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On Jan. 26, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz prohibited ICE from moving an immigrant, Baljinder Kumar, out of New Jersey while he challenged his unlawful detention. Five days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement flagrantly defied that order, transferring Kumar to a detention center in … Texas. After his lawyers complained, federal officials returned Kumar to New Jersey. But Farbiarz was not inclined to let this disobedience go unpunished. He informed the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office that he sought to craft a “remedy” for ICE’s defiance—and would require an “investigation” to assist him. He then ordered the office to investigate itself and to “enumerate each instance” in which it had “violated an order issued by a judge of this district” since Dec. 5.

Last Friday, Jordan Fox—an associate deputy attorney general and special attorney assigned to New Jersey—gave Farbiarz an answer: The office had violated at least 56 court orders since December alone, all related to the Trump administration’s unlawful policy mandating the indefinite detention of noncitizens legally entitled to a bond hearing. This confession, first reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, was accompanied by a letter stating that “we regret deeply all violations” but insisting that they were “unintentional and immediately rectified once we learned of them.” Fox, who is helping lead the New Jersey office after courts ousted Donald Trump’s first choice, Alina Habba, depicted these transgressions as relatively minor and rare. But Farbiarz did not buy it, noting that Kumar’s illegal transfer to Texas was far from an........

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