Trump urges criminal, immigration action that DOJ struggles to fulfill

Updated Aug. 23, 2026, 2:15 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is aggressive in pushing criminal investigations of perceived rivals and an immigration crackdown. But Justice Department lawyers, bound by facts and law in carrying out Trump’s priorities, are struggling to fulfill his calls for action amid an explosion of litigation.

Grand juries have refused to indict suspects, and prosecutors dropped charges in high-profile cases. Government lawyers have acknowledged violating dozens of court orders in immigration cases. And judges have accused government lawyers of misrepresenting the facts in some civil cases.

As the back-and-forth accumulates, the credibility of Justice Department lawyers is facing scrutiny. Judges are questioning whether the lawyers are reliable, under what is called the “presumption of regularity,” and have begun asking for sworn statements to accompany court filings.

“We’ve seen a lot of judges saying that the federal government is not entitled to a presumption of regularity,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston. “I think that we’re going to see judges start not giving DOJ the benefit of the doubt.”

Legal experts said the disconnect between Trump’s advocacy and what holds up in court erodes confidence in the department.

“A lot of it is pressure coming from the top, whether it is President Trump or senior officials within the Justice Department,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration-law professor at Cornell, told USA TODAY. “It undermines the American public’s faith in the Justice Department.”

Drawing broad conclusions from decisions in specific cases is difficult. Government lawyers have said mistakes were inadvertent. And some of the conflicts are political. A Justice Department spokesperson said multiple District Court judges opposed administration policies “before eventually relenting,” as in cases about ending temporary protections for immigrants from deportation.

“Investigative and prosecutorial decisions are made based on the law and the facts,” Kiersten Pels told USA TODAY.

‘Not vandalism’: Prosecutors drop Reflecting Pool charges

Trump was a vocal advocate for pursuing vandalism charges over damage to the Reflecting Pool’s liner on the National Mall. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for DC, charged Olympian David Hearn in July and accused him of “damaging a national resource, a national treasure.”

But Pirro’s office dropped the charges and acknowledged he Department of the Interior found “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” according to a July 31 filing in DC Superior Court. Trump said she “choked.”

Simply securing indictments has been difficult. Trump pressed publicly for charges against former FBI Director James Comey, who had investigated him, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a $500 million civil judgment against him. Trump called Democratic lawmakers “traitors” and “seditious” for saying soldiers don’t need to follow illegal orders.

But a judge threw out charges against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and against James for alleged bank fraud by ruling the prosecutor was appointed unlawfully. Comey still faces charges in another case of threatening the president with a picture of seashells, which he denies. A grand jury refused to indict the targeted lawmakers.

The government also failed to get a felony indictment against Sean Dunn, the man who threw a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent during a surge in immigration enforcement. The department then took a misdemeanor case against him to trial, which it lost.

‘Roller coaster’ of criminal charges filed and dropped in DC: judge

U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui called the government’s handling of criminal cases in DC “unprecedented” for pursuing charges by complaint after grand juries refused to indict, charging cases with “apparent constitutional violations” and “rushing to charge cases before properly investigating them.”

Statistics helped tell the story. Faruqui found the government dismissed 20 cases out of more than 4,000 filed by complaint in DC from 2014 to 2024. But during eight weeks late 2025, the government dismissed 20 cases out of 95 charged by complaint.

“For the last several weeks, judges in this District have seen case after case involving unprecedented prosecutorial action,” Faruqui wrote in an October 2025 order. “Arresting, charging, dismissing, re-charging, dismissing again, recharging again in another court, and dismissing again: this roller coaster is anything but normal.”

Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the pace of filings could offer a partial explanation. She also said the department lost a “startling” number of experienced lawyers as a result of terminations and resignations, which could have hurt the vetting of cases.

“But this volume of dropped charges suggests that the department is either intentionally charging when they do not have a good case because they want people to feel threatened or it is not doing the most basic work required to vet charges before filing,” Goldberg, a former official in the State and Education departments in the Biden administration, told USA TODAY.

How big a problem is birth tourism? ‘No one knows for sure.’

Trump made restrictions on birthright citizenship a top priority. He signed an executive order on his first day of his second term. He became the first sitting president to attend a Supreme Court argument about the order.

But the administration’s lawyer had to tread cautiously when Chief Justice John Roberts asked at the April 1 argument: “Do you have any information about how common that is or how significant a problem it is?”

Solicitor General John Sauer cited news reports than 1 million people in China or more could be U.S. citizens and hundreds of companies cater to “birth tourism.”

But Sauer prefaced his estimates by saying: “It’s a great question. No one knows for sure.”

Judges find possible contempt, abuse of power in Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation

As part of his immigration crackdown, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed deportations of alleged terrorists. But the strategy quickly hit a hurdle when Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant from El Salvador, was mistakenly deported in March 2025 despite having an immigration court order allowing him to remain in the United States.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ruled the government disregarded his order blocking the deportation flight. He found probable cause for criminal contempt, with boasts by government officials “intimated they had defied the Court’s Order deliberately and gleefully.”

But the DC Circuit Court of Appeals halted Boasberg’s contempt inquiry. Trump has called Boasberg a “disgrace” and “Out of Control.”

The government returned Abrego Garcia but charged him in Tennessee with alleged human smuggling. U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who was also appointed by Obama, dismissed the charges in May as “an abuse of prosecuting power.”

‘Beyond the pale’: Minnesota judge on violations of court orders

Trump, who campaigned on border security and threatened to deport all undocumented immigrants, promotes the highest detention rates on record. But the enforcement surge flooded federal courts with litigation.

In Minnesota, U.S. Chief District Judge Patrick Schiltz got into a spat with U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen about how many times Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers violated judicial orders.

Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush, noted “grave concerns” Feb. 26 after “extraordinarily busy judges” counted 96 violations in 74 cases in January alone. Rosen disputed the findings.

“Assuming the statistical sample we chose is as representative of the whole as I believe it likely is, the information compiled by others for your order was far beyond the pale of accuracy for an order that would be wielded so publicly and so sharply,” Rosen wrote the judge on Feb. 9. “The lawyers in my civil division didn’t deserve it.”

So the judge sharpened his pencil and checked the figures again. Schiltz said “the bottom line is that ICE violated 97 orders in 66 of the cases” in January. He also found “113 additional orders that ICE has violated in 77 additional cases” through the end of February.

“If anything is ‘beyond the pale,’ it is ICE’s continued violation of the orders of this Court,” Schiltz wrote. “Increasingly, this Court has had to resort to using the threat of civil contempt to force ICE to comply with orders.”

‘Mistakes can be made’: New Jersey judge

In New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz, who was appointed by Joe Biden, blocked the government from moving a detained immigrant on Jan. 26. But government lawyers notified him the detainee was flown to a Texas detention center on Jan. 31 anyway. The detainee was returned on Feb. 5.

Jordan Fox, chief of staff and associate deputy attorney general, acknowledged that 17 detainees had been transferred mistakenly from Dec. 5, 2025, to Feb. 12, 2026, after judges blocked their removals. All were returned to New Jersey, he said. Overall, Fox acknowledged the government violated court orders 56 times in 547 cases during that two-month period.

“We will continue to act with the utmost vigilance to prevent, self-report, and ensure compliance with court orders during this unprecedented period of immigration filings in one of the hardest hit districts in the country,” Fox wrote. “Adherence to court orders is a bedrock feature of our justice system; ensuring that adherence is a core responsibility of our Office.”

Farbiarz weighed holding officials in criminal contempt for transfer violations averaging more than once per week.

“An email might not be forwarded here or there. Work pressures build and it can be hard to dig out. Mistakes can be made,” Farbiarz wrote. “But when the same mistakes happen over and over again – the picture can start to look different.”

DOJ ‘unworthy’ of trust: Rhode Island judge

Disputes about investigative subpoenas led judges to increasingly question what they are told by Justice Department lawyers, whether investigating transgender care, Air Force One security or the 2020 election.

“I know that many judges have declined to give DOJ lawyers the presumption of regularity, that is, benefit of the doubt that they have done their jobs properly and that their representations can be trusted,” Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney, told USA TODAY. “In the long term, an erosion of that presumption of regularity can make it more difficult for Justice Department lawyers to do their jobs if judges don’t trust them when they speak in court.”

Trump has campaigned for years against transgender surgery for children and demanded legislation aiming to ban it. But government lawyers ran into a hornet’s nest after subpoenaing Rhode Island hospital for records about medical care for gender dysphoria.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, who was appointed by Trump, revoked the subpoena after criticizing federal prosecutors for withholding information and misrepresenting facts in a case about the treatment of gender dysphoria. She said “the discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ’s tactics in this case is unsettling.”

“DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case,” McElroy wrote. “Its representatives have, under oath, misrepresented salient facts.”