A former US Department of Homeland Security lawyer who made headlines after she told a judge that her job “sucks” announced that she’s running for Congress — seeking to unseat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Julie Le, who was fired hours after her outburst in court last month, told The New York Times that she would be a more moderate lawmaker than Omar, who has frequently called for ICE to be abolished.
Le, who will be running as a Democrat in the Aug. 11 primary, was as an assistant chief counsel at DHS representing ICE and was briefly detailed to the US attorney’s office in Minnesota earlier this year.
During a hearing at the height of Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities, the burnt-out lawyer went viral when she implored a judge to hold her in contempt so she could “have a full 24 hours of sleep.”
“What do you want me to do? The system sucks,” Le told US District Judge Jerry Blackwell in a St. Paul courtroom.
“This job sucks. And I am trying [with] every breath that I have so that I can get you what you need,” she railed.
Le, 47, told The Washington Post that she was fired hours later.
Now, she’s looking to try her hand in a new sector: politics. Le launched a bid on Saturday to challenge Omar.
She told the Washington Post that, after airing her grievances in the courtroom, she realized she couldn’t do anything to fix the broken legal system as an attorney.
“Legislators are the only ones that can change the law, or update the laws, or do something, so that we can have this under control,” she told the newspaper.
Le also told the Times that she was challenging Omar “for what I could bring to the table,” not “because she’s not doing the job.”
She cited immigration reform, education funding and healthcare access as the primary issues of her campaign.
Le is an immigrant from communist Vietnam. She was partially raised in the Philippines and arrived in the US with her family as refugees in 1993.
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