Minnesota drags Trump's ICE to court in effort to pause immigration crackdown

Lawyers for the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota urged a federal judge on Monday to halt the Trump administration's sprawling immigration crackdown in the state, arguing that the campaign, "Operation Metro Surge," amounts to an "unlawful" and "unchecked invasion" that violates the state's sovereignty protections under the 10th Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, ultimately adjourned court without indicating when she planned to rule on the emergency request — even as she acknowledged both the timeliness and importance of the case before her.

 "If I had a burner in front of the front burner, this would be on it," Menendez said. 

At issue in the case is an emergency lawsuit filed earlier this month seeking to end the Trump administration's deployment of some 3,000 ICE agents in Minnesota, who were sent there in recent weeks as part of the immigration crackdown.

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Lawyers for the state described the operation Monday as "essentially an army." 

They also argued that the sustained presence of ICE agents there had created an environment "so unprecedented, so intense, [that] it has created such an environment of fear," and urged the court to issue a temporary restraining order immediately to block the surge of additional ICE officers into the state.

"Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today," Lindsey Middlecamp, a lawyer for the state of Minnesota, urged the court.

The hearing also notably focused on a letter that Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) hours earlier, seeking access to the state's voter rolls and certain public assistance data, such as enrollment information. Bondi's letter described the three requests to the state as an effort to "help bring back law and order" to the state.

But lawyers for Minnesota disputed that in court, saying Monday that the letter was "extortionate" and amounted to a "ransom note."

Menendez pressed Justice Department lawyer Brantley Mayers for specifics on the letter in question. It "really, strongly suggests that, if the state will do three things," then "this will end," she said, referring to the ICE enforcement operation. 

"Is the executive trying to achieve a goal through force that it can’t achieve through the courts?" she asked Mayers. 

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Mayers and other DOJ lawyers declined to offer additional details on the letter. They spent their time doubling down on their assertion that Trump's actions are legally sound, noting in a filing that DHS has "delivered" on Trump's campaign promises "by surging resources to the removal of aliens who entered this country illegally," including in Minnesota.

Brian Carter, a lawyer for Minnesota, told the court that the situation on the streets "is so dire" that "relief is appropriate now — and it should be granted now."  

"At its heart, the issue is that the federal government is attempting to bend the state’s will to its own," Carter said. "And that is not allowed under the Constitution."

The emergency hearing comes as tensions between ICE agents and protesters continued to escalate in recent days following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and the protester killed this month in a confrontation between federal immigration officers and civilians.

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Still, Menendez did seem wary of the claim that she could determine that the administration's actions violated state sovereignty protections under the 10th Amendment.

"How do I decide when a law enforcement response crosses the line from a legitimate law enforcement response to a response that violates the 10th Amendment?" she pressed lawyers for the state of Minnesota.

 Still, she said it was unclear if it was "appropriate" to halt the full ICE operation or whether more narrow options might suffice.