The Justice Department on Tuesday asked two Minnesota federal judges to step aside from immigration cases, arguing that comments they made to put their impartiality in doubt. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward filed the motions against Patrick Schiltz and John Tunheim.
The filings land squarely in two active cases: one before Schiltz involving the Trump administration's effort to strip a Minnesota man of his U.S. citizenship, and one before Tunheim involving a South African national accused of two charges of illegally voting in the 2024 election. The South African national has pleaded not guilty, making the recusal fight part of an already contested docket rather than an abstract ethics dispute.
Woodward's motions say the judges' remarks, which were tied to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year called Operation Metro Surge, create at least the appearance of bias in immigration-related cases. The government is not asking for a general review of judicial ethics; it is trying to remove two judges from two live matters, and that is a rare step when pressed by the government itself.
The request also runs into a legal reality that does not favor the Justice Department. Judges are limited by ethics rules from publicly discussing cases that are still pending before them, and specialists in judicial ethics expect the Trump administration will likely lose this effort even after Woodward framed the comments as proof that Schiltz and Tunheim could not be fair. Ana Reyes rejected a separate Justice Department recusal effort on Sunday, a reminder that these motions have recently met resistance.
Schiltz has already set a hearing on the motion against him for Nov. 23, giving the department its first real chance to press the issue in court. The next question is narrower than the broad rhetoric in Woodward's filings: whether either judge's comments, as presented by the government, are enough to overcome the presumption that a federal judge can keep sitting on a case unless a real basis for recusal is shown.
