For a year, federal judges grappling with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda have looked askance at his administration, warning of potential or, in rarer cases, outright violations of their orders.

But in recent weeks, that drumbeat of subtle alarm has metastasized into a full-blown clarion call by judges across the country, who are now openly castigating what they say are systematic legal and constitutional abuses by the administration.

“There has been an undeniable move by the Government in the past month to defy court orders or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights,” warned U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, a Minnesota-based Clinton appointee. His docket has been inundated as a result of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation campaign in the Twin Cities.

The object of judges’ frustration has routinely been Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the vanguard of Trump’s push to round up and expel millions of noncitizens as quickly as possible. The agency’s unprecedented strategy to mass detain people while their deportation proceedings are pending has flooded the courts with tens of thousands of emergency lawsuits and resulted in a breathtaking rejection by hundreds of judges.

“ICE is not a law unto itself,” Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge on Minnesota’s federal bench, said Wednesday in a ruling describing staggering defiance by ICE to judges’ orders — particularly ones requiring the release of detained immigrants. He estimated, conservatively, that the agency had violated court orders by Minnesota judges 96 times this month alone.

Though the national focus has been on Minnesota, judges in other states have grown exasperated as well:

— Judge Christine O’Hearn, a Biden appointee in New Jersey, blasted the administration’s defiance of her order to release a man from ICE custody without any conditions, noting that they instead required him to submit to electronic monitoring. “Respondents blatantly disregarded this Court’s Order,” O’Hearn wrote in a Tuesday order. “This was not a misunderstanding or lack of clarity; it was knowing and purposeful,” she added.

— Judge Roy Dalton, a Florida-based Obama appointee, threatened sanctions against Trump administration attorneys for what he says was presenting misleading arguments in support of the administration’s deportation policies. “Don’t hide the ball. Don’t ignore the overwhelming weight of persuasive authority as if it won’t be found. And don’t send a sacrificial lamb to stand before this Court with a fistful of cases that don’t apply and no cogent argument for why they should,” he wrote in a Monday ruling.

— Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee in Rhode Island, ruled Tuesday that the administration defied her orders regarding the location of an ICE detainee, who was moved to a facility in Massachusetts that McElroy had deemed “wholly unsuitable.” “It seems clear that the Court can conclude that the [administration] willfully violated two of this Court’s orders and willfully misrepresented facts to the Court,” McElroy wrote.

— Judge Angel Kelley, a Biden appointee in Massachusetts, said ICE moved a Salvadoran woman out of Maine without warning and in violation of an order to keep her in place. That relocation caused the woman to miss her hearing to seek protection from being deported back to El Salvador, where she said she feared domestic abuse. “The Court notes that ICE signing its own permission slip, citing its own operational needs as reason for the transfer, offers little comfort or justification for ignoring a Federal Court Order,” Kelley wrote Wednesday.

— Judge Sunshine Sykes, a Biden appointee in Los Angeles, threatened to hold administration officials in contempt for what she labeled “continued defiance” of her order providing class action relief to immigrants targeted for detention.

— Judge Donovan Frank, a Clinton appointee in Minnesota, described a “deeply concerning” practice by ICE to race detainees to states with more favorable judges, which he said “generally suggest that ICE is attempting to hide the location of detainees.”

Throughout the first year of Trump’s second term, there have been high-profile examples in which judges have accused ICE and the Department of Homeland Security of violating court orders — from Judge James Boasberg’s command in March to retain custody of 137 Venezuelans shipped to El Salvador without due process, to Judge Paula Xinis’ April order for the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after his illegal deportation.

But the sheer volume of violations judges are now describing reflects an intensification of the mass deportation effort and a system ill-prepared to handle the influx.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded to questions about the complaints from judges by noting Schiltz backed off an initial plan to have ICE’s director, Todd Lyons, appear for a potential contempt proceeding.

“If DHS’s behavior was so vile, why dismiss the order to appear?” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, labeling Schiltz — a two-time clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — an “activist judge.”“DHS will continue to enforce the laws of the United States within all applicable constitutional guidelines. We will not be deterred by activists either in the streets or on the bench,” she added.

The surge in violations of court orders has been accompanied by signs that the Justice Department — like the court system — is simply overwhelmed by the volume of emergency cases brought by people detained in the mass deportation push. It’s led to mistakes, missed deadlines and even more frustration from judges, who themselves are buckling under the caseload.

Ana Voss, the top civil litigator in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, apologized to U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell last week, noting that in the crush of cases her office has handled recently, she failed to keep the court updated on the location of a man the judge had ordered to be returned to Minnesota from Texas.

“I have spent considerable time on this and other cases related to transfer and return issues over the past 3 days,” Voss said.

Notably, Schiltz singled out Voss and her office for praise when he initially criticized ICE for its legal violations. He said the career prosecutors “have struggled mightily” to comply with court orders despite their leadership’s failure “to provide them with adequate resources.” When he itemized the violations Wednesday, Schiltz said it was likely ICE had violated more court orders in January than some agencies had in their entire existence.

“This list,” he said, “should give pause to anyone — no matter his or her political beliefs — who cares about the rule of law. “