Minnesota sued the Trump administration on Monday over the “unprecedented” immigration crackdown underway in the state, alleging it violates federal law and the Constitution.
“The unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents is hurting Minnesota,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote in a statement on Monday. “People are being racially profiled, harassed, terrorized, and assaulted. Schools have gone into lockdown…This federal invasion of the Twin Cities has to stop, so today I am suing DHS to bring it to an end.”
The lawsuit comes as the Twin Cities are reeling from an ICE agent fatally shooting Renee Good last week, an incident that has prompted widespread protests. The Trump administration has alleged that Good was a “lunatic” and domestic extremist who was killed after she tried to ram officers with an SUV. Local officials have said these allegations are false, pointing to a widely seen video of the incident that appears to show Good was not heading directly at officers when the shooting took place.
The complaint, brought on behalf of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and St. Paul, names top officials at the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, ICE and the Border Patrol.
It alleges that the ongoing crackdown in Minnesota, which began in December, is “driven by nothing more than the Trump Administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points,” violates First Amendment rights and the Tenth Amendment’s separation of certain state and federal powers.
The attorney general’s lawsuit asks a Minnesota federal court to end the surge and declare it unlawful and unconstitutional.
DHS officials have said more than 2,000 agents are on the ground in Minnesota, calling it the largest ever immigration operation.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Independent in a statement that Ellison’s lawsuit shows he is “prioritizing politics over public safety,” and accused Minnesota officials of being hypocrites for suing to protect the proper division of state and federal powers while they “don’t want federal law enforcement officers to enforce federal law.”
“Sanctuary politicians like Ellison are the EXACT reason that DHS surged to Minnesota in the first place,” McLaughlin wrote. “If he, [Minnesota Gov.] Tim Walz, or [Minneapolis Mayor] Jacob Frey had just done their sworn duty to protect the people of Minnesota they are supposed to serve to root out fraud and get criminals off the street — if they had worked with us to do it — we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
The lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of using the president’s incorrect belief that he won the state in the last three presidential elections, as well as an ongoing fraud scandal in Minnesota, as a pretext to launch an operation that has resulted in alleged racial profiling, warrantless entries, and violent treatment of people legally observing and protesting the DHS campaign.
The complaint also alleges that other, Republican-led states like Utah, Texas, and Florida have higher populations of undocumented people, and that targeting Minnesota shows the partisan nature of the operation. The Trump administration has said it doesn’t need mass operations in those states because local jurisdictions agree to cooperate with federal agents.
President Trump has long spoken derogatorily about Minnesota officials, as well as the state’s large Somali population.
Last year, after a gunman targeted and shot multiple Minnesota lawmakers and their families, the president said he would not call Walz, accusing him of being “whacked out.”
Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a similar lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, accusing agents of acting as “occupiers rather than officers of the law” during their extensive operations there, which included the deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops in the region.
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