leaves judges on the bench as the last bastion.
But this episode demonstrates just how weak that obstacle might be.
Trump and his acolytes have effectively taken the position that they do not need to follow the law. Vice President JD Vance has declared that ICE agents have “absolute immunity” from prosecution. Worse, former Department of (in)Justice official Emil Bove told staff they should tell courts “fuck you” and ignore their orders. Bove has since been appointed as a federal appellate judge.
That is Autocracy 101: ignore the judicial rulings you don’t like until you can appoint your own judges.
This is what happens in places like Russia or Venezuela. It is not supposed to happen in America. We all grew up learning about the system of checks and balances that stopped such power grabs from happening. But as Le said, the system sucks.
When federal agencies can ignore court orders at their whim, the rule of law is on life support. The outcome is obvious and has become reality. Those agencies become judge, jury and executioner. And not in just a figurative sense, but in the deaths of American citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The fates of non-American citizens, including people in this country with legal status, are equally imperiled. It is obvious that ICE and other agencies have decided they do not need to heed judicial commands to obey the Constitution. They have become a law unto themselves.
That is terrifying. But you don’t have to take my word for it. At the hearing Le herself told Blackwell, “… I share the same concern with you, Your Honor. I am not white, as you can see. And my family’s at risk as any other people that might get picked up …”
It seems like something from a bad dystopian movie when a prosecutor fears for her safety and that of her family from the very people she represents. That an attorney said it in open court, in front of a judge and her superiors, underscores the dire state in which we find ourselves.
I imagine that judges across the country must be in disbelief. They dedicated their lives to a system of laws and rules that have always been strictly followed. It is in their very professional makeup that a court order cannot be questioned by anything less than an appellate court. To watch federal agencies ignore their decision so cavalierly must be equal parts infuriating and frightening.
They cannot say they were not warned, though. Former Judge Michael Luttig has been sounding the alarm for over a year. Other pundits and judicial journalists have been diligent in their reports. It just has been either too awful to face or too uninteresting for the public to pay attention.
The system sucks. The current condition of our country sucks. I wish a court could hold us all in contempt just so we could get three years of peace.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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