Federal judge says rule of law was threatened during Operation Metro Surge
Judge Patrick J. Schiltz and six other members of Minnesota’s federal bench gave on-the-record interviews about the winter 2026 immigration crackdown known as Operation Metro Surge. Schiltz, a former Scalia clerk who was chief judge during the operation, said the federal government’s conduct created a grave threat to the rule of law. His district received more than a thousand habeas petitions, and he found in a January order that immigration agents had violated nearly a hundred court orders in a single month. He also quashed broad grand-jury subpoenas issued to Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other officials, writing that opening a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or coerce official action is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand-jury process. Judges described threatening phone calls arriving continuously after high-profile rulings, with clerks logging hundreds of messages a day; a Justice Department spokesperson responded that the judges should recuse themselves from pending cases and said the administration will continue to comply with court orders.