The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a judicial misconduct complaint against federal judges in Minnesota who spoke to The New York Times about last winter's immigration enforcement surge, asking the federal appeals court that oversees them to investigate and to order the judges to step aside from cases involving the Department of Homeland Security.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit at a Justice Department news conference. "We have a right, just like every litigant in court, to have a judge that will be fair and impartial," he said. "We have no choice but to act." In a written statement, Blanche said seven of the district's federal judges had talked to the paper "about cases, some of which are on-going, in a manner that the Department of Justice views as a clear violation of their ethical duties." Their conduct, he said, "has undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota."
The complaint names Judge Patrick Schiltz and Judge John Tunheim along with judges it identifies only as "anonymous district judges." Schiltz led the district as chief judge from 2022, when he took over from Tunheim, until July 1. The filing grows out of a Sept. 17 Times article headlined "Trump's Minnesota Surge Threatened Democracy, Judge Warns," for which Schiltz sat for a 90-minute interview. According to the department, the paper said six of the seven judges who held active status in Minnesota last winter spoke with it.
Schiltz, an appointee of President George W. Bush who once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, told the Times that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's violations of court orders "created a grave threat to the rule of law." Tunheim, a Clinton appointee, took issue with the administration's contention that it was arresting the "worst of the worst." "They weren't arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street," he told the paper.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward signed the complaint, which accuses Schiltz and Tunheim of having "flagrantly violated the Code of Judicial Conduct with their improper and unethical comments" to the newspaper. Schiltz's comments, it says, were "overly political and concern matters that are pending," while Tunheim's, though "less verbose," were "equally unethical." The two officials also turned the judge's phrase back on him. If anything is a "grave threat to the rule of law," they wrote, "it is judges who repeatedly and brazenly exceed their authority then launch a partisan press campaign," which they said included criticizing the government for seeking an emergency appeal after a judge declined to rule on a search warrant application.
The department argues that the public now has reason to doubt the judges' impartiality in immigration matters. "DHS frequently has cases pending in the District of Minnesota, including immigration cases before Judge Schiltz and Judge Tunheim," the complaint says. "These judges should be ordered to recuse from any matters involving DHS because the public reasonably questions their impartiality in cases involving immigration." It also asks the Eighth Circuit to investigate what the department called "the judges' improper and unethical conduct."
Woodward said in the department's announcement that "public confidence in judicial impartiality cannot survive if judges seek out media attention and pander to the press," adding that the complaint "ensures we have a fair and impartial forum to continue to vigorously enforce our Nation's immigration laws in court." McCotter said the filing alleges that the judges "used their official judicial office to pander to the press about immigration policies."
Schiltz defended the interview. "As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times," he said in a statement. He cited a February advisory opinion that lets judges address "core judicial matters" such as the rule of law and judicial independence, and said that was what he had done. Rebeccah Parks, a spokeswoman for the federal court in Minnesota, offered the same defense on behalf of the court's judges, saying they "were acting well within the ethical rules" when they spoke to the paper.
The opinion, issued by the Judicial Conference's Committee on Codes of Conduct, says ethics principles "permit judges to speak or write about the independence of the judiciary, or advocate for the rule of law in general," and that there is "room, in at least some circumstances, for the measured defense of judicial colleagues" against illegitimate criticism. It also asks judges to weigh the "tone, context, and form" of what they say, including when they talk to reporters anonymously. Judge Nancy E. Brasel, appointed by Trump in his first term, appeared to invoke that guidance in the Times article. "We are allowed to speak out about judicial independence," she told the paper. "And so we should, in order to keep it."
The dispute dates to the winter crackdown. The administration launched Operation Metro Surge in December 2025 and sent more than 3,000 immigration officers to Minnesota, and border czar Tom Homan said in February that the operation would wind down. Judges in the state were swamped with petitions from detained migrants seeking release. In a pair of January orders, Schiltz identified 96 court orders in 74 cases that he said ICE had violated, writing on Jan. 28 that "ICE is not a law unto itself." CNN reported that the judges' comments to the Times focused on how staffing shortages at the Justice Department appeared to hamper the government's ability to comply with court orders, a point they had made before in legal proceedings. Blanche called the comments "overtly political" and said they reflected "an obvious bias" against the Department of Homeland Security.
CNN noted that the recusal demand may carry little practical weight, since the bar for disqualifying a judge is high and earlier efforts and public complaints have gone nowhere. A misconduct complaint that a former top Justice Department official filed last year against Chief Judge James Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington, over comments he allegedly made at a closed-door meeting of judges, was dismissed in December after the department failed to provide "sufficient evidence" about the alleged statement, according to a decision by Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit.
The department is not alone in objecting to judges speaking out. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary committees, had urged Chief Justice John Roberts to stop judges from talking to the press, particularly when they do so anonymously, before the conduct committee issued its February guidance.