Federal judges in Minnesota tasked with deciding a flood of habeas petitions challenging the detention of immigrants swept up during President Donald Trump's Operation Metro Surge weren't working entirely on their own — behind the scenes, they were regularly consulting one another through running email threads and developing tools to quickly handle recurring legal questions. The behind-the-scenes coordination among Minnesota's federal bench, revealed in a New York Times report Thursday, included regular meetings, running email threads, an informal spreadsheet created by court clerks showing which judges to turn to with particular legal questions, and templates some judges developed to quickly issue orders when similar detention disputes repeatedly came before the court. The disclosures are fueling questions over whether the judges were colluding on separate cases involving the same Trump administration immigration policies, or simply sharing expertise to manage an extraordinary caseload.
FEDERAL JUDGE TIES ICE AGENTS' HANDS WITH RULING ON WARRANTLESS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ARRESTS "The idea of a running email chain involving a variety of cases — it strikes me as very weird and frankly unprecedented," Robert Luther III, a professor at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School whose work includes federal courts and judicial ethics, told Fox News Digital. Federal judges can and routinely do consult colleagues, Luther said, particularly about procedural or evidentiary questions. But each judge is ultimately responsible for independently deciding the cases assigned to them — a distinction Luther said makes the coordination significant.
The disclosures have also drawn criticism from the Trump administration on two fronts. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival accused the former chief judge who led the district during Metro Surge of "essentially conspiring with his judicial colleagues" to thwart federal immigration enforcement. The Justice Department (DOJ), meanwhile, questioned the decision by sitting judges to give extensive on-the-record interviews about their experience with the administration's immigration operation.
Seven of the district's judges spoke to the Times for Thursday's report, including former Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, who sat for a 90-minute interview about the court's experience during Metro Surge. Schiltz declined to discuss ongoing cases, according to the Times, but described what happened in Minnesota's federal court as having "created a grave threat to the rule of law." "It is remarkable that sitting federal judges are giving on-the-record interviews attacking this Administration's policies rather than ruling from the bench," a Justice Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "If judges followed the law in adjudicating cases, there wouldn't be an 'overwhelming' habeas caseload.
Judges who have made public comments on pending or related matters should consider whether recusal is warranted going forward." OBAMA, BIDEN JUDGES DRAW FRESH FIRE AS TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION COURT CLASHES HEAT UP: ‘ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE’ But Chief Judge Eric Tostrud, who was himself among the Minnesota judges interviewed by the Times, rejected suggestions that the coordination described in the report compromised individual decision-making. He told Fox News Digital that every member of the bench independently decided the merits of each petition assigned to them, while pointing to an extraordinary surge in litigation — from 12 alien-detainee habeas petitions during all of 2024 to 1,427 through August of this year — and noting that many involved similar or identical, often novel, legal questions. "The bottom line is that each of us made an independent decision with respect to the merits of each and every petition we were assigned," Tostrud told Fox News Digital.
Tostrud stressed that the judges did not uniformly reach the same conclusions, saying that while some reached the same result on certain legal questions, they "reached different outcomes regarding other legal questions." He said the judges' ability to communicate helped them resolve the cases quickly and thoughtfully, regardless of whether individual petitions were granted. What exactly the judges were sharing behind the scenes, however, remains unclear. Tostrud declined to disclose the contents of the court's internal working materials, saying documents created by judges and court staff "are not public." TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S IMMIGRATION PUSH FUELS ICE'S BIGGEST ARREST MONTH IN AGENCY HISTORY That distinction could be significant, according to Luther, who said administrative templates are commonplace in federal courts, but drew a line between those and templates touching the substance of a case.
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