Judge in Pittsburgh holds top federal officials in civil contempt in immigration case

Body camera footage submitted to a federal judge in Pittsburgh by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shows several men running away and being taken to the ground during a June 26 “nationwide surge enforcement action.”

They show the men being patted down and handcuffed. Some are driven away by agents often wearing masks.

But none of the video clips showed the man U.S. Magistrate Judge Maureen Kelly asked to see — the man she previously ordered released but who got swept up again.

Because of what she interpreted as a blatant disregard for her orders, Kelly this week held in civil contempt U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche; head of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin; and John E. Rife, the acting ICE field office director for enforcement and removal operations.

Kelly presides over cases in the Western District of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh.

In a chastising opinion, Kelly said their effort to comply with her orders “involved inconsistent stories, dubious excuses, at least one inaccurate certification and at least three attempts to shield their clearly public acts from scrutiny.”

Their changing stories, the judge continued, lead to two possible conclusions: that they “willfully attempted to obfuscate the circumstances surrounding petitioner’s arrest and detention, as well as to hide the identities of the agent or agents involved therein; or 2) are unable to maintain proper records, utilize their own equipment and tools, or read and comply (with) the orders of this court.”

Kelly imposed sanctions requiring the government officials to pay attorney fees and costs for the man she said they wrongfully arrested.

The judge’s actions, immigration experts said, are unusual.

“In my read of this opinion, the court is treating the government and involved agencies in the same manner the court would hold any litigant not in compliance with the court’s order,” said Adrian Roe, an immigration attorney practicing in Pittsburgh. “That’s an even-handed way to handle these types of matters.

“It’s nice to see the rule of law is alive and well in Western Pennsylvania.”

A message seeking comment from the Department of Justice wasn’t returned.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh, which represented the federal government in the case, declined to comment.

‘Due process’

Nain Vasquez Gonzalez filed a petition in federal court last year through Legal Services of New Jersey challenging his detention by ICE at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an immigration detention facility in Clearfield County.

He had been held there since 2023.

A citizen of El Salvador, Vasquez Gonzalez entered the United States in 2016 while still a minor. He applied for asylum in 2020, seeking protection under the Convention Against Torture Act.

On Jan. 13, 2023, Vasquez Gonzalez was arrested on a drug possession charge and detained by immigration officials. He remained there for 38 months.

The length of Vasquez Gonzalez’s detention, Kelly found, entitled him to release.

“Pre-removal order immigration detention at some point, may become so prolonged that it offends due process,” the judge wrote in her April 28 decision. “Without significant and individualized justification, supported by robust procedural protections, it may be remedied only by outright release.”

Kelly found no evidence that Vasquez Gonzalez presented a danger or risk justifying indefinite detention. She ordered Vasquez Gonzalez’s immediate release, which occurred later that day.

However, according to court records, on June 26, he was arrested again by ICE.

Mistake or bad faith?

That morning, according to court filings, Vasquez Gonzalez was in Fairview, N.J., waiting for a bus to go to a doctor’s appointment around 8:20 a.m. when four agents in two vehicles approached.

They asked Vasquez Gonzalez if he was named “Fernando Daniel.” When he said no, they did not believe him.

“The agent who talked to me asked if I was legal. I told him I had come out of detention and had a release order in my wallet,” Vasquez Gonzalez wrote in a declaration in the case. “He did not look at or let me take it out.”

Instead, the agent arrested him.

“When I told him again that I had my release paper, he said, ‘That doesn’t matter, we’re just doing our job,’” Vasquez Gonzalez wrote.

He was photographed, and the picture was analyzed by facial recognition software. Then he was transported by ICE and held for 11 hours.

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He ultimately was released when his attorney learned he had been taken into custody and filed another motion with the court.

Afterward, Kelly set out to learn why Vasquez Gonzalez was rearrested in violation of her ruling.

In various orders, the judge told the federal government to provide the names of the officers who arrested him, and later, when they said they couldn’t, she asked for the body camera footage from that day. She also asked for a firsthand account from those on the scene of what happened.

In each instance, the judge found they failed to comply.

“ICE’s apparent practice of obfuscating the identities of the agents involved in arrests is deeply troubling,” the judge wrote.

By the time of the court’s deadline, ICE was able to identify the arresting officer but told the court he didn’t have his body camera activated that day.

In an unsworn memo, officials said the officer’s camera was not charged that day because he had left it activated the night before.

In a filing, the government called that “a preventable error for which there is no excuse. … But there is no basis to extrapolate from this mistake bad faith by ICE.”

When Kelly asked for the body camera footage from other agents that day, the government asked that it be filed under seal.

Kelly denied the request and then offered additional criticism of the use of masks to hide the identities of agents during ICE operations.

“The United States does not have a secret police force,” she wrote, calling their attempt to cloak their identities “deeply troubling, and — at its core — un-American.”

Eventually, the judge wrote, ICE submitted video from five agents, though none of it showed Vasquez Gonzalez’s arrest, despite there being at least 15 agents working in concert to arrest 20 people at the time.

‘Changing stories’

The attorney representing Vasquez Gonzalez asked the court to impose sanctions on the government and hold the individual officials in contempt, citing their “changing stories” and their failure to produce bodycam footage as “implausible and evasive.”

The government officials, wrote Robert Jackel of Legal Services of New Jersey, have a pattern of ignoring court orders.

“The District of New Jersey have issued multiple warnings to ICE, but the agency continues to violate court orders,” he wrote. “Warnings have not been enough. Sanctions are necessary to prevent such conduct in the future.

“Nothing the government has provided so far to this court contains a credible explanation for what happened when they arrested Nain.”

The government responded, according to court documents, by saying Vasquez Gonzalez’s statements were unfounded and speculative.

It said the agency’s failure to answer the court “resulted from ICE’s scramble to get the court the answers it requested in short order and in the wake of making a mistake that understandably frustrated the court and caused petitioner distress.”

As soon as ICE realized their mistake, Assistant U.S. Attorney Heidi Grogan wrote, they released him.

But Judge Kelly wasn’t convinced. She was critical of the government agents’ declarations in the case — made under oath — because they contained factual conclusions despite being made by people who were not present at Vasquez Gonzalez’s arrest.

“Such conduct is most disconcerting,” she wrote. “At best it undercuts the credibility of any future testimony from these individuals and wastes the resources of the court and the litigants.

“At worst, it is possibly perjury.”

‘Ask questions later’

Vanessa Stine, a senior staff attorney focusing on immigrants’ rights for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said Kelly’s order is important for holding the federal government accountable.

“ICE’s actions in this case are both appalling and unfortunately all too common,” Stine said. “It is part of a larger pattern of indiscriminate stops and arrests that sweep people up and ask questions later.”

Roe, the Pittsburgh immigration attorney, said judges don’t hold parties in contempt too frequently. But, he continued, it’s also unusual for a party to disregard a court’s order.

“A very high percentage of parties comply with court orders without the need for sanctions,” Roe said. “But there are parties and agencies that don’t comply, and this is what happens.”

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