Picture an elderly refugee in Northern Virginia who has lived legally in the United States for decades under a supervision order rather than in detention, because an immigration judge once determined he could not be returned to his home country due to risk of torture. This hypothetical case reflects the exact mechanism being exposed in a lawsuit in Louisiana: a protective order issued by a federal judge does not necessarily mean ICE will comply with it.
The central case involves Ibrahim Mohammed, a Maryland resident who was granted refugee status from Ethiopia. After losing that status due to a criminal conviction, he remained protected from deportation under the Convention Against Torture because an immigration judge determined he could be tortured if returned. However, ICE arrested him three times despite two successive release orders from federal judge John W. deGravelles. Vernon Liggins, then-deputy director overseeing the ICE Baltimore office, is accused of ordering the arrest in violation of court orders in July 2026 and now faces a contempt of court ruling expected to be issued by the court on Wednesday, August 19, 2026.
Notably, ICE also sought to deport Mohammed to Eswatini, a country with which he has no connection, while Washington paid $5.1 million to that nation to accept third-country deportees. This is not an isolated incident.
A court order providing protection is no longer a final safeguard if enforcement authorities are willing to ignore it.
A pattern repeating across the nation
In Minnesota, a federal judge also previously summoned federal prosecutors and multiple ICE officials to court over repeated violations of court orders, including failing to return phones, cash, and passports to released detainees. Another notable case involved Emilio Pena Jimenez, deported to Mexico despite two court orders requiring his release, and according to court records, he may not have had access to a lawyer before signing deportation documents not translated into Spanish.
The scope of the problem is even larger when looking at the numbers. In Minnesota, the federal government was recorded violating 96 court orders across 74 separate cases in just January 2026, a number that Judge Patrick Schiltz himself believes is underestimated. At the same time, the number of habeas corpus filings (requests for courts to review the legality of detention) reached 500 cases in less than a month, on track to more than double the total for all of 2025.
Why this matters to the Vietnamese American community
Unlike general immigration policy, the group directly affected here consists of those currently holding supervision orders or who once had deportation protection under refugee or Convention Against Torture provisions, including elderly first-generation refugees who may have encountered legal issues in the past. For this group, a court order no longer represents a final safeguard if enforcement officials are willing to ignore it and accept the risk of facing contempt charges afterward.
The next development to monitor is the upcoming ruling from the Louisiana court. If the court actually convicts Liggins of contempt, this would set a rare legal precedent holding ICE leadership personally accountable, rather than merely reprimanding the agency broadly. Conversely, if the court does not issue a strong ruling, immigration attorneys will likely continue to witness a similar pattern spreading, as already seen in both Louisiana and Minnesota.
For those holding supervision orders or protective visas, the practical lesson is to maintain close contact with an immigration attorney and keep complete records of all court orders related to your case, as these records may be the only basis to challenge ICE if it acts in violation of those orders.
Bảo Nguyễn
Bảo Nguyễn founded Saigon Sentinel to give the Vietnamese diaspora truly independent, in-depth community coverage at a time when misinformation moves faster than fact-checks and the language barrier makes verification harder than it should be. He sets the editorial standards and quality controls that govern the reporting, chooses the subjects, writes and edits each article, reads it against its sources before publication, audits published output, and handles corrections.