Judge won’t order ICE to leave Minnesota

A federal judge ruled against Minnesota’s emergency request to end the surge of federal immigration enforcement officers into the state, saying the national government has the right to enforce the law.

Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, delivered a scolding to Homeland Security and its two immigration law enforcement agencies, saying the surge into the Minneapolis area has had “heartbreaking” consequences for the region.

She said there’s been racial profiling, excessive use of force and multiple shootings of residents.

But she said higher courts have urged lower judges to show caution in shutting down federal operations.

“The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently vacated a much more circumscribed injunction which limited one aspect of the ongoing operation, namely the way immigration officers interacted with protesters and observers,” she wrote. “If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here — halting the entire operation — certainly would.”

She rejected Minnesota’s request for an injunction halting the surge, though the case will continue.

For now, it stands as a legal rebuke to Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats.

Officials from the state and a number of its municipalities had filed the unprecedented lawsuit to end the two-month-old surge in the state. They argued that the overwhelming show of federal force was costing the state by scaring residents, increasing their own police service calls and disrupting regular business in schools and courts.

That, they said, was a violation of the Constitution’s 10th Amendment and amounted to commandeering state authorities.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had said nothing less than the fate of “our republic” was at stake.

They argued that the surge, totaling some 3,000 officers, was retribution by President Trump against political opponents.

And they objected to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent letter suggesting the surge could be curtailed if the state agreed to cooperate on several Trump priorities, including turning over deportation targets from their prisons and jails and providing a complete list of the state’s voters.

Judge Menendez said some of that behavior did seem to reach the line of coercion.

But she said there were also clear law enforcement objectives behind the federal operation. She said the Trump administration’s explanation that it needs to send in more agents because the locals won’t cooperate was reasonable.

The judge said she was “particularly reluctant” to try to balance those arguments, suggesting it was a political question beyond the scope of the courts. 

Ms. Bondi, on social media, hailed the ruling as “huge.”

“A Biden-appointed district judge denied Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s attempt to keep ICE out of Minnesota,” she said.

The decision comes as both state leaders and the White House negotiate a cool-down. Border czar Tom Homan said Thursday that if local officials will cooperate in turning over people from their prisons, the feds can start a “drawdown” of some of the 3,000 personnel.

Judge Menendez previously issued a ruling limiting the kind of crowd control tactics the feds could use, saying she’d seen too many instances that crossed the line into suppression of protesters’ rights.

That ruling was put on hold by the 8th Circuit, which said things were more complicated than Judge Menendez’s reasoning suggested.

“We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did,” the circuit judges said in an unsigned opinion. “What they show is observers and protestors engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways.”

That decision to halt her previous ruling weighed heavily for Judge Menendez on Saturday.