AS PROMISED I HAVE THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE HEARING YESTERDAY IN WHICH THE LAWYER SAID THAT IT “SUCKS” AND WISHED THE JUDGE WOULD HOLD HER IN CONTEMPT SO THAT SHE CAN GET SOME REST – THERE IS *SO MUCH MORE* TO IT!
First, to all of you people saying nasty things about the attorney, Julie Le, stop it *right now*! This woman is a hero *trying to help people who have been detained*! She is essentially acting as a liaison between the Court and ICE and DHS! (Also I’m not sure whether the sometimes odd wording is because perhaps English is not Ms. Le’s first language?)
This 46-page transcript (included for Notes from the Front members, and which yes, I had to pay for out of my own pocket – I feel now that I have to explain that to the people who complain about the $5 a month membership), is really eye-opening – what the media has been reporting (the “This job sucks” and the “I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep”), is just a tiny tip of the iceberg.
To set the stage, this is a hearing covering five different habeas matters with which Ms. Le is trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to get ICE to comply. She is clearly struggling to get her ICEy overlords to do the right thing, with very little success. She is TRYING TO GET PEOPLE RELEASED. And she is there having to explain to a very ticked off court just *why* the Court’s orders have not been followed.
She starts out by explaining “So I receive the — okay. Just to have some background, I was put on this special mission to help with the U.S. Attorney Office with all the habeas claims that they have received. They are overwhelmed and they need help, so I, I have to say, stupidly enough to volunteer.”
She goes on:
“So in January 5th when I started with the agency, I have to be honest, we have no guidance or direction on what we need to do. And so when you showed up, they just throw you in the well and then here we go. I was tagalong with attorneys during my first week of my assignment there.”
And this exchange:
THE COURT: 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.
And..
THE COURT: Do you know that they are flown out of Minnesota sometimes within hours, if not the next day, of being detained?
MS. LE: Yes. I know that they are doing that.
THE COURT: And do you feel there’s anything wrong with taking hours or days to fly them out of Minnesota when they’ve been —
MS. LE: Oh, yeah, definitely.
THE COURT: Just a minute. Let me finish my question.
MS. LE: Yes.
THE COURT: — to fly them out of Minnesota and 13 days to return them when they’ve been found to unlawfully detained?
MS. LE: Your Honor, I did ask the same question too. I have not got the answer.
—
Now, I’m not making excuses for Ms. Le, in some cases she definitely messed up, but hopefully the above gives you a sense of just how in over their heads are these attorneys trying to get court orders complied with and getting *no* support from their superiors at ICE and DHS, in fact sometimes getting the *opposite* of support.
This all leads to the exchange which starts on page 30 of the transcript, when the Court notes that the Court ordered an individual to be released “with no conditions”, and yet DHS released that individual *with* conditions.
THE COURT: “…what I learned was that in the case of Jose, who had been ordered to have been released without any conditions, I learned that the Government had imposed conditions on his release that were not a part of the Court’s order and that were not imposed based upon any consent agreement, order from the Court. Is that accurate?
MS. LE: That is accurate, Your Honor.
THE COURT: And then your office has to then engage in more efforts because those conditions have to be then struck because they weren’t ordered by the Court. Is that what you had to do then?
MS. LE: I have to go back and pulling teeth to get things fixed. And it took a long time. … it took a long, long, long time and many order to show cause to explain and let them know that, Come on, if you guys don’t fix it, I’m going to quit and you are going to be dragging yourself into court.
I have to say that too in front of that in order to get it fixed.
I did put in my resignation from the job too, but they couldn’t find a replacement. So I gave them a specific time and — to get it done. If they don’t, then by all mean, I’m going to walk out. And before I walk out, I was able to release another individual, a juvenile.”
Then comes her now infamous line:
“I am here as a bridge and a liaison between the one that in jail, because if I walk out — sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep. I work days and night just because people still in there.”
There is more, so much more, but this gives you a taste of it. Notes from the Front members, I encourage you to read the entire transcript (46 pages) but if not, start on around page 25 or 26 and read from there.
By the way, she was removed from her post in Minneapolis today.
Notes from the Front members: the full transcript is in your inbox.
NOTE: To preserve original source documents before they can be tampered with, and to protect myself from claims of improper republication, and hey, the trolls, I make documents I find (and at times purchase out of my own pocket) privately available to Notes from the Front members. Often these are non-public documents, others may be public but I find the source originals for you and include explanations and insights based on my decades of law practice and as a law professor, with a side of snark. ;~)
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https://annepmitchell.substack.com/p/i-have-the-transcript-of-the-hearing-f6d
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