The old proverb about causation begins “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost…” For want of a shoestring, United States Attorney Daniel Rosen (my long-time friend — don’t look to me for objectivity) was called to show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court by Judge Jeffrey Bryan of the federal district court here yesterday. Judge Bryan’s show cause order is posted online here.
The hearing began at 10:20 and consumed the rest of the day. Also called to show cause were head of the United States Attorney civil division David Fuller and a representative of ICE, who turned out to be deputy regional director Tauria Rich. Bill Glahn anticipated the hearing in his February 27 post “So much habeas.” Bill’s foreboding of absurdity was vindicated in the event.
Judge Bryan invoked the prospect of Rosen being held in civil contempt and fined or criminal contempt and jailed in a testy exchange near the outset of the hearing. The prospect has elicited the interest of the press. We filled the seventh-floor courtroom in St. Paul’s Warren Burger Federal Building that Judge Bryan used for the hearing. His own courtroom and others on the third floor were out of commission.
I sat next to Esme Murphhy of CBS News Minnesota in the first row of the courtroom — more about Esme in due course. My row also included Steve Karnowski of the Associated Press, Matt Sepic of Minnesota Public Radio, Max Nesterak of the Minnesota Reformer, and Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times.
Karnowski, Sepic and Nesterak have conventional accounts of the hearing. I recommend Sepic’s or Nesterak’s to readers who want one. Our local sketch artist sat at the end of our row during the morning; Sepic’s story includes sketches of Rosen addressing Judge Bryan.
I found the hearing to be a surreal exercise. Judge Bryan began with an interrogation of Rosen regarding the premises underlying the hearing. I wrote in my notes that it was ordeal by humiliation. Dan was not humiliated, but it seemed to me that was the judge’s intent. Dan held his own and I believe ultimately got the judge to back down from the prospect of criminal contempt and imprisonment. Their “testy” exchange (“testy” was Judge Bryan’s word) became more respectful after the judge called a break.
Dan et al. were to show why they should not be held in contempt for violating court orders in 28 habeas cases involving illegals who had been arrested and held by ICE in the course of Operation Metro Surge. The personal property of the illeagls was to have been returned and its return documented. Operation Metro Surge has given rise to some 1,000 habeas cases here. The federal district court judges have been riding a high horse in opposition to ICE. A case pending before the Eighth Circuit should clarify whether they have jurisdiciton to do so.
By the time of the hearing the number of cases in which Rosen was held to account had been whittled down to 23. In the course of the hearing the number was further whittled down to five. One of the 18 that was resolved involved a missing shoelace. The habeas petitioner was concerned that if ICE found the missing shoelace, it might scrape it for DNA tying him to a crime. I kid you not. Rosen agreed that if ICE found the shoelace, it would be returned to the concerned illegal alien criminal without further ado.
The remaining five cases included one in which the lost personal property was a passport that was found after the petitioner’s release from ICE custody at Whipple. At the petitioner’s direction, it was held to be picked up by the petitioner’s attorney at Whipple over a period of some two weeks. In the meantime, ICE had stated that it was not aware of any “missing” or “lost” (I’m not sure what the adjective was) property. How was the word used to be construed? It might have been ambiguous. At the end of the hearing Judge Bryan took the case under advisement.
Another of the five cases involved a passport. That passport was returned by tracked US mail to the petitioner’s attorney, but he hadn’t been back to the office to open the package. Again, I kid you not. These two passport cases constituted two of the five over which Judge Bryan is now deliberating a contempt order.
During the morning portion of the hearing, I sat next to Esme Murphy. I have written about her many times on Power Line. She is one of the intensely partisan left-wing journalists working the local political scene. At the lunch break, she caught up with Dan and sought comment from him on the judge’s threat to imprison him. She apparently wanted to savor what I call the judge’s ordeal by humiliation. Dan wasn’t humiliated. He didn’t bite. He laughed her off.
When the embattled US Attorney who is in the midst of a contempt of court hearing for failing to turn over detainees possessions gives you a gracious non- answer that reveals more than many answers pic.twitter.com/oX4wYoP7eE
— esme murphy (@esmemurphy) March 3, 2026
Esme’s X posts on the hearing end with the clip above. Esme did not make it back into the courtroom for the rest of the hearing after lunch. I understand that she had left her phone on the first-row bench where we had been sitting during the morning. As credentialed members of the press, we are allowed to bring our devices into the courtroom, but under the prohibition that we cannot use them to record or photograph inside the courthouse. In fact, a US Marshal reminded us of the prohibition that morning. However, Murphy’s abandoned phone was picked up during the break and found to be recording. I was told the court yanked her press credential and sent her packing. Talk about contempt!
