A federal judge has denied a request by Minnesota’s state government to end the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis that has resulted in government agents killing two people, sparking weeks of protests.
The state, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, had lodged a lawsuit after the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent this month, demanding an end to the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge in the city.
Since that time, a second person protesting ICE’s presence, Alex Pretti, was shot and killed by federal agents. The shootings have provoked a furious wave of condemnation in Minneapolis and beyond.
However, on Saturday, federal judge Kate Menendez denied a request by the state and cities to end the operation and send the 3,000 ICE agents home.
The plaintiffs had argued that the Trump administration violated the 10th amendment of the constitution, which enshrines states’ autonomy from federal intervention beyond powers outlined in the constitution, through the ICE operation.
But these claims “provided no metric by which to determine when lawful law enforcement becomes unlawful commandeering, simply arguing that the excesses of Operation Metro Surge are so extreme that the surge exceeds whatever line must exist”, wrote Menendez, who was nominated to the bench during Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.
“A proclamation that Operation Metro Surge has simply gone ‘so far on the other side of the line’ is a thin reed on which to base a preliminary injunction.”
Menendez acknowledged that the operation has had a “profound and even heartbreaking” impact upon Minneapolis and that along with the shootings there was “evidence that ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) agents have engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions”.
But the judge said that she was not ruling on the tactics of the operation itself, only that the state and cities had failed to show that the administration had violated the 10th amendment.
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement that he was disappointed by the ruling.
“This decision doesn’t change what people here have lived through – fear, disruption, and harm caused by a federal operation that never belonged in Minneapolis in the first place,” Frey said. “This operation has not brought public safety. It’s brought the opposite and has detracted from the order we need for a working city. It’s an invasion, and it needs to stop.”
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, posted on X that the ruling was a “HUGE” win for the administration.
“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota,” Bondi wrote.
Brian Carter, a lawyer for Minnesota, had said that “this situation is unprecedented in the 250-year history of our country” and that the agents were “essentially an army” sent to Minneapolis to undertake “widespread illegal violent conduct”.
Trump himself has said that Ice is “going to de-escalate a little bit” in the wake of the shootings, with the president sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis to oversee the operation. But the administration has insisted the ICE agents are acting legally to uphold federal immigration laws.
The ruling comes as more than 300 demonstrations are expected to take place across all 50 states and Washington DC on Saturday in what organizers are calling “ICE Out of Everywhere”.
Organizers, led by the national grassroots organization 50501, say today’s protests are a response to a series of recent deaths involving federal immigration agents, including the fatal shootings of Pretti and Good in Minneapolis earlier this month, the homicide of Geraldo Campos in an immigration detention facility in Texas and the shooting of Keith Porter Jr by an off-duty ICE officer in Los Angeles.
