The Department of Justice moved to disqualify two Minnesota immigration judges from their cases after the judges publicly criticized the Trump administration’s deportation policy. Judge Patrick Schlitz and Judge John Tunheim participated in a report by the New York Times in which they criticized the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge.
In the report, they characterized Metro Surge as “a grave threat to the rule of law” and revealed that during the flood of immigration cases produced by Metro Surge arrests, various Minnesota judges communicated with informal email threads and spreadsheets about the legal issues in their cases.
The Department of Justice filed a judicial misconduct complaint against Schlitz, Tunheim, and the other Minnesota judges involved in the New York Times report, alongside motions to recuse Schlitz and Tunheim in their two immigration-related cases. Schlitz is currently presiding over the DOJ’s efforts to strip citizenship from a Somali national who supported Al-Shabaab terrorists. Tunheim is presiding over the prosecution of a South African national accused of fraudulent citizenship claims and illegal voting.
The justice department argued that judges in immigration-related cases such as these should be free of political bias. The judges’ statements in the New York Times report arguably indicated bias in favor of illegal aliens.
These liberal judges exposed their disdain for immigration enforcement, and it follows that their open borders ideology would hamper their ability to be impartial.
Labeling efforts to enforce the law as a threat to the rule of law should be disqualifying for any judge. They do not get to pick and choose which laws get enforced and which ones do not. Only legislators elected by the American people have the authority to set laws in place.
Texans for Strong Border applauds the DOJ’s crackdown on out-of-control judges. For too long, the Left has weaponized the judiciary into their own source of partisan power.
The judicial misconduct complaint against Schlitz and Tunheim now heads to the Eighth Circuit, where it will hopefully result in disciplinary action. America needs a judiciary that is trustworthy and not a biased, political tool. Punishing these rogue judges would help restore confidence in the broken system.