{"id":311,"date":"2026-02-04T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/reining-in-ice\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T20:32:00","slug":"reining-in-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/reining-in-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Reining in ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<br><div class=\"captioned-image-container\"><figure><a class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!YvyT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8635b137-b308-462d-9c90-e72697a4637f_960x504.webp\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"noopener\"><div class=\"image2-inset\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!YvyT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8635b137-b308-462d-9c90-e72697a4637f_960x504.webp\" width=\"578\" height=\"303.45\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/8635b137-b308-462d-9c90-e72697a4637f_960x504.webp&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:504,&quot;width&quot;:960,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:578,&quot;bytes&quot;:61716,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/webp&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/i\/186901001?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8635b137-b308-462d-9c90-e72697a4637f_960x504.webp&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" class=\"sizing-normal\" alt=\"\"><div class=\"image-link-expand\"><div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset\"><button type=\"button\" class=\"pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image\"><title><\/title><\/button><button type=\"button\" class=\"pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image\"><\/button><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/figure><\/div><p>Friends,<\/p><p>What should Democrats be demanding as a condition of releasing funds for the Department of Homeland Security? <\/p><p>Over the last few weeks I&#8217;ve discussed several important conditions: agents must not undertake warrantless searches; use racial profiling; pick up suspected undocumented people from schools, hospitals, courts, or places of worship; or carry lethal weapons. <\/p><p>Today I want to add an increasingly important condition:<\/p><p><em>Failure to obey any court order will immediately terminate all funding for ICE or the Border Patrol. <\/em><\/p><p>Who can be against this? It turns out, many Republicans in Congress. <\/p><p>Apparently Republicans don&#8217;t want to tie ICE&#8217;s or Border Patrol&#8217;s hands with the pesky responsibility of following court orders. <\/p><p>Last week, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz &#8212; a Reagan appointee and top federal judge in Minnesota &#8212; accused ICE of violating nearly a <em>hundred<\/em> court orders in the month of January alone. He wrote: &#8220;ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated,&#8221; adding that &#8220;ICE is not a law unto itself.&#8221;<\/p><p>Judge Schiltz had issued <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.mnd.230171\/gov.uscourts.mnd.230171.4.0_4.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an order<\/a> on January 14 that the government must give an immigrant a bond hearing or release him within seven days. Seven days passed without a hearing or release. Judge Schiltz then took what he called the &#8220;extraordinary step&#8221; of ordering Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, to appear at a hearing on January 23 to explain why he shouldn&#8217;t be held in contempt for violating the January 14 order. <\/p><blockquote><p>&#8220;The Court acknowledges that ordering the head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step, but the extent of ICE&#8217;s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed. <\/p><\/blockquote><p>Judge Schiltz said he would cancel the Friday hearing if the government released the man by then. The government released him. Schiltz canceled the hearing.<\/p><p>But threatening the acting head of ICE with contempt of court is a cumbersome way to get ICE to follow court orders. A threatened loss of funding for ICE and Border Patrol is necessary. <\/p><p>Meanwhile, during an immigration hearing on Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security attorney said it was like &#8220;pulling teeth&#8221; to get the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Justice Department to follow court orders. &#8220;The system sucks. This job sucks. I wish you could hold me in contempt so that I could get 24 hours of sleep,&#8221; she <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/justice-department\/attorney-government-tells-judge-ice-case-job-sucks-rcna257349\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a>.<\/p><p>Democrats should inform congressional Republicans who are objecting to conditioning continued funding on obeying court orders that it&#8217;s part of the job (and constitutional responsibility) of <em>every <\/em>public official &#8212; whether an agent of ICE or Border Patrol, or a member of Congress. <\/p><p>While they&#8217;re at it, Democrats (and the rest of us) should make sure the public knows the extent to which ICE and Border Patrol agents have been violating court orders &#8212;and are still utterly lawless. <\/p><p class=\"button-wrapper\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/reining-in-ice?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=share&amp;action=share&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Share&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"ButtonCreateButton\"><a class=\"button primary\" href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/reining-in-ice?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=share&amp;action=share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>Share<\/span><\/a><\/p>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/robertreich.substack.com\/p\/reining-in-ice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friends,What should Democrats be demanding as a condition of releasing funds for the Department of Homeland Security? Over the last few weeks I&#8217;ve discussed several important conditions: agents must not undertake warrantless searches; use racial profiling; pick up suspected undocumented people from schools, hospitals, courts, or places of worship; or carry lethal weapons. Today I want to add an increasingly&hellip;","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":312,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}