In a January column, I argued that the Trump administration’s decision to shield Immigrations and Custom Enforcement from investigation in state courts was one of many reasons to understand ICE as morphing into a secret police force. The federal government behaving as if its law enforcement arm is not fully bound by the law is a clear warning sign of authoritarianism.
Things appear even more dire now. An alarming and remarkably detailed report from Politico this week shows that the Trump administration is systematically bucking court orders to ICE to release detainees. In the process, the Trump administration is chipping away at the authority of the courts that obviously have jurisdiction.
ICE is operating increasingly like a rogue operation.
Politico reviewed hundreds of cases and found a wide variety of ways the Trump administration has refused to to comply with the courts on ICE-related orders. Some of those findings include:
- ICE has taken days or weeks to comply with court orders to release detainees, sometimes “requiring emergency motions by detainees’ lawyers and contempt threats from judges” before complying.
- ICE has imposed “conditions of release” on detainees, including GPS monitoring, whom judges “ruled should never have been arrested in the first place.”
- Despite judges’ orders barring detainees from being transferred out of their districts, ICE is shuttling detainees out of state, which makes it harder for them to fight for their release.
- The Department of Justice has ignored court-ordered deadlines to respond to defending detention decisions and habeas corpus petitions.
Judges have tools for enforcing the law if they’re ignored — including holding parties in contempt, sanctioning attorneys and issuing stricter, more detailed orders. For now, it appears that many of the courts’ reactions to the Trump administration’s noncooperation is waiting for compliance and issuing more specific, exasperated orders trying to box in ICE. But the judges’ language in their orders reflects a growing awareness that the failures to observe the law are not just an accident.
ICE is operating increasingly like a rogue operation, and the Trump administration’s constant acts of defiance of the judicial system appear to be tests to see how far it can go in disregarding the law. There are concrete reasons for concern about ICE behaving like a lawless force that ought to concern us in the near future: MAGA activists including Steve Bannon are calling for ICE agents to be deployed at polling sites during the midterms. It is not only imaginable, but plausible, that Trump could attempt such a gambit to alter the election results by intimidating voters, or create a pretext for questioning the results by causing chaos at specific sites. And if a judge orders ICE to stay away from the polls, we have increasingly little reason to be confident the administration will obey.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. 
