Segundo A.P.G. v. Bondi – Court Hearing
Court: United States District Court, District of Minnesota
Judge: The Honorable Jerry W. Blackwell, United States District Court Judge
Hearing Type: Show Cause Hearing
Date: February 3, 2026
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
Cases heard: Segundo A.P.G. v. Bondi et al.; Oscar O.T. v. Bondi et al.; Jose L.C.C. v. Bondi et al.; Roman N. v. Trump et al.; Juan V.A.C. v. Bondi et al.
Summary
On February 3, 2026, Federal District Judge Jerry W. Blackwell convened a show cause hearing in St. Paul, Minnesota, to address repeated failures by the federal government to comply with his court orders releasing immigration detainees. The hearing grew out of an enforcement sweep called Operation Metro Surge, which had resulted in the detention of large numbers of people — including many the court had already found to be lawfully present in the United States. Across five separate cases, the judge documented a troubling pattern: orders were issued, ignored, followed up on, and still ignored. People who had been ordered freed were flown across the country, held for days or weeks longer than lawful, and in at least one case released under conditions the court never authorized. The government attorney handling the cases frankly admitted to being undertrained, understaffed, and operating without a working email system. The judge took the matter under advisement.
Who Was in Court
For the Government (Respondents): Julie T. Le, Assistant U.S. Attorney (SAUSA); Ana H. Voss, Assistant U.S. Attorney — both from the United States Attorney's Office, District of Minnesota.
For the Petitioners: Kira A. Kelley, Climate Defense Project, representing Oscar O.T. and Juan V.A.C.; Irina Vaynerman, Groundwork Legal, representing Oscar O.T.
On the Bench: The Honorable Jerry W. Blackwell, United States District Judge.
The five petitioners — identified by first name and initials to protect their privacy — are immigration detainees who had previously been ordered released by this court. None of the petitioners had criminal histories that would require mandatory detention under law.
Background of the Dispute
In early 2026, federal immigration authorities launched Operation Metro Surge, a large-scale enforcement operation in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area that led to the detention of hundreds of people. Many of those detained filed habeas corpus petitions — requests asking a court to determine whether their detention was lawful. Judge Blackwell, along with other judges in the District of Minnesota, reviewed these petitions and, in the majority of cases, found the detentions were not lawful and ordered the individuals released.
A habeas corpus release order is not a suggestion. It is a binding federal court order requiring the government to free a person from custody. In these cases, the government was also required to file a notice with the court within 48 hours confirming the date, time, and location of each person's release.
Instead, Judge Blackwell found himself issuing order after order, sending follow-up after follow-up, and still not receiving timely responses — or, in some cases, any response at all. By the time of this hearing, the court had documented roughly 90 or more violations of release orders, with around ten occurring in just the prior week. That breakdown in compliance is what brought everyone to court on February 3rd.
What Happened in the Hearing
Judge Blackwell opened the hearing with a plain statement of purpose: this was about compliance with court orders — nothing more, nothing less.
He walked through each of the five cases with government attorney Julie Le, who had been assigned to the U.S. Attorney's Office on a special detail from her regular job as an ICE immigration attorney. Le had started the assignment on January 5, 2026 — less than a month before this hearing. She told the judge she had received no meaningful orientation or training, had only just received her access credentials to the DOJ's computer system the day before the hearing, and for weeks had been unable to reliably receive court orders because they were sent to a DOJ email account she couldn't access.
Le was candid, sometimes painfully so. She described working around the clock, logging enormous hours, threatening to quit in order to force action from colleagues, and still feeling like she was swimming against the tide. She said she had eventually developed her own process for tracking and responding to court orders — but acknowledged it had taken weeks to get there, during which time detainees remained in custody past their court-ordered release dates.
The judge then questioned Ana Voss, the senior AUSA on the cases, about accountability. Voss confirmed that when a release order is issued, it flows to the ICE field office at Fort Snelling — specifically to agency counsel there and to the operational staff responsible for carrying it out. When pressed about who ultimately bears responsibility for compliance, Voss acknowledged the buck stops with leadership: herself, the U.S. Attorney, and ultimately the agency heads named as respondents.
Petitioners' attorney Kira Kelley addressed the court last. She described the human cost of the delays — clients left in conditions she called sickening, denied food, clean clothes, phone access, and medical care while a release order sat unenforced. She urged the court to consider imposing sanctions directly on the government as a party, not just pressuring individual attorneys.
The court took the matter under advisement and adjourned at 2:16 p.m.
Key Exchanges in Court
Judge Blackwell opened with a firm statement of principle:
Judge Blackwell:
A court order is not advisory and it is not conditional. It is not something that any agency can treat as optional while it decides how or whether to comply. The authority exercised by the Court is derived from Article III of the Constitution and is not by dint of the parties' agreement with the ruling itself. That authority only has meaning if court orders are obeyed, adhered to promptly, fully, and in good faith. That obligation matters most where liberty is at stake. Detention without lawful authority is not just a technical defect — it is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it.
On the government's argument that Operation Metro Surge had overwhelmed its capacity:
Judge Blackwell:
Volume is not a justification for diluting constitutional rights and it never can be. It heightens the need for care. Having what you feel are too many detainees, too many cases, too many deadlines, and not enough infrastructure to keep up with it all is not a defense to continued detention. If anything, it ought to be a warning sign. What you cannot do is detain first and then sort out lawful authority later.
The judge confirmed the government's own position:
Judge Blackwell:
I don't take it at all that it's the Government's position that Operation Metro Surge has outpaced the Government's ability to lawfully process detentions and comply with judicial oversight. That's not the Government's position, is it?Ms. Voss:
No, certainly not, Your Honor.Judge Blackwell:
And does the DOJ feel that just because it has or needs resources to process all of the claims and comply with court orders, that is a reason for the Court to be relaxing constitutional requirements?Ms. Voss:
No. Certainly not, Your Honor.
On the extraordinary difficulty of getting a simple compliance update:
Judge Blackwell:
There's obviously a person associated with the Government who is going to the detainee to release him or her. You have their name. You can carry with you a form. The name is on it. Just write the time on it and send it to the DOJ. That cannot be the source of this noncompliance problem because that's too easy to fix, and I don't even work for the Executive Branch.
Attorney Le's frank admission about being unprepared:
Judge Blackwell:
So are you telling the Court that you were brought in brand new — a shiny, brand new penny into this role — and you received no proper orientation or training on what you were supposed to do?Ms. Le:
I have to say yes to that question, Your Honor.
On conditions imposed on released detainees without court authorization — in the Jose case:
Judge Blackwell:
Are you in any way defending the idea that for somebody who's been ordered released unconditionally because they were unlawfully arrested, the Government or DHS or anyone should be imposing conditions upon their release that the Court hasn't approved of?Ms. Le:
I am not defending it. That's why I have to go back and get them corrected, and it is corrected. But it took a fight — a big, huge fight — to get that done.
The judge explained why court orders have grown more specific over time:
Judge Blackwell:
I know that the Government has a concern about the growing number of requirements that the Court puts in place upon release of individuals. That happens because of the things we learn. For example, if we say release the person immediately, then we learn that, having transported him to El Paso or New Mexico, you don't bring him back. We learn that somebody is put out on the street with just the clothes on their backs and has to figure out how to get back here when they should not have been arrested here in the first place, let alone flown halfway across the continent of North America. And so some of this is of your own making by not complying with orders. Do you understand that?Ms. Le:
I do. And I share the same concern with you, Your Honor.
Ms. Voss acknowledged the situation was unprecedented:
Judge Blackwell:
Never in your career have you had such an incidence of having to account to the Court for noncompliance from the DOJ. When have you ever seen anything like it?Ms. Voss:
I have not in my career, Your Honor.
Petitioners' attorney Kira Kelley described what her clients experienced while waiting to be released:
Ms. Kelley:
He was without food. He was without clean clothes. He was subject to physical danger, both through reckless driving of ICE agents transporting him from one location to another, watching people screaming in pain with medical neglect, being exposed to COVID. Eating food that he conflated with dog food. People are just being treated like less than human. And all of this was happening while he had a court order for his release.
Ms. Kelley urged the court to look beyond the attorneys and address the government directly:
Ms. Kelley:
An e-mail with bold font is not going to change the widespread, systemic pattern of disregard for court orders and honestly for basic human rights in this situation. We need judicial intervention — and it has to be more than just having counsel be the go-between here. Sanctions to the party are within your inherent authority and are appropriate to bring this situation — this egregious, widespread pattern — back into the Court's control and into the Constitution's control.
The Judge's Ruling or Direction
Judge Blackwell did not issue a final ruling at this hearing. He stated that the court would take the matter under advisement, meaning he would review everything presented and issue a written order or ruling at a later date.
However, the judge made clear throughout the hearing that he considered the pattern of noncompliance serious and unacceptable. He asked pointed questions about accountability within ICE, the DOJ, and the chain of command responsible for executing release orders. He also raised — but did not yet act on — the possibility of calling the Fort Snelling field office counsel to appear before him directly to answer for the failures.
The judge was equally clear that his goal was not to punish individual lawyers. His aim was systemic compliance — ensuring that court orders are carried out promptly, fully, and in good faith going forward.
What Happens Next
The court will issue a written decision addressing the compliance failures documented at this hearing. Possible outcomes include formal orders to show cause directed at specific officials, sanctions against the government as a party, additional reporting requirements imposed on ICE and the DOJ, or the scheduling of further hearings with higher-level agency personnel.
The cases of all five petitioners — Segundo, Oscar, Jose, Roman, and Juan — remain active. At least some of the petitioners had been released by the time of the hearing, though often weeks after their court-ordered release dates. The broader Operation Metro Surge litigation in the District of Minnesota continues, with dozens of additional habeas petitions pending before Judge Blackwell and other judges in the district.
Why This Hearing Matters
This hearing is significant for several reasons that go well beyond these five cases.
First, it documents in striking detail what happens when a large-scale government enforcement operation outpaces the legal infrastructure needed to carry it out lawfully. Court-ordered releases were ignored not out of deliberate defiance — at least not in every case — but because the system was simply not built to handle the volume. People paid the price for that with days and weeks of unlawful detention.
Second, it raises fundamental questions about the rule of law. Federal court orders are not negotiable. When a judge orders someone released and nothing happens, the court's authority — and by extension the entire legal system's authority — is undermined. Judge Blackwell's message was direct: the Constitution does not pause for administrative inconvenience.
Third, the hearing illustrates the human cost of systemic failure. The people detained were not abstractions. They had families, communities, and in most cases, no criminal history. Some were left in dangerous conditions — in subfreezing temperatures, without coats or shoes, cut off from their families and attorneys — while paperwork sat unprocessed.
Finally, the hearing raises a question that courts around the country may soon have to answer: what remedies are available when a branch of government repeatedly fails to comply with judicial orders? The judge hasn't answered that question yet — but he's clearly asking it.
Endnotes
The five cases heard at this proceeding are: Segundo A.P.G. v. Pamela Bondi et al.; Oscar O.T. v. Pamela Bondi et al.; Jose L.C.C. v. Pamela Bondi et al.; Roman N. v. Donald J. Trump et al.; and Juan V.A.C. v. Pamela Bondi et al. — all filed in the United States District Court, District of Minnesota, before Judge Jerry W. Blackwell.
Operation Metro Surge is referenced throughout the hearing as the enforcement operation that generated the volume of detentions underlying these cases.
Petitioners' counsel Kira Kelley referenced two declarations filed in a separate related proceeding — one by her client Oscar describing conditions of his detention, and one by herself documenting her own efforts to communicate with the government. Those declarations were filed in The Advocates for Human Rights et al. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security et al.
The term "SAUSA" used during the hearing refers to a Special Assistant United States Attorney — an attorney from another agency assigned on a temporary detail to assist the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The term "PIV card" refers to a Personal Identity Verification card, a federal government-issued credential required to access secure computer systems.
The Whipple Building and Sherburne County Jail, referenced in connection with the Segundo case, are detention locations used by ICE in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area.
This article is a reader-friendly presentation of a public court proceeding held in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota on February 3, 2026. It is based on the official court transcript and has been rewritten for clarity and accessibility. It is not legal advice, and nothing in this article should be relied upon as such. If you have questions about immigration law or your legal rights, please consult a licensed attorney.
