{"id":158639,"date":"2026-07-28T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/07\/28\/dhs-general-counsel-names-four-federal-judges-worst-of-the-worst-as-threats-against-judiciary-hit-564\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T12:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T20:13:00","slug":"dhs-general-counsel-names-four-federal-judges-worst-of-the-worst-as-threats-against-judiciary-hit-564","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/07\/28\/dhs-general-counsel-names-four-federal-judges-worst-of-the-worst-as-threats-against-judiciary-hit-564\/","title":{"rendered":"DHS General Counsel Names Four Federal Judges \u2018Worst Of The Worst\u2019 As Threats Against Judiciary Hit 564"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Homeland Security runs a recurring social media feature called \u201cWorst of the Worst,\u201d in which it names individual immigrants it has deported and catalogs their alleged crimes. It\u2019s a public relations effort to distract from the fact that 99 percent of what DHS does involves deporting random, clean record small business owners<\/a> and killing innocent people<\/a>. Whatever you think of the practice \u2014 and there is plenty to think about it \u2014 it made internal sense for an agency trying to justify its actions by vilifying a minuscule subset.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, DHS General Counsel James Percival launched a new spinoff<\/a>: \u201cWorst of the Worst, District Judge Edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of four posts, Percival named four sitting federal judges: Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois and Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, were identified for temporarily preserving deportation protections for Burmese and Somali immigrants while litigation played out. Paula Xinis of Maryland, who drew the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. \u201cRemember Kilmar Abrego Garcia?\u201d Percival wrote. \u201cHe is still in the country,\u201d he adds as a gotcha, glossing over the part where the administration has already admitted they accidentally sent Abrego Garcia to an El Salvadoran slave prison. And Hern\u00e1n Vera of the Central District of California, earns a mention for handling litigation over how DHS responded to immigration protests.<\/p>\n

DHS told Bloomberg Law News that this is all very normal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Percival\u2019s social media thread \u201cis nothing more than a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences.\u201d \u2026 \u201cIf accurately describing a judge\u2019s rulings is controversial, the issue isn\u2019t the reporting, it\u2019s the rulings themselves. The record speaks for itself. Facts aren\u2019t attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWorst of the worst\u201d seems to ring in opinion, to be honest. Along with \u201cjudicial sabotage,\u201d \u201cdeliberately sluggish,\u201d \u201cmicromanaging,\u201d and \u201ccrazy\u201d \u2014 all characterizations from the Tweets \u2014 these claims are not facts<\/em> by the classical definition. Or, by any definition while we\u2019re at it. If the facts spoke for themselves, Percival wouldn\u2019t spend the rest of his character limit trying to spin past the lengthy recitations of fact in all the opinions involved. <\/p>\n

Which brings us to what Percival \u2014 who we will remind folks, we\u2019ve already noted as someone who really should lose their law license<\/a> when this is all over \u2014 told the Senate Homeland Security Committee when he was asking for this job:<\/p>\n

\n

I view the role of the General Counsel as limited. The attorneys in the federal government were not on the ballot. The President and his policy makers are the proper officials to make policy decisions for the federal government. The role of a General Counsel is to provide excellent, accurate legal advice free from political bias or motivation. If confirmed, that is what I would do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That aged poorly. Percival has spent his run atop the DHS legal apparatus penning opinion columns for The Federalist<\/em> \u2014 where he attacked a Rhode Island federal judge<\/a> who had called out the administration when she discovered government lawyers lied to her<\/a> \u2014 and the Wall Street Journal<\/em> \u2014 where he defended warrantless home invasions<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The latter article he signed as \u201cJimmy Percival,\u201d which gives L\u2019il Rascals energy, if the L\u2019il Rascals grew up and built a secret police force. On the other hand, this moniker was marginally helpful in researching his paper trail because it didn\u2019t litter the results with links to the objectively better James<\/em> by Percival Everett.<\/p>\n

The point is, Percival has spent his time in this position explicitly trafficking in political bias, likely because his legal advice keeps losing. This is a guy who struggled with habeas corpus at his confirmation hearing<\/a>, so the prospect of \u201caccurate legal advice\u201d was suspect from jump.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to criticize federal judges. We do it here all the time, and it can be a healthy to hold unelected, life-tenured officials to scrutiny. But none of us at Above the Law<\/em> is presently a federal government official and none of us are comparing federal judges to murderers and kidnappers<\/a> for an audience of thugs who already stormed the Capitol and tried to hang the vice president.<\/p>\n

As Paul Kiesel, founder of Speak Up for Justice<\/a>, explained:<\/p>\n

\n

[Percival] started posting on social media, calling sitting federal judges \u201cworst of the worst\u201d That is not a random phrase. That\u2019s the same label DHS uses for its own series naming dangerous criminal immigrants that the agency has deported, its language built to justify removing people accused of violent crimes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is what transforms Percival\u2019s thumb-warrior posts into a dangerous attack on the rule of law. We\u2019re not writing this article if the DHS general counsel posts, \u201cJudge X ruled against us, and we disagree with the ruling and plan to appeal.\u201d We\u2019re writing this because he lifted his own agency\u2019s description for heinous criminals and slapped it on district judges following the letter of the law instead of rewriting it for \u201cMr. Accurate Legal Advice\u201d here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you don\u2019t do is go public and target the judges personally, just because you didn\u2019t like the way they ruled,\u201d Kiesel said. \u201cAnd picking and choosing which judges to attack based on whose rulings you don\u2019t like isn\u2019t accountability. That\u2019s political loyalty testing, and it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

And not just dangerous for abstract the rule of law. The U.S. Marshals Service tracked 564 threats against federal judges last fiscal year<\/a>, up from 509. That\u2019s about an 11 percent bump, which sounds almost manageable until you remember it\u2019s compounding on a baseline that was already the worst on record, and that \u201ctracked\u201d means a threat serious enough to open a file on.<\/p>\n

District judges are taking the brunt of this abuse because they insist on doing their jobs<\/a>. The public doesn\u2019t quite grasp the horrific nature of the threats they\u2019re receiving for this<\/a> with little to no support from the Department of Justice<\/a>. Indeed, the potential future Attorney General used his government platform to declare \u201cwar\u201d on federal judges<\/a>. And the Supreme Court adds more fuel to the fire by rug pulling established caselaw from under district judges leaving the trial courts ripe for attack from cynical actors claiming they \u201cgot it wrong\u201d when they dutifully applied the law as it existed until an unexplained shadow docket order issued five minutes ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As bad as it would be to have the DOJ and DHS recklessly priming a pre-existing powder keg of violence to bully and chill federal judges from upholding the law, the problem is they built the powder keg too. The rise in judicial threats has steadily risen throughout the Trump era \u2014 whether he\u2019s been in office or seething from the outside. Goons like Percival reach for this \u201cworst of the worst\u201d rhetoric because it\u2019s the top of the playbook they\u2019ve worked out of for years now. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re going to keep doing it for years to come until there\u2019s some accountability. And that\u2019s all on the local licensing authorities. When all this is said and done and the people using their law degrees to push these disgraceful acts attempt to slither back to the private sector, professional authorities need to stand up and disbar them<\/a>. They\u2019ve undermined the integrity of the profession, attacked the rule of law our whole system relies upon, and losing the privilege of calling themselves lawyers and wreaking havoc on the public is our obligation as lawyers.<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: District Judges Fight To Save The Rule Of Law While DOJ And Supreme Court Snicker<\/a>
Legalweek\u2019s Annual Judicial Panel: A Clear And Present Danger To Our Judges \u2014 And The Rule Of Law<\/a>
\u2018I\u2019ll Put A Bullet In Your Head\u2019: The Disturbing Reality Of Being A Judge In America<\/a>
\u2018The Silence Is Deafening\u2019: Judge Esther Salas Blasts DOJ Over Threats Of Judicial Intimidation<\/a>
Amy Coney Barrett Swatting Incident Tests Whether Anyone Cares About Threats To Judges Who Aren\u2019t On SCOTUS<\/a>
As Judicial Threats Spike, Mike Johnson Talks About \u2018Making An Example\u2019 Of Them<\/a>
White House Has Absolutely Unhinged Response To Judicial Threats<\/a>
Judge James Ho Big Mad Over Statement On Judicial Safety<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post DHS General Counsel Names Four Federal Judges \u2018Worst Of The Worst\u2019 As Threats Against Judiciary Hit 564<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Wooden<\/figure>\n

The Department of Homeland Security runs a recurring social media feature called \u201cWorst of the Worst,\u201d in which it names individual immigrants it has deported and catalogs their alleged crimes. It\u2019s a public relations effort to distract from the fact that 99 percent of what DHS does involves deporting random, clean record small business owners<\/a> and killing innocent people<\/a>. Whatever you think of the practice \u2014 and there is plenty to think about it \u2014 it made internal sense for an agency trying to justify its actions by vilifying a minuscule subset.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, DHS General Counsel James Percival launched a new spinoff<\/a>: \u201cWorst of the Worst, District Judge Edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the course of four posts, Percival named four sitting federal judges: Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois and Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, were identified for temporarily preserving deportation protections for Burmese and Somali immigrants while litigation played out. Paula Xinis of Maryland, who drew the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. \u201cRemember Kilmar Abrego Garcia?\u201d Percival wrote. \u201cHe is still in the country,\u201d he adds as a gotcha, glossing over the part where the administration has already admitted they accidentally sent Abrego Garcia to an El Salvadoran slave prison. And Hern\u00e1n Vera of the Central District of California, earns a mention for handling litigation over how DHS responded to immigration protests.<\/p>\n

DHS told Bloomberg Law News that this is all very normal<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Percival\u2019s social media thread \u201cis nothing more than a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences.\u201d \u2026 \u201cIf accurately describing a judge\u2019s rulings is controversial, the issue isn\u2019t the reporting, it\u2019s the rulings themselves. The record speaks for itself. Facts aren\u2019t attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWorst of the worst\u201d seems to ring in opinion, to be honest. Along with \u201cjudicial sabotage,\u201d \u201cdeliberately sluggish,\u201d \u201cmicromanaging,\u201d and \u201ccrazy\u201d \u2014 all characterizations from the Tweets \u2014 these claims are not facts<\/em> by the classical definition. Or, by any definition while we\u2019re at it. If the facts spoke for themselves, Percival wouldn\u2019t spend the rest of his character limit trying to spin past the lengthy recitations of fact in all the opinions involved. <\/p>\n

Which brings us to what Percival \u2014 who we will remind folks, we\u2019ve already noted as someone who really should lose their law license<\/a> when this is all over \u2014 told the Senate Homeland Security Committee when he was asking for this job:<\/p>\n

\n

I view the role of the General Counsel as limited. The attorneys in the federal government were not on the ballot. The President and his policy makers are the proper officials to make policy decisions for the federal government. The role of a General Counsel is to provide excellent, accurate legal advice free from political bias or motivation. If confirmed, that is what I would do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That aged poorly. Percival has spent his run atop the DHS legal apparatus penning opinion columns for The Federalist<\/em> \u2014 where he attacked a Rhode Island federal judge<\/a> who had called out the administration when she discovered government lawyers lied to her<\/a> \u2014 and the Wall Street Journal<\/em> \u2014 where he defended warrantless home invasions<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The latter article he signed as \u201cJimmy Percival,\u201d which gives L\u2019il Rascals energy, if the L\u2019il Rascals grew up and built a secret police force. On the other hand, this moniker was marginally helpful in researching his paper trail because it didn\u2019t litter the results with links to the objectively better James<\/em> by Percival Everett.<\/p>\n

The point is, Percival has spent his time in this position explicitly trafficking in political bias, likely because his legal advice keeps losing. This is a guy who struggled with habeas corpus at his confirmation hearing<\/a>, so the prospect of \u201caccurate legal advice\u201d was suspect from jump.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to criticize federal judges. We do it here all the time, and it can be a healthy to hold unelected, life-tenured officials to scrutiny. But none of us at Above the Law<\/em> is presently a federal government official and none of us are comparing federal judges to murderers and kidnappers<\/a> for an audience of thugs who already stormed the Capitol and tried to hang the vice president.<\/p>\n

As Paul Kiesel, founder of Speak Up for Justice<\/a>, explained:<\/p>\n

\n

[Percival] started posting on social media, calling sitting federal judges \u201cworst of the worst\u201d That is not a random phrase. That\u2019s the same label DHS uses for its own series naming dangerous criminal immigrants that the agency has deported, its language built to justify removing people accused of violent crimes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is what transforms Percival\u2019s thumb-warrior posts into a dangerous attack on the rule of law. We\u2019re not writing this article if the DHS general counsel posts, \u201cJudge X ruled against us, and we disagree with the ruling and plan to appeal.\u201d We\u2019re writing this because he lifted his own agency\u2019s description for heinous criminals and slapped it on district judges following the letter of the law instead of rewriting it for \u201cMr. Accurate Legal Advice\u201d here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you don\u2019t do is go public and target the judges personally, just because you didn\u2019t like the way they ruled,\u201d Kiesel said. \u201cAnd picking and choosing which judges to attack based on whose rulings you don\u2019t like isn\u2019t accountability. That\u2019s political loyalty testing, and it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

And not just dangerous for abstract the rule of law. The U.S. Marshals Service tracked 564 threats against federal judges last fiscal year<\/a>, up from 509. That\u2019s about an 11 percent bump, which sounds almost manageable until you remember it\u2019s compounding on a baseline that was already the worst on record, and that \u201ctracked\u201d means a threat serious enough to open a file on.<\/p>\n

District judges are taking the brunt of this abuse because they insist on doing their jobs<\/a>. The public doesn\u2019t quite grasp the horrific nature of the threats they\u2019re receiving for this<\/a> with little to no support from the Department of Justice<\/a>. Indeed, the potential future Attorney General used his government platform to declare \u201cwar\u201d on federal judges<\/a>. And the Supreme Court adds more fuel to the fire by rug pulling established caselaw from under district judges leaving the trial courts ripe for attack from cynical actors claiming they \u201cgot it wrong\u201d when they dutifully applied the law as it existed until an unexplained shadow docket order issued five minutes ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As bad as it would be to have the DOJ and DHS recklessly priming a pre-existing powder keg of violence to bully and chill federal judges from upholding the law, the problem is they built the powder keg too. The rise in judicial threats has steadily risen throughout the Trump era \u2014 whether he\u2019s been in office or seething from the outside. Goons like Percival reach for this \u201cworst of the worst\u201d rhetoric because it\u2019s the top of the playbook they\u2019ve worked out of for years now. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re going to keep doing it for years to come until there\u2019s some accountability. And that\u2019s all on the local licensing authorities. When all this is said and done and the people using their law degrees to push these disgraceful acts attempt to slither back to the private sector, professional authorities need to stand up and disbar them<\/a>. They\u2019ve undermined the integrity of the profession, attacked the rule of law our whole system relies upon, and losing the privilege of calling themselves lawyers and wreaking havoc on the public is our obligation as lawyers.<\/p>\n

Earlier<\/strong>: District Judges Fight To Save The Rule Of Law While DOJ And Supreme Court Snicker<\/a>
Legalweek\u2019s Annual Judicial Panel: A Clear And Present Danger To Our Judges \u2014 And The Rule Of Law<\/a>
\u2018I\u2019ll Put A Bullet In Your Head\u2019: The Disturbing Reality Of Being A Judge In America<\/a>
\u2018The Silence Is Deafening\u2019: Judge Esther Salas Blasts DOJ Over Threats Of Judicial Intimidation<\/a>
Amy Coney Barrett Swatting Incident Tests Whether Anyone Cares About Threats To Judges Who Aren\u2019t On SCOTUS<\/a>
As Judicial Threats Spike, Mike Johnson Talks About \u2018Making An Example\u2019 Of Them<\/a>
White House Has Absolutely Unhinged Response To Judicial Threats<\/a>
Judge James Ho Big Mad Over Statement On Judicial Safety<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Homeland Security runs a recurring social media feature called \u201cWorst of the Worst,\u201d in which it names individual immigrants it has deported and catalogs their alleged crimes. It\u2019s a public relations effort to distract from the fact that 99 percent of what DHS does involves deporting random, clean record small business owners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Headshot-300x200-Zs87H5.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}