U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams threatened to hold Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in contempt of court.
A federal judge blasted Florida’s attorney general and could hold him in contempt of court for advising state law enforcement leaders that an order the judge made barring them from enforcing new immigration laws is not “lawful” or “legitimate.”
U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams said during a hearing in Miami on Tuesday that she was offended by a letter Attorney General James Uthmeier sent to policing leaders last week, and questioned what more she had to do to make it clear that her order is legitimate. “Do I need to put a ribbon on it?” she said, according to the Florida Phoenix.
The dustup occurred after Williams, in early April, granted a temporary injunction prohibiting Florida law enforcement officers from arresting illegal immigrants for violating novel new state laws that bar them from entering or reentering the state.
Uthmeier argues that the restraining order on state and local law enforcement is unlawful in part because no independent policing agencies are listed as defendants in the initial legal challenge filed this month by immigrant advocates.
After a mid-April hearing, Uthmeier initially instructed state and local law enforcement agencies to comply with Williams’s order. But he pivoted last week, writing in a letter that he “cannot prevent” them from enforcing the new laws.
It is his view, he wrote, “that no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce new illegal entry and reentry laws.”
That letter and a court filing by Uthmeier, who was appointed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in February, set up Tuesday’s showdown with Williams, a Barack Obama appointee. The case has broader implications about the ability of states to pass and enforce their own immigration-related laws. It comes as DeSantis and other Florida leaders are positioning the state as a key ally in President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation effort.
In February, just weeks after Trump returned to office, Florida lawmakers passed two bills aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration in the state. One of the measures made it a first-degree misdemeanor for unauthorized aliens to enter the state “after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.” It includes heightened penalties for illegal immigrants who reenter the state after a removal.
In early April, two non-profit immigrants’ rights groups and two of their unnamed members filed a class action complaint in U.S. District Court in Miami alleging that the state has unconstitutionally “created its own immigration crimes, completely outside the federal immigration system.” They claim that the Florida laws violate the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy and commerce clauses.
The Farmworker Association of Florida and the Florida Immigrant Coalition acknowledge in their lawsuit that many of their members “entered the United States unlawfully and now have a wide range of immigration statuses and histories.”
The defendants are Uthmeier, Nicholas Cox, the statewide prosecutor, and Florida’s 20 elected state attorneys, according to the lawsuit.
On April 4, two days after the lawsuit was filed, Williams granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting “Defendants and their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and any person who are in active concert or participation with them” from enforcing the new laws. She ruled that the plaintiffs have standing and are likely to succeed on the merits, and that their members could “suffer irreparable harm by being placed at risk of arrest, prosecution, and detention under an unconstitutional state statute.”
In a response filed last week, Uthmeier argued that Williams’ order was “wrong” and unlawful because it binds state and local law enforcement agencies — sheriff’s offices, police departments, the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — who are not parties to the suit, aren’t defendants, and “are not invariably in active concert or participation” with the defendants.
“Defendants have no power to control or direct their behavior,” Uthmeier wrote in his brief.
After Uthmeier sent his letter to law enforcement leaders last week, DeSantis backed him in a post on X: “The mission continues,” he wrote. “Immigration law must be enforced and FL is leading on working with the Trump administration to get it done.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers called Uthmeier’s argument “baseless” and “radical.” In his view, they wrote, “law enforcement officers across the state may make hundreds or even thousands of arrests under the unconstitutional law,” and the only way to prevent those arrests would be for “each and every law enforcement agency” to be “formally joined to this litigation—and every other challenge to unconstitutional state laws.”
They noted in their brief that some Florida law enforcement officers continued to make arrests under the new laws in the weeks after Williams’s initial order.
Williams on Tuesday called Uthmeier’s letter advising law enforcement “shocking.” After a brief break in the hearing, lawyers for the attorney general told Williams that Uthmeier wasn’t retreating from his position, according to the Miami Herald.
Williams scheduled a hearing for late May, during which she could hold Uthmeier in contempt of court, the Herald reported.
In an order Tuesday night, Williams reiterated that “local law enforcement agencies are bound by the Court’s Order and cannot make arrests” under the state’s new immigration laws “unless the Court enters a future order dissolving the injunction or a higher reviewing court modifies or overrules this Order.”
Williams wrote that Uthmeier’s argument that law enforcement agencies can’t be bound by her order because they aren’t controlled or funded by the defendants in the case “raises grave constitutional concerns.” She also noted letters he sent recently to leaders in Orlando and Fort Myers threatening to remove them from their positions “based on his perception that they had failed to use their best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law.”
She also noted social media posts he’s made as attorney general directing state law enforcement agencies to execute search warrants and monitor protests.
“Those statements by the party Defendant,” she wrote, “support a conclusion that he exerts a measure of control over state and local law enforcement agencies’ criminal enforcement efforts, including those related to immigration.”