Burcum: The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office is melting down

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So far this year, 14 lawyers have either resigned or announced they intend to resign from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office.

If anyone remained unconcerned about this powerful office’s management after the troubling wave of departures, a disturbing courtroom exchange on Feb. 3 confirms that Minnesota’s federal prosecutor’s office is in serious distress.

The exchange, which makes it clear that congressional scrutiny is urgently needed, happened during an immigration detention hearing between U.S. District Court Judge Jerry Blackwell and Julia Le, an attorney representing the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office. Of clear concern to the judge: whether the federal government has repeatedly ignored legal process and court orders by unlawfully detaining individuals taken into custody during the federal government’s immigration crackdown here.

Blackwell hammered Le with questions about missed deadlines and unanswered communications about people detained by immigration agents remaining in federal custody when they should have been released, according to a transcript of the hearing posted by Lawfare senior editor Roger Parloff. It was an eyebrow-raising beatdown from the bench, but it was Le’s extraordinary candor that made their conversation go viral on social media.

In response to the judge’s mounting frustrations, Le notes that she was brought in to assist from another federal agency and that she was still having trouble accessing her U.S. Department of Justice email. She also answered “yes” in response to this query from the judge: Was she “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?”

“Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, your honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep,” she said, adding: “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks.”

To sum up, what Le is saying is that the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office doesn’t have the horsepower to ensure that detained people are being held on lawful grounds — an appalling situation.

Le’s unusual remarks made national headlines. She’s also apparently gotten her wish for time off, reportedly being relieved of her duties at the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office.

That leaves her work to be picked up by colleagues. Unfortunately, the ranks of those who would do so are swiftly thinning, too. The Minnesota Star Tribune has reported that Ana Voss, the civil division chief, is among the attorneys leaving, further undermining the office’s capacity to handle the deluge of legal responsibilities created by Operation Metro Surge.

Voss has been the “point person handling hundreds of wrongful detention petitions that have flooded the office since ICE agents began their immigration crackdown in December," the Star Tribune reported.

We need to understand which of the office’s vital responsibilities aren’t being met. And full transparency is needed on the reasons federal attorneys are leaving en masse.

This week, a Politico report put a disturbing spotlight on the office’s capacity. It reported that Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen stated in a recent legal filing that his office “has been forced to shift its already limited resources from other pressing and important priorities.”

Prosecuting fraud in the state is just one of those other critical priorities. I asked former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Andy Luger to describe the office’s other high priority work.

His answer: Gangs. Gun cases. Large-scale drug cases. Sex trafficking. Child exploitation.

I’d also add that the office has a critical role in prosecuting serious crimes that take place on Indian reservations. Minnesota has 11 tribal nations within its borders.

Also alarming is the apparent reason so many attorneys are leaving, other than a greatly accelerated workload. The Star Tribune’s reporting has linked the resignations to “recent directives from the U.S. Department of Justice. That included the department’s refusal to initiate a civil rights investigation into the killing of Renee Good by [an] Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent [...] They have been asked to defend immigration enforcement actions that are growing unpopular with the public.”

Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, praised the departing attorneys’ willingness to stand on principle. “I think they’ve done the right thing. They’ve stepped out, they’ve said no and that’s what a lawyer needs to do when they’re being asked to do things that violate their conscience,” said Painter, who is also a professor at the University of Minnesota law school.

Painter noted as well that Rosen could decline to give those dubious orders coming from Washington, D.C. “The U.S. Attorney’s not the military. It’s not like the general tells the colonel, the colonel has to tell the captain and it’s got to go down exactly the way the general said. There’s some discretion.”

I reached out to Rosen for comment. I had to go through extra steps because his office doesn’t currently have a public information officer. Rosen did not respond to my request.

Painter walked me through congressional oversight options. The U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees can convene oversight hearings. Congress controls the DOJ budget, which provides it some leverage over the department.