Todd Lyons, Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), speaks at a press conference about Operation Midway Blitz, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign, from a hangar in Gary, Indiana, on October 30, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
A detained immigrant whose case prompted a senior Minnesota federal judge to threaten the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with contempt of court has been released in Texas, according to a court filing Wednesday.
In a letter, the released immigrant’s lawyer, Juan Hugo Tobay Robles, told the judge that “contempt proceedings may still be appropriate” given that the federal government violated the judge’s advance order in holding a bail hearing for Tobay Robles.
Attorney Graham Ojala-Barber asked Chief Judge Patrick Schultz to hold a hearing in more than a week to give Tobay Robles time to gather evidence about the “harm” he suffered as a result of the government’s actions.
A man protests the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a rally against increased immigration enforcement across the city outside the Whipple Building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 8, 2026.
Tim Evans Reuter
In a scathing filing Monday night, Schultz ordered Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to appear in person in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on Friday to explain why he should not be held in contempt of court despite ICE’s repeated violations of judicial orders related to immigration enforcement actions.
Schiltz said he would not require Lyons to appear in court if he was informed that Tobay Robles had been released before Friday’s hearing.
In a joint filing Wednesday, Lyons Ojalla Barber, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and ICE St. Paul Field Office Director David Easterwood confirmed that Tobay Robles has been released.
In a separate filing, Ojalla Barber told Shilts that after the judge issued the order to Lyons, “my office learned (on Tuesday afternoon) that ICE had finally released Tobay Robles from custody in Texas.”
“Tobay Robles’ supporters drove from Minnesota to Texas and are now driving back to Minnesota to reunite with his family and resume interrupted medical care,” Ojala-Barber wrote.
“As His Highness’s order of January 26 illustrates, the consequences of recent government failures to comply with court orders have often resulted in great hardship for the non-citizens involved,” the lawyers wrote.
“I believe that the hardship suffered by Mr. Tobay Robles as a result of the government’s violation of this court’s January 14 order (requiring bail hearings) is significant and merits the filing of a personal contempt action,” the attorneys wrote.
“However, due to his long detention and return from Texas, it was impossible to fully document these harms.”
Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement in St. Paul, Minnesota, on January 27, 2026.
Seth Herald | Reuters
Ojala-Barber had no comment to CNBC other than to say, “We have reached an agreement with the government that Mr. Tobay Robles has been released from custody.”
ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment from CNBC.
Shilts called it an “extraordinary step” Monday in an order requiring Lyons to appear in court.
But the judge also said, “This court has been extremely patient with the defendants, even though they have decided to send thousands of personnel to Minnesota to detain aliens and have made no provision to deal with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that are sure to result.”
ICE and other federal agents are flooding into Minneapolis as the Trump administration seeks to round up illegal immigrants there and elsewhere in the state.
This month, two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Preti, were shot and killed by federal agents during separate confrontations. These killings led to a nationwide backlash against the administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement strategy.
