A federal judge ripped into the Trump administration for putting her safety and that of the American public at risk with a “patently false” public smear about an immigration ruling.
U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose said on Monday that a Department of Homeland Security press release headlined “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder” was still live on the agency’s website days after she had publicly refuted it. The April 30 statement attacked the Rhode Island-based judge over her order releasing Bryan Rafael Gomez, 27, from ICE custody two days earlier.
“The April 30th, completely erroneous and dangerous press release is still on their website,” DuBose said at a contempt hearing, reported by Politico. “It puts people at risk. It’s a threat to judicial security.”
Justice Department attorney Kevin Bolan admitted he had failed to tell DuBose about a 2023 arrest warrant issued for Gomez by authorities in Santo Domingo because ICE had ordered him to keep it back.
The outlet reported that Bolan “profusely apologized” to the judge during the virtual hearing, conceding the central claim against her “simply was not true.”
But Biden apointee DuBose, the first openly LGBTQ judge on the Rhode Island federal bench, noted that the same warrant had already been bragged about publicly by Trump officials in their own press release two weeks earlier—one boasting that ICE Boston had rounded up five “foreign fugitives” in a month.
“I’m not trying to make this political,” she added, according to Politico. “It’s also very important that the public has the facts. As long as this particular post is out there, it’s setting up a false narrative.”
The DHS attack from acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis branded DuBose “an activist judge appointed by Joe Biden” who had “released this wanted murderer back into American communities.”
Both press releases remained live on the DHS website at the time of this story’s publication. A DHS spokesperson refused to answer Politico’s questions, instead directing the outlet back to the same release.
The Daily Beast’s sister publication, PunchUp, has discovered that the press release page on dhs.gov was modified on May 1—the same day Bolan filed his court declaration disowning its central claim as untrue—to add two new keyword tags, “ALIEN” and “ILLEGAL,” to the page.
A Wayback Machine snapshot taken in the early hours of May 1 shows the page tagged with three keywords, while a second snapshot taken about 18 hours later, after the page was updated, shows the same three plus the two additions. No correction was issued to the body of the release and no part of it was taken down.
The Daily Beast has asked DHS whether the agency deliberately withheld the warrant information from DuBose to enable the political attack on her, and why the release was made more searchable on the same day its central claim was repudiated by DOJ in federal court.
It responded not by answering the question but by referring to the original, unchanged, “Activist Biden Judge” press release.
DuBose said that if Bolan had a genuine confidentiality concern, the obvious move was to put the warrant before the court under seal—a routine practice in her courtroom. She placed the blame primarily on ICE, labeling the agency’s behavior “misconduct,” and said she was weighing contempt sanctions against DHS or DOJ officials.
“There was a serious breakdown in the ethical codes here,” DuBose said, calling the episode “a massive breach of this court’s trust.” She added, “It’s going to take a while to rebuild that trust. I believe that we can.”
Gomez was originally arrested by Worcester, Massachusetts, police on April 4 on assault and battery charges. ICE Boston picked him up after he posted $500 bail and held him at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, under a statute DuBose later ruled did not apply to his case.
He has been at his Massachusetts home since DuBose’s habeas ruling. The judge deferred a decision on whether to send him back into detention until Tuesday.
The episode is the latest flashpoint in escalating tensions between federal judges and the Trump administration’s deportation operation. Courtrooms across the country are increasingly seeing DOJ and ICE officials hauled in over missed deadlines, false statements, and apparent breaches of court orders.
The Daily Beast has also contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
