A federal judge went scorched earth on the Department of Justice for trying to force his hand in a major immigration case.
District Judge Drew Tipton, who was appointed by Donald Trump, issued an injunction last week saying that Biden’s administration couldn’t use any of the new immigration rules it implemented when Joe Biden took office.
On Monday, Tipton told the DOJ they had one week to make an appeal of his ruling to a higher court before forcing the Biden administration to play by Trump’s rules, according to The Washington Times.
But prior to that, Tipton told Adam Kirschner, a DOJ attorney, that he was not happy with the department for trying to force his hand, Politico reported.
Tipton was furious after the DOJ seemingly threatened that it would seek emergency relief from an appeals court by 2 p.m. Central Time if Tipton had not acted on a request to stay last week’s injunction.
“Whose idea was it to impose a 2 p.m. deadline on the court?” Tipton asked.
“This is the view of the United States,” Kirschner said. “I can’t speak to internal deliberations. It shows the urgency that we have and the great irreparable harm posed by the injunction.”
Tipton kept on asking who at the Justice Department thought it was a good idea to give him a 2 p.m. deadline to make a decision.
“Whose idea was it?” he said. “Were you involved in it?”
Kirschner said he was in the discussions but would not name anyone else.
Tipton had scheduled a hearing on the case at 3:15 p.m. and did not appreciate the Biden administration trying to tell him that he needed to make his ruling an hour and 15 minutes sooner.
“It’s not a good look … to have a hearing set for 3:15 to address these issues and then to get a deadline,” he said.
“This was not an attack at you or an attack at the court,” Kirschner said. “We thought if we were to wait until after the hearing it would be another day lost.”
The immigration ruling could be crucial.
Some 50,000 migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally have been released in the United States without a court date.
Axios reported that the migrants have been told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office following their release and that only 13 percent of them showed up so far.
As detailed by the publication, the group was not given a court date to show up for hearings.
Biden’s administration hopes that migrants will show up at the offices on their own volition in order to get work permits.
An additional 16,000 migrants did not show up and passed the 60-day reporting window they were given – equivalent to 2.4 migrants who failed to report in for everyone that has.
The remaining group, made up of some 27,000 migrants, who crossed and were released at the same time frame have yet to turn up but remain under the 60-day timeframe for reporting.
A DHS official emphasized to the publication that nearly 70% of migrants are within the 60-day window or have reported to ICE.
Despite the lack of court dates given to those 50,000 migrants, the release of migrants continues unabated.
The months of higher-than-normal border crossing activity are seeing 20-year record highs, with more than 1 million apprehensions for the year to date.
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