Prosecutor Who Said 'System Sucks' Fired

A Minneapolis prosecutor who openly vented about her immigration caseload in court is now out of a job at the US attorney's office. Julie T. Le, a lawyer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who had been detailed to the US attorney's office in Minnesota, was removed from that temporary post Wednesday, a day after a tense exchange with a federal judge in St. Paul, sources tell the New York Times. Le told Judge Jerry W. Blackwell that she and her colleagues were swamped by immigration cases tied to the Trump administration's statewide enforcement push.

Confronted over why prosecutors had not complied with his orders to release immigrants he found were being illegally held, Le described a system in collapse. "The system sucks. This job sucks," she said in court, adding that she was doing everything she could but lacked the power to fix what she called a broken process. "I don't have a magic button to do it. I don't have the power or the voice to do it," she said. "I only can do it within the ability and the capacity that I have." She told the judge that asking ICE and Homeland Security to deal with violations of court orders was like "pulling teeth," requiring "escalation and a threat that I will walk out" before anything was fixed, the Minnesota Star Tribune reports.

"Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have full 24 hours of sleep," Le said. She told the judge she had "stupidly" volunteered for the Minnesota assignment and hadn't been properly trained, the AP reports. She said she had already submitted her resignation but had stayed at the office because no replacement could be found. Le had about 90 immigration-related cases on her plate, the Times reports. Blackwell told her that the workload was no excuse for disregarding court orders. "I hear the concerns about all the energy that this is causing the DOJ to expend, but, with respect, some of it is of your own making by not complying with orders," he said.

Le's outburst, and swift removal, spotlight the strain on Minnesota's federal courts, where judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys are struggling under a flood of immigration detention challenges. "The DOJ, the DHS, and ICE are not above the law," Judge Blackwell said, warning that ignoring court orders threatens not just judicial authority but the constitutional rights of people in custody. It's unclear whether Le also faces consequences in her permanent role at ICE. In a statement, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that Le was a probationary attorney and that her "conduct is unprofessional and unbecoming of an ICE attorney."