The most potent resistance to America’s immigration laws isn’t surging across the southern border. It’s emanating from federal courtrooms. Across the judiciary, unelected judges appointed by Democratic presidents have converted their chambers into staging grounds for opposing the very enforcement voters demanded when they returned Donald Trump to the White House. From Minnesota to Washington, D.C., these robed ideologues aren’t merely ruling against the administration – they’re editorializing to the press, coordinating behind the scenes, and now threatening criminal prosecution of the Justice Department for doing its job.

The brazenness is what separates this chapter from the usual judicial overreach. In Minnesota, federal judges recently sat for cozy interviews with the New York Times, openly trashing the administration’s immigration crackdown – while actively presiding over related cases. Bold move. But what’s unfolding in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals makes Minnesota look like a warm-up act.

From The Post Millennial:

An Obama judge in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals smeared a Trump-appointed judge with unfounded allegations of “contempt” as she and her colleagues considered whether to reopen a criminal case against the Justice Department for flouting an injunction on deporting illegal aliens.

Watchdog reporter Julie Kelly revealed that Judge Patricia Millett “was particularly unhinged” during the recent oral arguments before the full DC appellate court. “Often pounding on the dias to emphasize her point and raising her voice, Millett badgered assistant attorney general for civil division Brett Shumate about the government’s opposition to Boasberg’s witch hunt,” Kelly wrote.

A judge without a mask

Pounding the dais. Raising her voice. Badgering a senior DOJ attorney. This isn’t the conduct of a dispassionate jurist weighing constitutional questions. It’s a political operative wielding a gavel – and not particularly concerned about who notices.

Millett’s backstory makes the performance even less surprising. She was the very first judge confirmed after then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nuked the filibuster for judicial nominations in 2013, blowing open the floodgates so Obama could stack the federal bench with ideological allies. She replaced John Roberts on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The gap in judicial restraint between the two could fill the Grand Canyon.

During arguments, Millett latched onto claims from Erez Reuvini – an attorney with Democracy Forward, a leftist advocacy outfit – who accused former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove of essentially telling activist judges to take a hike regarding their immigration injunctions. So a progressive advocacy lawyer feeds an accusation to a sympathetic Obama judge, who then treats it as gospel in open court. Totally normal judiciary stuff.

Where it all began

The contempt saga traces back to Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg. Early in Trump’s second term, Boasberg issued a restraining order mid-flight – demanding planes carrying Venezuelan gang members reverse course and bring them back to American soil. El Salvador, under President Bukele, had agreed to receive the deportees after Maduro’s hostile regime refused. Boasberg’s response? Threaten the DOJ with criminal contempt for not anticipating his injunction before he issued it.

Worth remembering: this is the same judge who dutifully rubber-stamped the FBI’s FISA requests to surveil Trump during the Russia-gate debacle. Impartiality has never been his signature move.

Activist judges from coast to coast

Boasberg and Millett aren’t outliers. They’re part of a pattern. Attorney General Todd Blanche recently filed a judicial misconduct complaint against seven Minnesota federal judges who talked to the New York Times about active immigration cases. One judge, Patrick Schiltz, described the administration’s actions as threatening “the constitutional order.” He sat for a ninety-minute interview. While cases were pending. On his docket.

Chad Mizelle of the America First Policy Institute nailed it: “When judges become politicians in a robe, the system starts to collapse.” He pointed out that in 2001, the D.C. Circuit removed Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson from the Microsoft case for giving embargoed interviews to the very same newspaper – calling the conduct “deliberate, repeated, egregious and flagrant.” Funny how that standard evaporates when the target is a Republican president.

A rigged game

Hans Mahncke of the Counterlawfare Institute distilled the entire problem into one devastating observation: “Once a case has even the slightest connection to Trump, the law, the facts, the quality of the arguments, and the caliber of the lawyers making them all become totally irrelevant. The outcome is determined solely by which judges are assigned to the case.”

The Founders envisioned the judiciary as the least dangerous branch – independent, measured, removed from partisan warfare. Reid’s nuclear option and Obama’s appointments created something altogether different: a permanent insurgency of activist judges, armed with lifetime tenure, answerable to nobody, and hell-bent on overriding the electorate. Judicial accountability isn’t some peripheral skirmish of the Trump era. It is the central battle. And the republic hangs in the balance.

Key Takeaways

• Obama-appointed judges are weaponizing contempt proceedings against the DOJ for enforcing immigration law.
• Judge Millett’s courtroom theatrics expose political activism masquerading as impartial jurisprudence.
• Minnesota federal judges face misconduct complaints for publicly attacking Trump’s immigration enforcement.
• Harry Reid’s nuclear option seeded a permanent class of unaccountable activist judges now obstructing governance.

Sources: The Post Millennial, AOL.com