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ICE stalked a Minneapolis public defender, then falsely accused him of a crime.

Prosecutors called the memo an oversight but wouldn't say it was untrue. The judge said he'd never sign a complaint based on it.

ICE stalked a Minneapolis public defender, then falsely accused him of a crime.
Stock photo. Photo by Jay Pace on Unsplash

Matthew Deates did what defense lawyers do every day. After a federal magistrate judge in Minneapolis ordered his client released on April 28, Deates got the man some food and walked him to the light rail station. The next day, an ICE deportation officer wrote a memo claiming the client "was aided and abetted from immigration arrest by Assistant Public Defender Matthew Deates."

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the judge who had ordered that release told the government it had no business writing that. U.S. Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota called Deates "an exemplary lawyer," apologized to him on the government's behalf, and said he would order prosecutors to destroy every copy of the memo and replace it with a version that blacks out Deates' name, MPR News reported.

"On the face of the memo, it's clear that Mr. Deates did not and could not have committed any crime," Schultz said, according to MPR News.

Lunch, a train, and a tail

Deates is an assistant federal defender, a public lawyer appointed to represent people who can't afford one. His client, Ezequiel De Jesus Portillo Rodriguez, faces a felony charge of reentering the country after deportation. At the April 28 hearing, Schultz adopted Pretrial Services' recommendation to keep him free and allowed travel between California and Minnesota for court purposes, according to Deates' sworn declaration.

Deates says he didn't know until he read the memo that "any government agent was following or surveilling me" on that walk. The memo's author, ICE deportation officer Michael J. O'Neal, had planned to make an administrative arrest, meaning an immigration arrest without a judge's warrant, at the federal Pretrial Services office that day, the declaration says. (MPR News later reported that Portillo Rodriguez missed a July 30 hearing. That has nothing to do with what Deates did in April.)

How a memo about one case landed in another

The memo surfaced in discovery, the evidence prosecutors must hand to the defense, in United States v. Sant, No. 0:26-cr-00115 (D. Minn.), the conspiracy case against 15 Minnesotans accused of coordinating to impede federal immigration officers. Deates represents none of them. In a Sept. 25 letter, U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen and Assistant U.S. Attorney Tory Sailer asked defense lawyers to return or destroy it, writing that it "does not reflect the position of the United States Attorney's Office." The Red Lake Nation News also reported that the memo was "inadvertently disclosed."

At Tuesday's hearing, Sailer called the memo "an oversight by our office" caused by confusion about O'Neal, MPR reported. Deates is not under investigation, according to MPR. But Sailer still would not tell the judge the memo was wrong: "It is the position of our office that we do not agree with the memo, but I won't go as far as to say I agree with the facts," Sailer said, as MPR reported.

Schultz did not leave it there. "I think it's outrageous that agents of the United States government would follow a federal defender who is actually in the act of making sure that his client complies with a court order," he said. If the memo came to him as a criminal complaint, he said, "I have no doubt that I would decline to sign it."

Who won and what's left

Deates won most of what he asked for: an apology from the bench, a promise that the memo will be scrubbed of his name, and a judge's statement that the accusation had no basis. Schultz said he wasn't sure he had the power to grant one more request, a formal legal finding that Deates broke no law. The government lost on every point that mattered and walked out without having retracted its officer's claim. ICE told MPR News earlier this month that "obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime" and declined further comment.

"At every turn, they've chosen the dark path," said Chris Madel, Deates' lawyer, according to MPR News.

A public defender is a worker. He was named as a criminal suspect in a federal document for walking a client to a train, and the government still won't say the claim is false. We condemn ICE's decision to put that accusation in writing and prosecutors' refusal to take it back.

MPR's report did not mention a written order or a next hearing date, so watch the docket for the redaction order. If ICE shows up where you work, or names you in its paperwork, read our guide on what to do if ICE comes to your work and talk to a lawyer before you talk to agents.

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