A Myanmar refugee nursing a five-month-old, arrested and shipped to Texas. A Mexican man who sustained severe skull injuries during an arrest by ICE and was shackled in the hospital against doctors’ wishes. A Kenyan woman detained after picking up seizure medication. A Ukrainian refugee arrested for no apparent reason.

In other words, an ordinary weekend for federal judges in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s mass deportation push in the Twin Cities.

The district’s seven full-time judges and 10 partially retired judges have been inundated by hundreds of emergency lawsuits from immigrants targeted by ICE during the operation. They’re working weekends to manage the backlog and juggling a crush of individual cases under intense national attention.

And in all but a handful of cases, those judges have ruled that the Trump administration violated the law, sometimes flagrantly.

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Judges who are now weighing those larger cases have already seen their dockets swamped by individual immigration cases arising from Operation Metro Surge.

They include Kate Menendez, who recently ordered ICE to refrain from using retaliatory force against protesters. Her order was later blocked by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Biden-appointed judge is holding an even more significant hearing Monday, in the state’s effort to end Operation Metro Surge altogether.

“I think it kind of goes without saying that we are in shockingly unusual times,” Menendez said at the start of Monday’s hearing.

Menendez’s comment came just three days after she ordered the release of a Kenyan woman arrested while picking up seizure medication at a CVS, saying the administration lacked a legal basis to lock her up.

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The massive workload facing Minnesota judges may actually understate the impact of Operation Metro Surge: Department of Homeland Security officials have been quickly transferring some detainees out of state — often to deportation staging areas in Texas — which prevents them from filing for relief in Minnesota courts.

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