Florida Judge Blasts Trump DOJ Immigration Argument, Orders Prosecutors to Explain Why They Shouldn’t Be Sanctioned

U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton in Orlando ordered the release of Venezuelan high school student Javier Gimenez Rivero, who has lived in Florida with his family for more than four years, and issued a scathing written order saying the Trump Justice Department’s argument that he lacked jurisdiction over the habeas case 'beggars belief' and appeared to 'deliberately mislead the Court.' In the order, memorializing remarks from a hearing last week and published Monday, Dalton called DOJ’s position on the merits 'ill‑informed,' 'incoherent' and 'simply insupportable on all fronts,' noting that judges appointed by presidents from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump have already rejected the government’s reading of the statute. He said the government is free to argue for changing the law, but faulted U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joy Warner for failing their duty of candor by not citing contrary binding precedent, and directed them to show cause by Feb. 9 why they should not be sanctioned. Dalton stressed that Gimenez Rivero’s release 'provides him with the remedy he deserves' but does not 'remedy everything that happened in this Court,' adding that his case is just one of 'many cases flooding the courts' in which the government has unlawfully detained long‑present noncitizens and declaring, 'In this country, we don’t enforce the law by breaking the law.' The ruling, widely shared in legal circles and immigrant‑rights feeds, underscores growing judicial backlash to what multiple judges now describe as slapdash, law‑breaking immigration enforcement under Trump’s DOJ.