It Was Nice While It Lasted

Bondi and company have torched the DOJ’s reputation for integrity.

Image credit: whitehouse.gov

Federal judges have begun writing about the Department of Justice in terms that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. I do not mean pointed criticism of a filing or a sharp exchange with a line prosecutor. Courts are now taking aim at the Department as an institution—questioning the credibility of entire offices and describing misconduct as widespread, top-driven, and intentional.

It’s common for certain courts to respond harshly to certain government positions or legal arguments. What makes this moment different is the register. Judges now describe the conduct as knowing, not mistaken; systemic, not episodic; and grave enough to warrant sanctions once reserved for extreme defiance.

For generations, whatever one thought of DOJ’s arguments, the baseline assumption held: the Department acted in good faith and would follow the courts’ rulings.

That assumption has given way, displaced by a sustained pattern of noncompliance and escalating confrontation with the courts.

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There are two cases in point from the last few days. And they have lots of company around the country.

Cartagena Hueso v. Soto was a habeas petition filed by Diana Elizabeth Cartagena Hueso, a woman ICE had released in 2016 after she established credible fear of returning to El Salvador. Hueso thereafter lived openly in the United States, including marrying and having a child, for nearly a decade. Then in 2026, ICE arrested her again. It tried to impose mandatory detention and process her for deportation without any opportunity to challenge her deportability.

ICE tried to base the detention on a newly issued “interpretation” of a statute that court after court has rejected. The argument is that people residing in the U.S., even for years, remain “applicants for admission,” subject to mandatory detention without bond, as if they had just arrived at the border. It’s well-established that people who present themselves at the border can be turned away without any legal or judicial process, but it’s likewise always been uncontroversial–though the Administration is trying to change it–that once they enter the country, due process rights attach.

Joining scores of courts and hundreds of cases rejecting the same maneuver, Judge Zahid Quraishi rejected ICE’s theory outright. At the outset, he attempted to preserve a lawful path forward. He ordered that Hueso receive a prompt bond hearing under § 1226 and directed the government not to transfer her out of New Jersey while that process unfolded.

ICE had already moved her once. The day before the order issued, officials transferred her to Oklahoma. Then, on the very day the court prohibited transfer, they moved her again—this time to Texas—and shortly thereafter back to Oklahoma. The government neither alerted the court nor offered a coherent explanation for the multiple transfers in violation of the order.

That’s when Quraishi, provoked by a string of literally hundreds of violations of similar orders by him and colleagues in New Jersey, blew his stack.

In earlier cases, Quraishi had tried to salvage defective detentions by reclassifying them under a different statute and ordering bond hearings rather than release. This time he wrote, simply, “No more.”

Quraishi then characterized the government’s conduct as intentional, a fairly breathtaking charge from a federal court. “On the merits,” Quraishi wrote, “[the] detentions are illegal. The Government knows this.”

Ouch.

That was not the end of it. Quraishi placed the case in a broader pattern. He cited roughly 300 federal decisions rejecting the same statutory maneuver. He noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had conceded, in a court filing, to violating 72 immigration habeas orders in that district alone. He observed that a colleague recently had required sworn testimony from office higher-ups and took the somewhat unusual step of requiring Department attorneys with personal knowledge to testify under oath about the government’s factual and legal contentions.

Then came the broader damnation. Quoting a different judge from the New Jersey bench, Quraishi rendered this judgment, which extended not to a couple bad actors but the entire U.S. Attorney’s Office. “Sadly, the well-deserved credibility once attached to that distinguished Office is now a presumption that has been undeniably eroded.”

That “distinguished Office” is one of the largest and historically most respected of the Department’s 94 U.S. Attorney’s Offices. Quraishi was declaring that the office itself could no longer claim the court’s trust.

That’s a stunning and devastating indictment.

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A depressingly similar story played out in Minnesota last week.

As with Judge Quraishi, Patrick Schiltz, Chief Judge of the district court, began with a backdrop of head-spinning numbers of violations of orders. He noted nearly 100 in district cases overall. Schiltz wrote that the pattern would “give pause to anyone…who cares about the rule of law,” and observed that ICE had likely violated more orders in a single month than some agencies have in their entire existence.

As has so often been the instinct of Bondi and Department leadership, the U.S. Attorney’s Office challenged and rebuked the court. The tally, it said, ran “far beyond the pale of accuracy.”

So Schiltz ordered a fresh review. The numbers increased. 113 additional violations in seventy-seven more cases came to light in the review. Many occurred after his first warning.

And that’s where Schiltz lowered the boom. He wrote that he was unaware of another moment “in the history of the United States,” in which a federal court had to threaten contempt “again and again and again” to force “the United States government” to comply with court orders.” He warned that civil contempt had proven insufficient and that criminal contempt remained available. And he closed with a firm resolve: “One way or another, ICE will comply.”

Schiltz clerked for Justice Scalia. President George W. Bush appointed him. He is not a grandstander. When he writes that he cannot recall another moment in American history when a federal court had to repeatedly threaten contempt to force the United States government to comply, he is sounding an institutional alarm about a Department of Justice that has profoundly lost its way.

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Judges from around the country have been sounding a similar refrain.

Courts in Illinois have ordered bond hearings after concluding the government stretched statutory language beyond recognition. District judges in California have blocked transfers that appeared designed to outrun judicial review. Courts in Texas have reminded the Department that expedited removal authority does not suspend habeas corpus. The New York Times has reported that in 35 cases in the last six months, judges from seven states and Puerto Rico have called on the government to “show cause” why it shouldn’t be penalized for violating orders in immigration cases.

Across these jurisdictions, judges have issued show-cause orders. They have imposed contempt sanctions. They have required sworn explanations from officials with personal knowledge rather than accepting representations at face value.

It takes a great deal to move federal judges to this register. Most judges write, well, judiciously. In particular, for generations, they have assumed—with good reason—that the Department of Justice is always on the square: its legal arguments intellectually honest, its factual representations scrupulous, and its dedication to the rule of law beyond question.

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The erosion of institutional trust in the Department imposes costs that go well beyond the bruised egos of DOJ attorneys.

Reputations are fragile. Even in the best of times, the Department of Justice has had to overcome the skepticism that attaches to any institution wielding immense power—the power to indict, to imprison, to seize assets, to reshape lives.

The only durable answer to that skepticism is to show up daily and do the right thing. That had been the governing ethos of the Department for generations.

Judges recognized that, as for the most part did the whole criminal justice system. That understanding served as a sort of tailwind that enabled the Department to carry out its mission of protecting public safety and vindicating constitutional rights.

At the same time, that credibility reassured the public that the system operates fairly—that charges reflect evidence, not allegiance; that the innocent walk free; that constitutional guarantees apply to everyone.

It’s far easier to lose institutional trust than to rebuild it. Once courts and the public begin to suspect selective enforcement or strategic defiance, credibility does not snap back with a few corrected briefs. It returns only through consistent, disciplined adherence to the law—shown case after case, year after year. It’s unclear if the Department will ever be able to rebound fully from the damage Bondi and company have inflicted in barely over a year.

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Before Trump 1.0, the previous crisis of credibility for the Department was Watergate. That era involved setbacks to the Department’s institutional standings that do not remotely approach the chainsaw demolition perpetrated by the mob gang currently in charge. After Watergate, the legendary Attorney General Edward Levi rebuilt the Department’s credibility by drawing firm boundaries between the White House and prosecutors and by restoring internal guardrails that leadership had bent. Those remained essentially unimpaired until Trump 1.0, when they bent. Now they are being dismantled.

So long as the current leadership remains, and likely for a long time thereafter, courts will approach the government’s representations with skepticism rather than confidence. The Department can no longer count on a presumption of regularity, once its most valuable asset in federal court. The adverse consequences cascade–for the Department, for public safety, and for the rule of law itself.

For decades, DOJ lawyers entered court with the benefit of the doubt.

To quote Judge Quraishi, no more.

Talk to you later.

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On Saturday, March 14, Talking San Diego will welcome Governor Josh Shapiro. Governor Shapiro and I will discuss his new memoir, Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service, and his vision for America’s path forward. Tickets can be found here.