The Government Lied About a Judge. Their Own Lawyer Said So. Then Their Top Lawyer Wrote a Column Defending the Lie.
On April 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose — Rhode Island’s first Black federal judge — ordered the release of Bryan Rafael Gomez from ICE custody. She ruled that the detention authority used didn’t apply to him, since he’d been arrested inside the country by local police, not at the border.
What DuBose didn’t know was that Gomez was the subject of an international homicide warrant out of the Dominican Republic. She didn’t know because the government’s own attorney, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan, had been instructed by ICE not to tell her.
Two days later, DHS published a press release: “Activist Biden Judge Releases Violent Criminal Illegal Alien Wanted for Murder.” The clear implication was that this judge knew about the murder warrant and released the man anyway.
That was a lie. By May 5, the government’s own lawyer was in court saying so.
AUSA Bolan told Judge DuBose the press release “simply was not true,” apologized to her personally, and acknowledged that ICE had told him not to disclose the warrant. Here is the part that should stop you cold: ICE had already publicly posted about that same warrant on social media on April 16 — two weeks before the hearing. They knew. They’d already publicized it. They just chose not to give that information to the judge, then attacked her for not having it.
That is not a breakdown in communication. That is a trap.
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One week after his own attorney apologized in open court, DHS General Counsel James Percival published an op-ed in The Federalist calling the press release “factually true” and accusing DuBose of “judicial misconduct” for objecting to it.
Percival is not a commentator. He is the top lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security — a sitting government official writing about a pending case in a partisan magazine, defending a press release his own government’s attorney had already admitted was untrue.
His “factually true” argument rests on the warrant being real. It was. But the press release wasn’t a warrant summary — it was an attack on a judge, implying she knowingly released a murder suspect. That implication was false. Calling a press release accurate because the underlying facts about the defendant were correct, while ignoring that the attack on the judge was false, is technically precise and morally bankrupt.
Percival also argues DuBose exceeded her jurisdiction — a legitimate legal debate. But it has nothing to do with whether the press release was honest. He is hoping you won’t notice he swapped one question for the other.
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Judge DuBose is now living under a federally-generated public narrative that she released a murder suspect — a narrative the government itself confirmed was false. Her security has been put at risk; she said so in court. The press release is still live on the DHS website.
There is a word for using the machinery of the federal government to humiliate and endanger a judge who ruled against you, then calling her objection “misconduct.” The word is intimidation. It doesn’t become less of what it is because the person doing it went to law school.
The government set the trap. Their own attorney admitted it. And then their General Counsel called the trap a ruling.
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Sources: The Federalist (James Percival, May 12, 2026); Techdirt (May 13, 2026); Rhode Island Current (May 1, May 5, May 13, 2026); Boston Globe (May 1, May 4, May 14, 2026); Lawfare (Roger Parloff, May 12, 2026); DHS press release dated April 30, 2026 (still live as of publication); DOJ/USAO-RI response to show-cause order signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Bolan.