During a July 29th hearing, D.C. federal judge Amit Mehta rebuked and threatened to sanction government officials for having ignored his prior ruling in Long v. ICE (D.D.C), a seven-year-old case concerning access to metadata and database schema for certain agency databases.

I am literally at a loss right now. I am at a loss. I have never, in my judicial career, had an agency respond to a judicial order in the way that ICE has responded to this order in this case.

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I'm not doing this anymore, because otherwise you all are going to get sanctioned. And I don't know how one really sanctions a federal agency. It's not like you can sanction them in a way that you sanction a party, like money is really going to matter to a federal agency.But you're going to get sanctioned unless something starts happening in this matter that is consistent with what has happened in this case. I don't understand this. You are thumbing your nose at what has happened in this case.

The judge subsequently ordered ICE and DOJ to have supervisory officials appear at a hearing on August 4, 2021.

I don't act this way with parties, I really don't, I try not to do this, but you all have really tried my patience. I don't know what more to do and I don't know what more to say other than escalating this to people who will actually understand that when a court actually rules on something, that that order should be followed. This is just unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

See full hearing transcript here.