ICE Director Todd Lyons Maybe Gotta Tell It To The Judge
Judge epically sick of Todd’s crap!
While the Supreme Court Six are lining up to put their stamp of approval on every one of Holy Executive Donald J. Trump’s unconstitutional fascist sharts, most of the rest of the judiciary has been less enraptured. Now the chief federal judge of Minnesota, Patrick J. Schiltz — who was appointed by George W. Bush, and once clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, by the way — has demanded that the (acting) director of ICE, Todd Lyons, hustle his cheeks into the courtroom and plant them in a chair this Friday, January 30, at 1 p.m. to explain why he, Todd, should not be found in contempt, following Judge Schiltz ordering back on January 14 that Ecuadorean immigrant Juan Hugo Tobay Robles was to either be released or have a hearing within a week to challenge his detention, but is somehow still in custody without a hearing or an explanation.
Though Judge Schiltz graciously said he would excuse Lyons if ICE released Tobay Robles, who entered the US illegally about 30 years ago as a minor and appears to have no criminal record. Judge Schiltz ruled on the 14th that Tobay Robles had been wrongly detained by agents, and now, after nearly two weeks, Judge Schiltz has taken this extraordinary, unprecedented step because he is all the fuck out of the last of his judgely patience with the extraordinary, unprecedented balls of these people.
Judge Schiltz:
This is one of dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks. The practical consequence of respondents’ failure to comply has almost always been significant hardship to aliens (many of whom have lawfully lived and worked in the United States for years and done absolutely nothing wrong).
Judge Schlitz did not specify which court orders he meant, exactly, but ICE golems have been flagrantly ignoring Judge Kathleen Menendez’s order to quit arresting, detaining, pepper-spraying or otherwise retaliating against peaceful protesters in Minnesota, even before the Eighth Circuit put her ruling on hold.
ICYMI, LAST FRIDAY:
Judge Schiltz is also surely still reeling from getting gobsmacked last Friday, when the US attorney in Minnesota, regime lackey Daniel N. Rosen, came to him whining for him to overturn a fellow judge, Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko, and sign an arrest warrant for Don Lemon and four protestors, even though the five were not accused of anything criminal — at worst, yelling in a church, and in Lemon’s case, doing journalism about it.
It is important to emphasize that what the US attorney requested is unheard-of in our district or, as best as I can tell, any other district in the Eighth Circuit. I have surveyed all of our judges — some of whom have been judges in our district for over 40 years — and no one can remember the government asking a district judge to review a magistrate judge’s denial of an arrest warrant.
We haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to Todd Lyons, as we were distracted by the rise of Gregory Bovino as the Commander Op At Large for all of ICE and Border Patrol. But now that old Greg has fucked off to somewhere, perhaps playing pinochle with Johnathan Ross and Alex Pretti’s killers wherever they’re hiding out, his social media taken away, leaving him and alleged $50,000 bribe-taker/grunting lug Tom Homan in charge, let’s find out more about this Todd.
Here is his official picture.
Todd has been with ICE for nearly 20 years, and before that he did two six-year stints in the Air Force, where he got into Special Operations stuff.
And though he is no lawyer, Lyons appears to be the author of ICE’s most evil memos, like decreeing that ICE can lock up detainees for as many years as any removal proceedings might take, and one more recently instructing agents that they can ignore the agency’s own training manuals now, because ICE has some kind of new special exception to the Constitution that means they don’t need judicial warrants to enter houses any more, even farther than 100 miles from the border. Just an administrative warrant — i.e., a permission slip from themselves — is fine now.
Lyons has also defended agents wearing masks and hiding their identification, and memorably the detention of a Massachusetts teenager on his way to his high school graduation last year.
But even Yale Law grad JD Vance knows that routinely breaking down doors to private homes with no warrant is such reeking bullshit that even certain corrupt, fascist-loving SCOTUS justices might think it just a little bit more than the law will allow:
“What the Department of Homeland Security really has proposed to the Department of Justice is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law. Now, it’s possible, I guess, that the courts will say no. And, of course, if the courts say no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We’re talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system.”
Unless, though, “somebody’s firing on an officer or they have to do something in order to protect themselves.”
A big unless, as agents have lied about every single shooting, car ramming, and toddler gassing that they’ve been involved with, that they had to protect themselves. Just like they did with Alfredo Aljorna, the man they chased and according to witnesses shot in the leg through his own front door in Minnesota in the week in between Renee Good’s killing and Alex Pretti’s, claiming that Aljorna had beaten them with a broom handle.
And oh crap, goons just shot somebody in Arizona too.
Good and Pretti weren’t even the first people murdered by ICE gangs, they were the fourth and fifth. But they were the first white victims, and also the first ones whose deaths were graphically recorded on video form multiple angles, leaving no doubt to any non-cult-member about who the aggressor was.
Let us not also forget the 33 people who have died in ICE custody since Noem took over.
Thirty-eight people who would surely still be alive right now, if only Kamala Harris had been born with a penis.
And at least nine people have been shot and injured yet not killed (that we know of, so far). Many of them while driving moving cars! Agents are surely not just demoralized because they’re exhausted and know everyone hates them, but also by their fellow agents’ terrifying lack of trigger discipline, like emptying 10 rounds into a person with other agents standing feet away. It’s amazing that more of them haven’t gotten hit by “friendly fire,” or hit by cars driven by the injured or dead.
DHS may have recruited 22,000 people, but that does not seem like enough to keep up the pace of terror on a population of 341 million for three more years, not even with the help of AI and every byte of Peter Thiel’s snooping technologies.
And speaking of Tom Homan and $50,000 bribes, note that ICE recruits don’t get that $50,000 bonus at signup, the government is not dumb. The money is a pre-tax amount broken into payments over four years, and if you drop out before two years, you have to pay the bonuses back, and still owe the income taxes. So you get $10-$30k at signup, they take something like $3k-$9k of that for taxes, and if you quit before your term, you still owe them the signup money but are out the taxes. A government indentured servant!
If you’re amoral, have only a high school diploma, and desperately need to make an extra 10k (which is actually $7k) a year, which would you rather: Join ranks with the goons who keep firing off multiple rounds of rubber and metal bullets and gas in close proximity to your face, or live an honest life selling your butthole on OnlyFans?
The end.
[Tobay Robles v. Noem / New York Times archive link / The Trace]
I'm not showing my ass on the Internet for any kind of money. Can we create a baked goods equivalent and call it OnlyFlans?
This flouting of court orders (on behalf of the ethnic cleansing the unreconstructed sought in the 2024 election) will continue until actual sanctions start happening:
* Contempt of court assessment and incarceration.
* Sanctions for legal counsel.
Until these things happen Maladministration 2.0 is going to feel free to play in our faces and violate the Constitutional rights of Americans (and anyone within its borders).