It would, of course. But we don't know what the judge did, and yet everyone here is interpreting the events in the least generous way possible. Next week, when there is another incident, they'll use their least generous interpretations of what happened here as fact to justify their least generous interpretations of that incident.

>If the judge said, “the guy you are looking for is with the chief judge” and it turns out he wasn’t with the chief judge,

Or, if he just said "you all need to leave, none can stay" with the intention of hurrying the proceeding along so that the immigrant could leave before they could possibly return, that too is willful obstruction.

>In that scenario, ICE could have just not gone to see the chief judge until a

The other comment says they were "asked to leave and talk to him for permission". Ask is courtroom code for "do this, or you'll be arrested for contempt and spend at least a few hours in a holding cell in the other part of the courthouse building". There was no "they could have just not gone".