As legal claims against the Trump administration stack up, several federal lawyers defending the U.S. government — and its repeated failures to follow court orders — have regularly fallen back on the same argument: They simply have no idea what’s going on.

In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national and Maryland resident mistakenly deported last year, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis became so frustrated by government attorneys’ failure to answer basic questions that she considered holding them in contempt.

“We have said what we can say. I do not have that information,” the government’s lawyer, Drew Ensign, told Xinis at a protracted hearing on Abrego Garcia’s status last spring. Ensign’s lack of knowledge about Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and what the administration had done to facilitate his release, Xinis said, suggested the government was “playing a game with their own lawyers.” In a later order, she slammed DOJ attorneys for their “willful bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations” and “specious” tactics to evade her questions. One year later, Abrego Garcia’s case is still not closed, and just last week, the government said it still intends to deport him.

In a January case alleging ICE was routinely denying people detained at the Whipple Federal Building in Minnesota access to phones or lawyers, a U.S. district judge and a lawyer representing the government couldn’t agree on the basic fact of whether phones had been available inside.

DOJ lawyer Christina Parascandola had trouble determining the names of the people the government had detained, she told a judge, meaning there was no way to check if all detainees had been able to make a phone call, as they were supposed to. In fact, she told the judge, she couldn’t “say with a hundred percent certainty” if the government, her client, even kept such records. As to the phones, Parascandola said she hadn’t been there herself to see, and could only rely on what ICE agents had told her.

In a West Virginia case over the legality of a warrantless ICE-initiated traffic stop of a driver, who was then held in jail for nine days, government lawyer Christopher Arthur told U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin he was “not prepared to answer” questions about who approved stopping the man, nor their title or the agency they worked for.

When the judge begged him to “just answer me” and explain “why this stop was lawful,” Arthur replied: “OK. The answer is, I don’t know what initiated the initial stop.”

Goodwin appeared flabbergasted.

“Can you imagine ever coming to court to try to convince somebody that a person is being lawfully held with absolutely no information? You don’t have anything,” he said.

“I don’t know” as an answer in court isn’t unheard of, and it’s not necessarily a wholly unacceptable response to judges. But a HuffPost review of prominent federal immigration cases found U.S. attorneys falling back on “I don’t know” or some version of it as an answer to judges’ questions often — including after they had already been asked repeatedly for information at earlier hearings or given time to discern answers for the court. Some lawyers have maintained that response despite threats of professional or even legal consequences from the judges presiding over their cases. This hints at two possibilities: either a loyalty to a strategy of obfuscation, or a systemic incompetence that runs through the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump.

Legal experts told HuffPost either one is deeply concerning. Whether lawyers are incompetent on purpose or if they are simply in the dark, the fact remains that lives are at stake and the credibility of the Justice Department hangs precariously in the balance.

As Amy Powell, a senior trial counsel for the Justice Department for 20 years, told HuffPost, the “brain drain from the department has been dramatic” over the past two years, and the consequences have been immediate. Powell resigned last year and now serves as the litigation director for Lawyers for Good Government.

“The DOJ is never going to be the same. Even if we elect a competent administration and they appoint competent people, career people don’t suddenly get hired back,” she said. “The institutional loss is generational, and it’s going to be decades to rebuild what has been lost.”

Attorneys for the government are meant to hold a special place in the justice system. They are the “nation’s principal litigators,” and must balance federal, state and local interests. They must prosecute and defend. And they take an oath to execute the laws “faithfully” for all, regardless of their individual interpretation of the Constitution or federal laws.

The standards for lawyers inside the department appear to be at rock bottom right now, said one former DOJ official who agreed to speak anonymously out of fear of professional repercussions.

“If you’ve got a pulse, you can get into the Justice Department,” they told HuffPost.

The Justice Department did not respond to specific questions about its strategy or lawyers not answering direct questions from judges. None of the prosecutors named in this story responded to requests for comment.

Scrupulous lawyers still remain at the Justice Department. But it has been hard for the institution to keep checks and balances on itself.

Since his second stint in office began, Trump has handpicked sycophants to control the Justice Department. The agency has been gutted as politicization has proliferated. Firings and resignations have ripped through the department. The number of attorneys employed by the DOJ has dropped to less than one-third of what it was before Trump took office — from 12,955 in December 2024 to just over 3,400 in January 2026, according to research published this month by a group of former DOJ officials known as Justice Connection. On Trump’s order, the DOJ has hollowed itself out over the last year by shuttering various civil and criminal divisions, and has seen its funding drastically reduced.

“Can you imagine ever coming to court to try to convince somebody that a person is being lawfully held with absolutely no information? You don’t have anything.”

The result has been DOJ lawyers spread thin as the administration has sued — and been sued by — various organizations and individuals at breakneck speed. And when they get in front of a judge, they may claim cluelessness.

“I don’t know” is at times a necessary answer, Powell said: Sometimes lawyers just don’t know things. But they cannot use it as a dodge.

“If you do know and you’re lying and you say you don’t know, it’s still a lie and the lie you told was that you don’t know,” she said.

Judges and lawyers in the U.S. operate under a shared legal doctrine known as the “presumption of regularity,” or the concept that the federal government must be presumed to be acting in good faith unless evidence proves otherwise. It is foundational to American law. So, if lawyers say they “don’t know” or don’t have answers, it is assumed they are truthful.

The former DOJ official agreed that there are times where a lawyer may actually be caught unaware and not have an answer to a question. “But there is also a duty of diligence,” they said. “They have to dig in and learn what the facts are.”

The failure by some lawyers at the DOJ to dig into those facts, especially after judges have asked them repeatedly or even made accommodations for them, damages the Justice Department’s credibility, and it raises the question of whether government lawyers are abdicating their responsibilities.

When Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act last year to rapidly deport over 100 men accused of being Venezuelan gang members to the CECOT prison in El Salvador, the Justice Department defied Chief District Judge James Boasberg’s orders to turn around planes holding those deportees. Boasberg, who had already issued a temporary restraining order barring the deportations, held a hearing with government lawyers to discuss Trump’s proclamation and learn whether the government had plans to deport anyone else within 24 to 48 hours.

When questioned, Ensign — the same lawyer who would also represent the government in the Abrego Garcia case — repeatedly said, “I don’t know the status of the planes” and “I don’t know the answer to that question.” The “I don’t knows” were coupled with assertions that information couldn’t be shared because it was a threat to national security.

Lawyers representing the men in detention said the planes were leaving imminently. That night, two planes carrying deportees left the U.S. for CECOT.

When Boasberg reconvened the hearing later that night, he was clear with his instructions: “Inform your clients of this immediately and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States.”

They were not. Instead, over the next two days, the planes arrived in El Salvador. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shared a New York Post article on X mentioning Boasberg’s order and a laughing/crying emoji with the words “Oopsie… Too late” next to it. The White House shared Bukele’s post a little over an hour later.

The men who the government sent to CECOT, as HuffPost previously reported, would later speak of enduring horrific experiences at the prison, including allegations of beatings, mental abuse and sexual assault.

Boasberg eventually sought to hold the government accountable, attempting to open criminal contempt proceedings for the Trump administration officials who would have signed off on the orders Ensign seemed unable or unwilling to discuss in court. In kind, the Justice Department accused Boasberg — ultimately unsuccessfully — of judicial misconduct. But the government succeeded in defeating the contempt proceedings, with an appellate court ruling 2-1 against the probe just this week.

In the opinion, Trump-appointed Judge Neomi Rao declared: “These proceedings are a clear abuse of discretion.”

The fine line between whether a lawyer or the system around them is to blame for incompetence was put on display during an explosive hearing in February.

Julie Le, a former ICE attorney who volunteered to assist the government as it became inundated with immigration cases courtesy of Trump’s Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, unraveled in front of U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell in an exchange that ended up going viral.

The court was demanding answers from Le about why people had been unlawfully detained for weeks beyond court-ordered release dates or under conditions the judge didn’t approve. Again and again, Le said she didn’t know why, and didn’t know specifics. Her requests to higher-ups for detainee information were being slow-walked so badly, she said, that she threatened to resign hoping that would force the department to pick up the pace.

But the “broken system,” she claimed, left her at a loss and utterly exhausted.

“What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks. And I am trying every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” Le said.

“Our email just never stops. And as you can see, I ― I would ― I would love to undo all of this stuff because no one wants to be in jail. And actually, honestly, you know, being in jail a day to get ― catch up with sleep is not bad right now with all the hours I have to put into this job,” she said.

Le was fired from the U.S. attorney’s office less than a week later.

The way the Justice Department is handling itself today doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It will also undermine the department’s future. Mentors for young lawyers say those who are up-and-coming worry that hitching their wagon to Trump’s DOJ will jeopardize their long-term careers, for which they must maintain a standard of professional ethics. Defending the Trump administration’s lawlessness may be viable today given the lack of oversight at the department, but that may not be the case years from now.

“They don’t want to get disbarred later,” said another former DOJ official, who also spoke to HuffPost on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.

Without an influx of eager, young and, moreover, ethical attorneys to the agency, the future could mean a department increasingly devoid of skilled practitioners who put public service above personal gain or political loyalty.

Both through incompetence and acting in bad faith, the rules of engagement of justice have changed: Americans have witnessed government attorneys defend the arrest and detention of thousands of people with little to no justification, including hundreds of U.S. citizens who reported being beaten, dragged and kicked by ICE agents. They have watched as the government has flatly refused to cooperate with probes into the slaying of U.S. citizens by ICE. Lawyers for the government have defended — ultimately, unsuccessfully — the invasion of American cities by federal forces in violation of constitutional bedrock principles.

“Many of my friends and former colleagues who are still at DOJ are trying to continue be good lawyers, to zealously represent the U.S. as represented by its elected officials while staying true to their oaths, giving candid legal advice, trying to comply with court orders and trying to get clients to comply with court orders,” Powell said. “And the government has made it really difficult to do all of those things.”

The system may very well be as “broken,” as Le suggested — but only for individual lawyers and defendants. When it comes to immigration issues in particular, the administration, after all, seems to be getting what it wants: Trump’s massive deportation agenda implemented and often, federal, state or local laws be damned.

“Judges who believed what a career attorney or a political official told them without pause a few years ago have developed an intense skepticism.”

In 165 cases where judges had ruled against the administration, the government defied 1 in every 3 court orders, The Washington Post found last year. Many of those cases involved flat-out noncompliance. But others involved attorneys providing false information or withholding evidence. Other cases demonstrated lawyers creating a pretext to evade orders, like the claims made in the CECOT case that disclosures would pose a threat to national security.

In a whistleblower complaint filed by Erez Reuveni, a former senior DOJ lawyer fired after he admitted the government deported Abrego Garcia in error, Reuveni said Emil Bove, at the time Trump’s former criminal defense attorney-turned-deputy attorney general, made clear in a private meeting that the DOJ wouldn’t abide orders if they didn’t feel like it and may “consider telling the courts ’fuck you.’”

Reuveni alleged Ensign lied in court when he told the judge the government didn’t have “many details to share” around the CECOT deportations. He also alleged Ensign used the pretext of national security to deflect and that even when the judge agreed to pull attorneys aside privately in court to discuss the sensitive details, Ensign said he did not “personally” have the information requested.

That came, according to Reuveni, right after Bove’s instructions that the DOJ may choose to ignore court orders.

Reuveni was eventually fired in April 2025. Ensign remains the deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration and continues to handle a large volume of immigration cases.

“Those decisions went off like a bomb in the civil division of the DOJ,” Powell said. “I was still there at the time, and that was the last and final straw for me.”

A DOJ spokesperson said the allegations against Ensign were “laughably false” and “nothing more than a half-hearted, bad-faith ploy for publicity.”

“The DOJ as an institution has lost credibility,” Powell said. “The politicization of the department, its decisions, public statements, what appear to be outright lies and defiance of court orders in multiple cases, means that those presumptions the government has long relied upon are falling by the wayside. Judges who believed what a career attorney or a political official told them without pause a few years ago have developed an intense skepticism.”

“It’s terrible for public service, it’s terrible for the department, it’s terrible for the American people. … It’s all heartbreaking for those of us who are refugees from the department, watching its dissolution,” she said.