Federal Judge Orders Ethics Probe After DHS Falsely Smears Her Over ICE-Concealed Warrant

What ICE Did

In late April 2026, U.S. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose of Rhode Island held a hearing on the detention of Bryan Rafael Gomez, an undocumented immigrant in ICE custody. Government lawyers argued, and the judge accepted, that he could be released. On April 28, she ordered him released.

What no one told the court was that the Dominican Republic had issued an investigative homicide warrant for Gomez. The Justice Department lawyers handling the case knew about the warrant. They did not tell the judge — because, according to the Justice Department’s own subsequent admission, ICE had ordered them not to. The agency hid material facts from a federal judge through its own counsel of record, then watched as the judge ruled without them.

The Smear

Two days after the release, on April 30, the Department of Homeland Security issued a press release attacking DuBose by name. The release branded her a “Biden activist judge” who had knowingly released a “violent criminal illegal alien wanted for murder.” The framing was, in the words of the Justice Department itself, “inaccurate.” DuBose did not know about the warrant. She could not have known about the warrant. ICE had explicitly forbidden the lawyers in her courtroom from informing her of it.

The president’s own department, in other words, withheld evidence from a federal judge, then publicly attacked her for ruling without it.

”Egregious” Conduct

When DuBose returned to the bench last week, she did not let it go. She ordered an ethics review of the administration’s handling of the case, demanding answers about who at ICE made the decision to muzzle DOJ counsel, and whether any of the lawyers in her court understood they had been complicit in misleading her. She characterized the conduct as “egregious.” She also allowed ICE to re-arrest Gomez now that the warrant was on the record — a procedural off-ramp that does not absolve the underlying misconduct.

DuBose is not, in fact, a Biden appointee acting on partisan instinct. She is a federal judge enforcing the basic ground rule that lawyers do not lie to courts and that executive agencies do not weaponize the press against judges who rule against them.

A Pattern, Not an Incident

The DuBose case is the second high-profile instance in 2026 of a federal judge openly accusing the Trump administration of bad faith in immigration cases. In February, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes vacated a Board of Immigration Appeals decision and accused the executive branch of “terror” against noncitizens, citing the killing by ICE agents of two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — in Minnesota. The ACLU has filed at least 36 declarations from individuals describing excessive force during ICE arrests, including headlocks, pepper spray, and detentions of people who produced proof of citizenship.

The DuBose press release fits the same template the administration has used against district judges nationwide: lose a ruling, then attack the judge personally, falsely, and through official government channels. It is a deliberate corrosion of the line between the executive and judicial branches — a calculated bet that voters will hear “activist judge” and tune out the underlying facts.

Why It Matters

A federal judge cannot rule on facts that the government conceals from her. When a judge does her job and rules on the record she has been given, and the executive branch responds with a press release calling her a partisan hack for the very ruling its own deception produced, the rule of law has not been challenged from the outside — it has been gutted from the inside. DuBose’s ethics order is one of the rare moments where a judge has refused to absorb the abuse and instead pushed back on the record.