Activist judge who downplayed Don Lemon’s church antics, summoned ICE director donated to pro-illegal-alien group

The Minnesota-based federal judge who declined to issue arrest warrants for Don Lemon and several of the radicals accused of storming into Cities Church on Jan. 18 demanded on Tuesday that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons “appear personally before the Court and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of Court.”

Despite U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Schiltz’s portrayal in the liberal media as a conservative-minded and “mild-mannered George W. Bush appointee,” it appears that Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin’s characterization of Schiltz as “just another activist judge” is more apt.

‘Another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans.’

Bill Melugin of Fox News revealed this week that Schiltz is linked to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, a liberal activist outfit that provides free legal representation to illegal aliens, low-income migrants, and so-called refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota.

The ILCM routinely criticizes the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accusing them of occupation, racism, “Islamophobi[a],” and engaging in “execution-style murders.”

After Schiltz’s name was found among the donors and volunteers listed in the ILCM’s 2019 annual report, the judge — dubbed the “latest hero to the anti-Trump resistance” by Politico — admitted to Fox News Digital that he has “donated for many years to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.”

“I have also donated for many years to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation,” added Schiltz, who has served as a delegate at Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party conventions.

The donor to the illegal alien support group noted in a Monday court filing that his “patience is at an end” and ordered Lyons to explain on Friday why he should not be held in contempt for supposedly violating an earlier order.

RELATED: DOJ tries to put the squeeze on Don Lemon over church invasion — but judge says no, enraging Bondi: Report

Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Schiltz indicated that Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, an Ecuadorian national who illegally entered the U.S. in 1999 and was detained by immigration agents on Jan. 6, should have been provided with a bond hearing or released earlier this month.

The Bush judge indicated in his Tuesday order that if Robles was released before the hearing, Lyons would not be required to appear. A lawyer for the Ecuadorian told the Associated Press that his client was released Tuesday afternoon.

“Judge Patrick J. Schiltz is just another activist judge who is clearly more concerned about politics than the safety of the Minnesotans,” stated DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Does this judge really think Director Lyons should take time out of his day leading ICE to target the worst of the worst criminal illegals including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and terrorists into our country to testify at a hearing for one illegal alien’s removal proceedings?”

While Schiltz evidently figured that swift and decisive action was required in the case of Robles, he took an entirely different approach in the case of the radicals who assembled on Jan. 18 for a so-called “ICE Out Action,” then stormed a Christian church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

After the church invasion, the Trump Justice Department promptly filed a criminal complaint in the District of Minnesota charging eight of the suspected invaders with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.

The DOJ’s pursuit of accountability was frustrated at the outset when Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko — whose wife reportedly works for Minnesota’s anti-ICE attorney general, Keith Ellison — declined to support all but three of the requested arrest affidavits.

After Micko threw up additional roadblocks, the DOJ turned to Schiltz for a review of the magistrate’s no-probable-cause finding in hopes that he might issue the warrants.

In an angry and sarcastic Jan. 23 letter to the Eighth Circuit’s chief judge, Steven Colloton, Schiltz downplayed the church invasion, glossed over the invaders’ intimidation tactics, cast doubt on whether arresting them would deter copycats, emphasized that “there is no emergency,” and noted that if the petition filed by the government seeks an immediate decision, “the petition is frivolous.”

In a separate letter, he suggested there was “no evidence that [Don Lemon and his producer] engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”

Sure enough, Schiltz indicated that he would not issue arrest warrants until conferring with his colleagues — a meeting that was supposed to happen last week but was delayed.

Over the weekend, a three-judge Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied the government’s petition to review the magistrate’s refusal to sign the warrants.

While U.S. Circuit Court Judge Steven Grasz, an appointee of President Donald Trump, recognized that the complaint and affidavit “clearly establish probably cause for all five arrest warrants” and that “there is no discretion to refuse to issue an arrest warrant once probable cause for its issuance has been shown,” the government had “failed to establish that it has no other adequate means of obtaining the requested relief.”

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