court order

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, under intense grilling at a Senate hearing Tuesday, refused to commit to abiding by federal court orders.

Mullin also conceded that his predecessor as secretary, Kristi Noem, had inaccurately described two shootings involving immigration officers in Minneapolis.

His refusal to commit to complying with court orders came during a testy exchange with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Murphy quoted Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz in Minnesota — a Republican appointee — who said Immigration and Customs Enforcement had violated nearly 100 court orders and had “likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

When Murphy asked Mullin to commit to complying with court orders in the future, Mullin replied that his agency would not break the law.

“But that doesn’t sound like the same thing as committing that you will obey a court order,” Murphy said.

“If we didn’t think the courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that. But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for political opinion and not just the rule of law,” Mullin said.

“So you’ll pick and choose which court orders you’ll obey?” Murphy asked,

Mullin told Murphy not to put words in his mouth.

Addressing his fellow senators, Murphy said, “If you’re a Democrat or a Republican on this committee, you should be really, really freaked out.”

Murphy later returned to the court orders question, saying that ignoring judges erodes democracy.

“I agree that there is politics involved in judicial decisions,” he said. “I do not think that gives an excuse to either Democratic or Republican administrations to ignore those court orders. I think that’s actually the end of our republic, if the administration willfully ignores a court order because they disagree with it or its motivation.”

Mullin faced the Senate Appropriations Committee amid scrutiny over the agency’s budget and immigration enforcement ahead of the World Cup. President Trump tapped Mullin to take over leadership of the embattled Department of Homeland Security after Noem was fired in March.

Mullin’s appearance came as the Senate is considering legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of Trump’s term. Republicans intend to use a legislative maneuver that would bypass the need for support from Democrats, who have pushed for reforms since two U.S. citizens were killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis.

During his previous appearance before senators, Mullin projected himself as diplomatic, saying he would work to bring confidence to the agency and keep it out of the news. But recently, he has set the travel industry on edge by threatening to remove Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in so-called sanctuary cities, which limit collaboration with immigration enforcement agents.

Millions of people are preparing to visit the United States for the World Cup, which starts June 11 and includes host cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Mullin said he will attend his first soccer game June 12 in Los Angeles.

Murphy, the committee’s top Democrat, made note of Mullin’s promise to keep Homeland Security out of the news. He said the agency has repeatedly broken the law, wasted billions in taxpayer dollars and lined the pockets of private prison corporations.

“Nothing has really gotten better,” he said. “In fact, you spent the first two months of your tenure threatening to suspend international arrivals in states represented by Democrats. Not only would that throw our entire air travel system into chaos, it’s completely illegal.”

Mullin took issue with Murphy’s characterization of the agency’s behavior, calling it political theater. Murphy sat with his head propped up on his hand, looking directly back at his former Senate colleague.

Mullin said threats against immigration agents are up significantly and that Murphy’s “reckless tone is getting people hurt.”

Protests erupted last month outside an immigrant detention facility in New Jersey after detainees launched a hunger and labor strike over what they called inhumane conditions such as rotten food and medical neglect. Tensions have escalated over several days as protesters clashed with law enforcement and counterprotesters.

On Monday in Dallas, Mullin said he would pull Customs officers from airports around the country to help with the security in Newark, if it became necessary.

Addressing the issue of officer training, Mullin said Tuesday that the agency will return next month to 72 days of training for new recruits, including training on crowd control. Last year, then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Congress the agency had reduced the number of training days to 42.

He also said the agency is not “actively patrolling” sensitive locations, such as schools, and said that the agency has stopped relying on administrative warrants to enter a residence by force and is now seeking judicial warrants before doing so in most cases.

Asked by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) about body-worn cameras, Mullin said the agency doesn’t have the money to supply enough body cameras for every immigration officer. Homeland Security received an unprecedented windfall last year of $170 billion under Trump’s sweeping tax bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Mullin said the agency suffered a blow to morale because of the historic 76-day shutdown of ICE and CBP after a congressional stalemate over funding.

“Some people couldn’t sustain it,” he said. “We lost a tremendous amount of workforce, about 8%.”

During an exchange with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Mullin acknowledged that Noem had unfairly and inaccurately described two shootings involving immigration officers in Minneapolis.

An ICE agent was recently arrested over the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man, whom Noem had called an attempted murderer.

“That’s an untrue statement, isn’t it?” Van Hollen said.

“From what we have been briefed on, yes,” Mullin replied.

Next, Van Hollen brought up Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by CBP agents. Noem called him a domestic terrorist.

“You agree the facts don’t support that statement?” Van Hollen said.

“The investigation would say that’s probably not accurate,” Mullin replied.

Mullin was scheduled to appear before the House on Wednesday.

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Trump’s second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by the Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about 1 out of every 8 lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Trump administration’s power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations and the U.S. role in the international order.

Widespread noncompliance found

The Trump administration violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — including failing to return property and keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump’s first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration’s Justice Department has been combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

The White House’s aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

Higher courts boost Trump efforts

The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say those decisions are emboldening the administration to ignore judges’ orders.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings.” The administration will “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” she added in a written statement.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” the statement said.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

“The danger is that this gets normalized,” said JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, which is tracking noncompliance cases. The group is also involved in litigation against the administration.

‘Ham-handed,’ ‘hallucinating’

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of President George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president’s immigration priorities.

The Department of Homeland Security responded by keeping the immigration requirement on some grants, but making it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move “ham-handed” and said the agency was trying to “bully the states.”

In a case over the suspension of refugee admissions, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden nominee, accused the Justice Department last May of “hallucinating new text” in an appellate court order and “rewriting” it to achieve the government’s preferred outcome.

In four additional cases the AP reviewed, judges stopped short of a clear written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.

Of the judges who have confirmed violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and seven by Republican presidents.

Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said jurists are losing trust in the integrity of the Department of Justice.

That’s making them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith,” said O’Grady, who along with Fogel is part of the nonpartisan democracy group Keep Our Republic.

Fogel said judges are also getting frustrated.

“They make orders and the orders don’t get complied with, and then they have to inquire why the orders are not being complied with, and that’s where it gets very mushy and very political,” he said.

Education case raises alarms

In Eureka, Calif., school administrator Lisa Claussen is worried about the impact on her students’ mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of a court order on federal grants.

Grant money allowed the school district in the poor coastal community in Northern California to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.

Education officials in the Trump administration told schools in California and other states last year that it was discontinuing the grants; the administration opposed diversity considerations in the grant process.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson blocked the move permanently in December, but California and 15 other states now say the administration is making an end run around her injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial limit of six months of funding.

Attorneys for the Education Department said they wanted to see whether schools were making progress on performance goals before releasing additional funds. The judge’s order did not block the six-month limit, they added in a court filing.

Evanson, a Biden nominee, has yet to rule.

In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they have already issued layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminated positions.

“We have many kids who don’t trust adults for very good reason, and to be able to just swipe this grant like they’re doing … ,” Claussen said in a phone interview, her voice trailing off. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Justice Department response

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations that the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges. Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group the Article III Project, said many of the judges who have found violations are ignoring laws that clearly prohibit their rulings.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

A justice’s rebuke

In March, a federal appeals court ruled Sykes, the judge in California, had probably exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision.

The outcome was not unusual.

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after one such ruling.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” she wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.