A Minnesota federal judge held an attorney for the Justice Department in civil contempt of court after the government released a man from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody without his identification documents, in violation of a court order, further escalating tensions between the judiciary and the Trump administration over immigration cases.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino ordered the attorney, Matthew Isihara, to pay $500 each day until the petitioner’s identification documents are returned to him. Isihara is a military lawyer currently detailed to assist the Justice Department as a special U.S. attorney, according to his LinkedIn profile.
A day later, the government returned the man’s property to him, and Provinzino said no fines would be imposed.
The plaintiff, Rigoberto Soto Jimenez, was arrested in mid-January, part of a monthslong immigration crackdown in Minnesota. On Feb. 9, after the man sued for his release, Provinzino ordered Soto Jimenez to be released from ICE custody, finding that he was unlawfully detained because immigration officials did not have an administrative warrant to justify his detention.
She ordered his release without any conditions and ordered “all property” to be returned to him. She also said he must be released in Minnesota, where court documents show he has lived since 2018 with his lawful permanent resident spouse.
“None of that happened,” Provinzino wrote Friday. Instead, the judge said, Soto Jimenez’s attorney told the court that he was released in Texas — “a state unknown to him” — without his driver’s license or other IDs, forcing him to spend a night in a shelter before his lawyer could arrange a flight back to Minnesota.
Earlier this week, the judge scheduled a show cause hearing with lawyers for both parties after Provinzino said that the Justice Department had failed to release Soto Jimenez in Minnesota as required by her order and failed to return Soto Jimenez’s property to him. The judge also said the government failed to provide her with a status update.
According to a transcript of Wednesday’s hearing obtained by CBS News, Soto Jimenez was transported to an ICE detention center in El Paso, Texas. His attorney, Erin Lins, said in court that she had repeatedly attempted to reach ICE officials in El Paso, but never received a response. She also said she made multiple unsuccessful attempts to reach government attorneys in Minnesota to find a resolution for her client.
The Justice Department attorneys who argued for the government said they were also unable to reach ICE officials who were working on Soto Jimenez’s case in Texas.
“We’re in a somewhat similar position to plaintiff’s counsel — or petitioner’s counsel, unfortunately,” the attorney, David Fuller, said, before defending Isihara’s work and saying any issues in the handling of the case were “inadvertent.”
When pressed for his explanation on what happened in the case, Isihara told Judge Provinzino that “unfortunately, this was one instance in which, to be candid, the ball was dropped and — on my part.”
Both Fuller and Isihara said that the “downfall” in the case was the result of working in an understaffed and overburdened office, an argument Provinzino rejected.
“The government’s only argument against a finding of contempt is the assertion that the government’s failure to comply was not intentional or willful, but, rather, because of understaffing and high caseloads,” Provinzino said Wednesday. “But willfulness is not a requirement to impose coercive civil contempt sanctions. More to the point, the government’s understaffing and high caseload is a problem of its own making and absolutely does not justify flagrant disobedience of court orders.”
Lins told CBS News on Friday: “[I’m] glad that my client received his property. It is unfortunate that this case reached this point. It highlights the challenges immigrants are facing in receiving their property back after release, which in many cases affects their ability to work and drive legally.”
The Justice Department and Isihara did not respond to requests for comment.
Provinzino isn’t the first federal judge in Minnesota to accuse the government of violating court orders in immigration cases. In some cases, judges have accused federal agencies of slow-walking their orders to release migrants, releasing people in other parts of the country or making people wear ankle monitors despite orders to release them with no conditions.
Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, accused ICE of violating court orders nearly 100 times in the month of January. He said the agency “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
In recent months, the federal court system has been flooded by requests for people to be released from immigration detention. Those requests — known as “habeas corpus petitions” — have spiked as the Trump administration has ramped up immigration arrests and sought to detain many migrants indefinitely while their deportation cases are pending.
Those requests have caused what one U.S. official described to CBS News as a “tsunami” of immigration cases that have strained the Justice Department’s resources.
The issue is especially acute in Minnesota, where the U.S. Attorney’s Office has grappled with a wave of resignations by experienced prosecutors. The Justice Department has tried to augment that office with prosecutors from neighboring states and military attorneys.
Isihara, a member of the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s corps, has been listed as an attorney on more than 100 cases filed against the government since last month, federal court records show.
Another person who was temporarily assigned to help the Justice Department with habeas petitions in Minnesota, ICE lawyer Julie Le, has been assigned to more than 80 cases. The strain on federal resources burst into public view in one of Le’s cases earlier this month, when she responded to frustrations by a federal judge by saying during a hearing: “The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need.”
Le, who was later removed from her Justice Department detail, invited the judge to hold her in contempt of court “so that I can have a full 24 hours sleep.”
In her order Friday, Judge Provinzino said she expects Justice Department attorneys to show “100% compliance” going forward, and to quickly notify the court if an order might be violated. She wrote that the court has been “exceedingly patient” with government lawyers and understands that they are in a difficult situation, but “at this point, the refrain of ‘understaffing’ and ‘too many cases’ has worn out its welcome, particularly when it comes at the expense of individual rights.”
“This Court would never allow a private attorney or litigant to rely on an ‘I’m too busy’ excuse to justify disobedience of a court order. The Government is no different,” the judge wrote.
