A federal judge on Monday criticized federal immigration officials for repeatedly violating judicial orders and warned that future defiance could result in criminal contempt proceedings.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Farbiarz noted that a recent internal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office found that the office had violated 17 injunctions barring them from transferring immigrants out of New Jersey, including in one case where a migrant was sent to Peru.
“But when the same mistakes happen over and over again — the picture can start to look different,” he wrote. “What looks like inadvertence (when it happens once) might begin to inch closer to looking intentional (when it happens more than once a week).”
Farbiarz’s opinion orders an extraordinary remedy for prosecutors in all of the judge’s immigration-habeas cases — those in which a detained immigration challenges their detention — where Farbiarz issues a no-transfer order. Prosecutors will be required to sign a declaration, under penalty of perjury, that they have received the injunction, conveyed it to ICE, and provided ICE with written legal advice on the agency’s obligation to comply with the order. And ICE will be required to sign a second declaration confirming it received the injunction and has received written legal advice from prosecutors on its obligation to comply with the order.
“Requiring declarations is intrusive. But it is a narrowly-tailored way to address the precise problem before the Court — of ensuring going-forward compliance with judicial no-transfer orders,” Farbiarz wrote.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, arrests of immigrants across the country have sharply increased, and so have habeas corpus filings. Farbiarz said that hundreds of cases have been filed each month in New Jersey, the volume of which has “badly overwhelmed” the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Farbiarz, a Biden appointee, is far from the only judge to lecture federal prosecutors over immigration cases. Just last week, U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, another Biden appointee, excoriated prosecutors for arresting and detaining migrants using a federal statute already rejected in hundreds of cases.
The state’s federal bench has been at odds with Trump in other matters, too. Last year, after the temporary appointment of Trump’s pick to be U.S. attorney lapsed, the judges convened to choose someone to replace her. Trump quickly fired the replacement.
A request for comment from the U.S. Department of Justice was not returned.
Farbiarz’s Monday order came in the case of Baljinder Kumar, a migrant held at Newark migrant jail Delaney Hall. Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition on Jan. 25, 2026, arguing that federal law entitles non-citizens to a bail hearing before an immigration judge (Farbiarz noted in his Monday opinion that every federal judge in New Jersey who has considered an argument along these lines has agreed with it).
Farbiarz issued a no-transfer order for Kumar the following morning at 7:58 a.m. The U.S. Attorney’s Office notified ICE of the injunction in less than 30 minutes, and ICE’s legal office passed that to the Newark ICE field office by 9:21 a.m., according to Monday’s opinion. ICE transferred Kumar to a detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas, on Jan. 31, the opinion says.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office learned of the transfer from Kumar’s lawyer, and ICE returned Kumar to New Jersey on Feb. 5, according to the opinion.
Farbiarz’s opinion questions whether there is “willful blindness” on behalf of federal officials because of how often they have repeatedly violated the same type of court order.
“If local ICE leaders at some point developed a rough sense that this may have been going on, but did not then meaningfully tackle the problem — could that suggest that later violations of judicial orders (like the violation of the January 26 no-transfer order) were a product of their willful blindness?” the judge wrote.
Farbiarz’s opinion came after Jordan Fox, a special attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, detailed a host of violations the office has made in immigration-related cases in the past three months.
Besides the 17 times no-transfer orders have been violated, there were also late releases, missed answer deadlines, missed bond hearing deadlines and incomplete evidentiary productions. And what is likely the most striking violation, ICE deported a migrant to Peru despite a court order that barred removal. Fox called that an “inadvertent administrative oversight” and said the government offered to facilitate the person’s return to the United States but they declined.
Farbiarz said the U.S. Attorney’s Office has made clear that “it takes violations of court orders seriously,” while ICE has been silent.
“In the face of scores of violations of recent judicial orders, this silence, the Court fears, is clarifying as to the overall approach of local ICE leaders to following the Court’s orders,” he wrote.
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