Lessons from the Minnesota Civil Contempt Case

On Feb. 18, 2026, after a 90-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino of the District of Minnesota imposed a conditional civil contempt fine upon a government attorney handling one of the hundreds of immigration related habeas corpus cases that have overwhelmed the courts of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., since December. She ordered Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Isihara to pay a $500 daily fine that would begin accruing the following day, if a separate order she had entered nine days earlier had not, by then, been fully complied with. Compliance was, in fact, achieved the next day, the contempt was purged, and Isihara paid no fine.

Still, the remarkable case is worth examining closely. It affords yet another glimpse inside the “complete breakdown,” as Judge Provinzino termed it, in the ability of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota to keep up with the caseload that Trump administration immigration policies have foisted upon it. The chief of the civil division of that office, present at the contempt hearing, readily admitted to Provinzino that there had been such a “breakdown,” had humbly apologized, and had asked for the court’s “good graces” to excuse the multiple violations of her order that had unquestionably occurred.

Nevertheless, when the New York Times sought comment on the contempt order later that evening, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen denounced it with pugilistic bravado: “Judge Provinzino’s order is a lawless abuse of judicial power.”

Rosen’s stance—robotic denial and reflexive counterattack—epitomizes the entire administration’s response to its self-created crisis, and explains much about how we got here.

In Operation Metro Surge, which began in December, an unprecedented force of 3,000 to 4,000 federal officers—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol, and Border Patrol agents—was sent to Minneapolis and St. Paul for the stated goal of enforcing immigration laws. The flood of arrests those officers have made—possibly spurred by quotas—predictably led to a deluge of habeas corpus filings by detainees. Most of those detained were held without the possibility of bond as a consequence of a new and highly controversial interpretation of detention laws, announced by the Department of Homeland Security last July, one that reversed 29 years of prior practice.

On Jan. 26, Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, a Ronald Reagan appointee and former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, ordered acting ICE director Todd Lyons to appear before him personally to explain why he should not be held in contempt for failure to release petitioner Juan Tobay Robles in accordance with his order—"one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks,” he wrote. Though Schiltz, who sits in Minneapolis, cancelled the hearing on Jan. 28, after Tobay Robles was finally released, he noted in a written order that he and his colleagues had compiled a list of 96 court orders that ICE had violated in 74 cases in the District of Minnesota in January alone—a list he said was “almost certainly substantially understated.”

Six days later, at a now infamous hearing, Judge Jerry Blackwell, of St. Paul, asked special U.S. attorney Julie Le to explain the government’s noncompliance with his court orders in five different cases she was handling. Le had recently been parachuted into the U.S. attorney’s office from her duties as an ICE attorney in the immigration courts. Her now immortal response to Blackwell was:

What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.

Le left the office the next day. By Feb. 9, the chief of the district’s civil division, Ana Voss, had also left. Judge Schilitz had singled Voss out for praise in a footnote to his Jan. 26 order, noting how hard she and her colleagues had worked to try to comply with orders “despite the fact that respondents have failed to provide them with adequate resources.”  (The respondents in that case were Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Lyons, and the acting director of ICE’s St. Paul field office, David Easterwood.)

Those incidents set the stage for the case of Rigoberto Soto Jimenez—the petitioner whose habeas petition led Judge Provinzino finally, if briefly, to impose a civil contempt order. Thanks to a transcript of the Feb. 18 contempt hearing, and to Provinzino’s order explaining why she purged it, it is possible to provide here a fairly complete picture of what led her to take that step.

Read it and weep.

On Feb. 2, attorney Erin Lins filed a habeas corpus case in federal court in St. Paul seeking Soto Jimenez’s release from custody. Though no government attorney filed a notice of appearance at that time—or, indeed, ever—the case was assigned to Isihara that same day, as he later admitted at the contempt hearing.

Isihara was one of two special assistant U.S. attorneys, both Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps attorneys, who had been transferred to assist the beleaguered office about one month earlier. He had never practiced in federal court before, he would later note at the contempt hearing. During that month, he had been assigned to defend 126 to 129 habeas corpus cases, he said.

The same day the petition was filed, Judge Provinzino ordered the government to explain why Soto Jimenez should not be released. As is the norm in habeas cases, she required the government to provide “affidavits and exhibits” to show the lawfulness of his detention, along with a “reasoned memorandum of law” and a recommendation of whether an evidentiary hearing should be conducted. The government’s papers were due Feb. 5, a Thursday.

Isihara filed nothing.

The following Monday, Feb. 9, Judge Provinzino ordered Soto Jimenez released, citing the government’s failure to respond. Because Minnesota judges had, by this time, had experience with ICE releasing detainees thousands of miles from their homes without papers or property or even coats or shoes against frigid temperatures—issues that Judge Blackwell had discussed at length during the hearing with Julie Le—Provinzino specified that Soto Jimenez be released “in Minnesota” by 5 pm that Friday, Feb. 13, and that all his property be returned to him. She also ordered the government to file a status report certifying its compliance with her order by Feb. 17.

Isihara would later acknowledge that he learned of Provinzino’s release order at 8:45 a.m. the next morning, Feb. 10, when a paralegal sent it to him. The proper procedure at that time would have been for him to notify ICE’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), which would then contact the relevant detention facility—in this case, in El Paso. (Assistant U.S. attorneys [AUSAs] do not contact the detention facilities directly, but, rather, work through OPLA, Isihara explained.) However, as Isihara admitted at the contempt proceeding, he never notified OPLA.

On Feb. 11, Soto Jimenez’s attorney, Lins, reached out to the El Paso detention center herself, to make sure they knew about the release order. She emailed the order to a general “outreach” mailbox for the El Paso ICE field office. She heard nothing back.

The next day, Feb. 12, her client called her. He had been released but, notwithstanding the terms of the order, in Texas. He had no way to get back. Lins then emailed the two individuals at the El Paso field office whose addresses appeared on a resource list that immigration lawyers have shared with one another, because of the large number of detainees being sent to El Paso. She believes they may be the direct and assistant director of the field office. She alerted them that her client had been released in Texas in contravention of the court order and that he had no way to get back to Minnesota. She heard nothing back—ever.

Lins then decided to try to contact the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case. But since no notice of appearance had ever been filed, she still didn’t know—ten days after the petition was filed and three days after it was granted—who that was. She emailed an AUSA who had been responsive in the past, Trevor Brown. Brown swiftly got back to her, explaining that Isihara had been assigned to the case and cc’ing him on the thread. She then waited a bit to see if Isihara would contact her. He did not.

At 2:43 pm on Feb. 12, Lins emailed Isihara and told him that her "client continues to be in El Paso and does not currently have a way to Minnesota. I would like to resolve this before the status update to the Court is due,” according to undisputed facts that emerged at the contempt hearing.

Two minutes later, Isihara emailed back. “Let me get back to you in a bit,” he said. “I have a few urgent matters I need to close the loop on. I'll circle back with you later this afternoon.”

He didn’t. Isihara never got back to Lins until the morning of the contempt hearing, six days later. 

Soto Jimenez spent the night in a shelter. The next morning Lins, acting on her own, arranged to get him onto a commercial flight back to Minnesota.

By Feb. 16—the day before the government had been ordered to certify compliance with Provinzino’s order—attorney Lins had learned that Soto Jimenez’s property had not been returned to him, another violation of the court order.  The missing property included his Minnesota driver's license and a Mexican consular ID card. She then emailed Isihara again to alert him to the property issue and try to get it returned before the status report was due the next day. She heard nothing back.

On  Feb. 17, the day the government’s certification of compliance was due, Lins wrote the judge, explaining that her client had been released in Texas, not in Minnesota, and that her client’s property had still never been returned to her—both in contravention of her order.

By 3 pm, the appointed deadline for the government’s status report and certification of compliance, Isihara filed nothing—the third violation of Provinzino’s Feb. 9 order. As of that point, in fact—15 days after the case was filed and eight after the judge’s release order—Isihara had never filed a single document in the docket. Not even a notice of appearance.

Late that afternoon, Judge Provinzino issued an “order to show cause” why she should not hold the government in contempt for (1) failing to release Soto Jimenez in Minnesota; (2) failing to return his property to him; and (3) failing to file a status update—all as required by her Feb. 9 release order. She ordered a Zoom teleconference for the next day, Feb. 18, at 2 pm, and ordered the new Civil Chief David Fuller (Voss’s replacement) to appear for the government, as well as the ICE agent or agents “who had notice of the Court’s February 9 Order and is responsible for Petitioner’s custody, property, and release.”

The judge had not ordered Isihara’s appearance because, in the absence of a notice of appearance, she did not even know of his involvement yet. (Lins, in her status-update letter to the court, had discreetly not identified him, though she had recounted their one email exchange.)

Isihara learned of the contempt hearing the next morning, Feb. 18, at about 9:45 a.m. He then emailed ICE’s OPLA—for the first time—to tell them the steps that the Feb. 9 order had required to be taken. He also notified his own civil chief, Fuller. Fuller then contacted the deputy ICE field office director for New Orleans, Scott Ladwig, who has been overseeing Operation Metro Surge. 

Fuller, Isihara, and Ladwig all attended the 2 pm Zoom hearing. But, despite Provinzino’s order, Ladwig was not someone who’d had “notice of her Feb. 9 order,” nor had he been “responsible” for Soto Jimenez’s “custody, property [or] release.” Fuller explained to Judge Provinzino that Ladwig was the best person he could contact in the time frame provided. Though he said he’d also reached out to people in Texas that morning, he had not yet heard anything back.

Ladwig, for his part, testified that he’d only heard about the issue of returning Soto Jimenez’s property “five minutes before the hearing.” Indeed, none of the three government representatives had any idea where Soto Jimenez’s property was—El Paso, Minnesota, or perhaps elsewhere.

Like Ladwig, Civil Chief Fuller knew nothing about the Soto Jimenez case. Fuller first told the judge that Isihara had only been assigned to it on Feb. 12. But Isihara, to his credit, then corrected Fuller, admitting that he’d actually been assigned on Feb 2, the day it was filed.

But despite the urgency of the circumstances—Isihara was responding to an order to show cause why he should not be held in contempt—Isihara himself also appeared to be confused about exactly which case he was being asked about.

“So I filed the response,” he told Provinzino, “which was due, I believe, sometime after February 2nd in this case. ... I had filed a timely response ... when that filing was due.” 

“Are we looking at the same case file?,” Judge Provinzino responded. “I see no response from you. In fact, I entered my order clearly indicating that because the Government had failed to respond, they had waived certain arguments.”

“That’s—that’s correct, Your Honor.” Isihara quickly admitted. “My apologies.” He said that this case had “slipped through the cracks,” citing the enormous volume.

“Here we have a complete breakdown,” the judge commented. “The Government did nothing in this case.” In frustration, she even turned her question around to accentuate the ridiculousness of the situation: “So can you direct me to any ways in which the government has complied with my order?”

The only thing Isihara could come up with was that he had notified OPLA of the contents of her order earlier that morning—nine days after she’d issued it and the morning of the contempt hearing.

Civil chief Fuller then stepped in. “There obviously was a breakdown in this case at the level of the U.S. Attorney's Office,” he conceded, “because of our people, frankly, being overwhelmed with — with just the number of matters,” he said.

To make matters worse, Provinzino had met Isihara in court just nine days earlier—at another contempt hearing. In that case—Juan Carlos Guzman Alvarez v. Bondi—she had ordered him to explain why he and other respondents should not be held in contempt for various failings in that case, including Isihara’s failure to file an ordered status report.

Recounting that incident at the Soto Jimenez hearing, Provinzino said she’d lectured him “that it was really important for the government to file responses to status updates because that’s the way the Court can get some assurance of whether there’s compliance of not, and the way the court can understand what steps have to next happen.” Now, in the Soto Jimenez case, Provinzino asked the same question: Why hadn’t Isihara even filed the status report?

“[M]y understanding,” Isihara said, “was that since we did have a hearing and I became aware of it today, that that would be probably the best point at which to update the court on the current status of things.”

The answer made no sense. The status report had been due the day before at 3:00 pm, before any hearing had been scheduled. Indeed, the contempt hearing was scheduled in part because of his failure to file a status report.

Toward the end of the 90-minute hearing, the court invited final input from the parties.

Lin said she would defer to the court on the issue of contempt. “I’m a very firm believer in professional courtesies,” she said. “I understand that the caseload has affected all parties astronomically, and we are all human. But my client is, too. . . . All the people behind these petitions are humans.”

Civil Chief Fuller appealed to “the court’s good graces.” He continued:

[T]he U.S. Attorney's Office has been struggling and striving mightily to bring about as much compliance as we possibly can. And I understand that Judge Schiltz issued an order not long ago listing a great number of instances of noncompliance. Morale is one of the issues that has caused us difficulty, frankly, in getting additional help. And it has caused us to lose some of the help that we have had. ... There are mistakes that are made from time to time. But in the vast majority of cases, attorneys, my colleagues, such as Mr. Isihara, are doing a very good job, and they're working very, very hard.

Isihara offered an apology. He said, in part:

I am sincerely apologetic about my role in this situation. Again, as I mentioned before, I've had anywhere from 126 to 129, and the paralegals have said that might be a lowball estimate of the number of cases that we've handled over the last month.

I haven't really practiced in federal court before. This is a new experience for me. We've come in in the midst of a crisis. And I will say that my other SAUSA coworkers and I, who were sent here on an Army mission, essentially, we've tried to make the best of our situation, adapt to these new circumstances; but this is uncharted waters for us.

Judge Provinzino then delivered her oral decision, later commemorated in a minute order. She observed that “willfulness” was not a requirement to impose coercive civil contempt sanctions. “More to the point,” she continued, “the government's understaffing and high caseload is a problem of its own making and absolutely does not justify flagrant disobedience of court orders.”

She imposed a $500 per day fine that would accrue the next day “so that if the documents are returned to him tomorrow, no fine will be imposed.”

This is the decision that U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen would, a few hours later, characterize to the New York Times as “a lawless abuse of judicial power.”

The next day, the government did manage to return Soto Jimenez’s documents. In a written order filed on Feb. 20, Provinzino explained that she had, as promised, lifted the fine, with no money having changed hands. But she also explained why she issued the contempt order.

[T]he Government asked the Court to exercise its “discretion” and “good graces” based on the understaffing and oversized caseloads in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. But since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge, the Government has offered that excuse to this Court again, and again, and again  (and to other judges in this district again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again) to excuse its oversights and disobedience of court orders in immigration habeas cases. [The Court’s footnotes have been replaced here by hyperlinks to the relevant case docket.]

Going forward, Provinzino beseeched government attorneys to advise judges when an order was about to be violated, and why. “What the Court will not tolerate is what happened here: disobedience and radio silence from the Government.”

It’s an extraordinary message—and, fundamentally, unsatisfying. She’s saying: I know you are unable to follow my orders; please at least give me a heads-up next time when you are about to violate one.

The correct message was the one she delivered orally at the hearing: “[T]he government's understaffing and high caseload is a problem of its own making and absolutely does not justify flagrant disobedience of court orders.”

Unfortunately, the only appropriate enforcement tool—criminal contempt for the high-level officials responsible for the policies causing these serial crimes—is effectively off the table. The president and his highest officials are the culpable parties, and it is they also who choose whom to prosecute, whom to jail, and whom to pardon.