The Department of Justice filed a judicial misconduct complaint on Wednesday against several Minnesota-based federal judges for “pander[ing]” to legacy media about ICE operations in the state. “Seven federal judges in the District of Minnesota talked to the New York Times about cases, some of which are on-going, in a manner that the…
Page B1From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 October 2026
THE FILING
Justice Department accuses judges of pandering to New York Times over deportation of man ICE shot
As it ran on the front
The Department of Justice filed a judicial misconduct complaint on Wednesday, and the clause worth reading out loud is the first one: seven judges in the District of Minnesota are accused of "pander[ing]" to the New York Times. All together now — the word chosen is pander, not err, not overreach. The complaint states the judges "talked to the New York Times about cases, some of which are on-going, in a manner that the Department of" — and there the item runs out. The wire quotes the filing, then three dots, where the rest of the sentence should be. I won't write the missing words for you.
Eight days earlier, a federal judge in Texas was doing the kind of thing this complaint calls pandering. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan man, was shot by an ICE officer in Austin on a Sunday. By Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia, a Clinton appointee, had ordered him to stay in the state while the shooting was investigated. No complaint was filed against Judge Garcia. Nobody called it pandering to notice that the agency asking to deport a man might want to explain, first, why one of its own officers had shot him.…
…(cont) Three weeks before that, a federal judge in California had done something in the same family, for a different reason. Judge Noel Wise, a Biden appointee, sided with the Stanford Daily's lawsuit and ruled the government could not deport noncitizens for criticizing Israel over the war in Gaza. All together now — the ruling didn't invent a right. It read the one already on the books. That decision drew a wire story, not a misconduct complaint either.
So here is the taxonomy the Justice Department has filed, in its own words, with its own gaps: a judge who talks to the New York Times about an ICE case is pandering. A judge who talks to no one, and simply declines to deport a man his own agency shot, or a student newspaper suing on the First Amendment, does not appear in the complaint at all. The docket, three doors down, has the judges who answered the Constitution's.
“They call it "pandering" — that's the con, dressing up a judge doing the one job that matters, checking the government's homework, as some favor to a newspaper. Look at the docket right next to the complaint: a man gets shot by ICE, and the judge who says hold on, let's find out why, is the one who ends up under investigation, not the agent who fired. Punish the judges who pause and the next judge skips the pause, and the next guy who gets shot gets deported before the bullet's even logged.”
“Look, a judge discussing an ongoing case with the Times, that's a legitimate judicial-ethics question, there are canons of conduct, we take that seriously. Did I say "pandering"? That's the Department's word, not mine, don't put that on me. And the Texas thing is a totally separate judge doing a totally separate — look, nobody's defending the shooting, I'm defending the paperwork.”
The receipts
· Judge pauses deportation of man shot by ICE agent in Texas from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Federal judge temporarily blocks deportation of illegal immigrant shot by ICE agent in Austin, attorney says from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Judge blocks deportation of immigrant shot by ICE in Texas, attorney says from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Federal judge says US cannot deport noncitizen students who criticize Israel from the morgue, 29 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.