How Trump Broke the Department of Justice

"I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep."

That's what a lawyer representing Donald Trump's government told a federal judge on Tuesday. Julie Le, who had volunteered to help the Department of Justice handle its crushing caseload, was assigned 88 federal court cases in under a month. Her courtroom confession reveals how Trump's immigration crackdown has systematically broken the Justice Department.

When Courts Can't Get Answers

The crisis began when Trump deployed thousands of immigration agents to Minneapolis without sending enough lawyers to handle the inevitable legal fallout. As Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz explained in a January 26 order, the administration "decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result."

The result? Federal judges issue orders to release detainees or take other actions, but there's often no lawyer available to respond. When lawyers do engage, compliance becomes nearly impossible. Le told the court it's like "pulling teeth" to get the Trump administration to follow judicial orders. "It takes 10 emails from me for a release condition to be corrected," she said.

By January 28, Schiltz had documented 96 court orders that ICE violated across 74 cases. That's not incompetence—it's systematic non-compliance with the judicial branch.

The Great DOJ Exodus

The human cost is staggering. In Minnesota's federal prosecutor's office alone, six lawyers resigned in protest last month, including the office's second-in-command. Eight more have either left or plan to leave, according to the Associated Press.

Le herself is no longer working for the Minneapolis office after her courtroom moment of honesty. Her 88 cases now fall to other already overworked attorneys. Her co-counsel Ana Voss has also submitted her resignation.

This isn't just about Minnesota. Bloomberg reports that all 93 U.S. Attorney's Offices nationwide have been ordered to designate lawyers for "emergency jump teams" to assist offices facing "urgent situations." The Justice Department is pulling lawyers off criminal prosecutions and civil defense work to manage crises created by Trump's own policies.

Illegal Detentions, Legal Chaos

The workload crisis is compounded by the Trump administration's systematic misreading of federal law. Consider the case of Juan T.R., where the administration claimed it must detain an immigrant under a statute applying to "an applicant for admission." Problem: Juan arrived in the U.S. around 1999—he's not an applicant for admission.

This legal error isn't isolated. One federal judge noted that Trump's misinterpretation "has been challenged in at least 362 cases in federal district courts." The government has lost 350 of the decided cases, with victories spanning "over 160 different judges sitting in about fifty different courts."

Yet the illegal detentions continue. How many immigrants remain unlawfully confined simply because they can't find lawyers to challenge their detention?

The Long-Term Damage

The consequences will outlast Trump's presidency. The Justice Department has historically attracted elite lawyers despite lower pay by offering job security and meaningful work. Now, with mass resignations and impossible working conditions, who will want these jobs?

Julie Le's moment of courtroom honesty will follow her career forever. Any future employer googling her name will find articles about the time she asked a federal judge to hold her in contempt. She volunteered to help her government and was rewarded with professional stigma and an impossible workload.

Meanwhile, federal judges are losing confidence in DOJ lawyers and whether their statements can be trusted. That institutional trust, once broken, takes decades to rebuild.

How do you rebuild trust in justice when the Justice Department itself becomes untrustworthy?