Minnesota, Illinois Sue Trump Admin for ‘Federal Invasion’

AP Photo/Tom Baker

The state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul sued the Trump administration on Monday over the recent surge of immigration agents in the area, arguing that it amounted to “a federal invasion of the Twin Cities.” Shortly thereafter, news broke that Chicago and Illinois had filed their own lawsuit on similar grounds.

The litigation comes after several days of protests throughout the area after Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last Wednesday, among other incidents with federal agents, many of which have been captured on video and posted to social media.

The 80-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota by the state’s Attorney General Keith Ellison and the city attorneys for the two cities, names as defendants seven officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, and U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino.

The complaint focuses on “Operation Metro Surge,” the name the Trump administration gave to its deployment of federal immigration enforcement agents from multiple DHS agencies to Minnesota, specifically to the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, an “unprecedented surge” that has involved “[t]housands of armed and masked DHS agents [who] have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional stops and arrests in sensitive public places, including schools and hospitals—all under the guise of lawful immigration enforcement.”

This “massive deployment of armed agents to Minnesota bears no connection” to the federal government’s claimed objective of fighting fraud, the complaint continues, “and instead reflects an alarming escalation of the Trump Administration’s retaliatory actions towards the state,” an operation that “is driven by nothing more than the Trump Administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points—at the direct expense of Plaintiffs’ residents.”

The complaint goes on to note that the more than 2,000 DHS agents the feds say they have deployed to the Twin Cities “greatly exceeds the number of sworn police officers that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have, combined.”

“Operation Metro Surge is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities,” the plaintiffs argue.

The complaint argues that the federal immigration operations are unconstitutional and unlawful, as violations of the First and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the federal Administrative Procedure Act, Minnesota’s right to Equal Sovereignty, and violations of state and local laws.

The plaintiffs are seeking a court order declaring Operation Metro Surge to be “unconstitutional and unlawful,” blocking the federal government from implementing this surge in Minnesota, and blocking the federal immigration agents from a list of “unlawful actions described in this Complaint” — including wearing masks, using “physical force” to disperse people engaged in First Amendment-protected activities, and restricting them from brandishing weapons, committing physical assaults, using chokeholds, and so on. The complaint further requests a court order requiring the federal immigration agents to wear body cams and “visible identification” of an “alphanumeric identifier” on their uniforms.

“The unlawful deployment of thousands of armed, masked, and poorly trained federal agents is hurting Minnesota,” said Ellison in a press release. “People are being racially profiled, harassed, terrorized, and assaulted. Schools have gone into lockdown. Businesses have been forced to close. Minnesota police are spending countless hours dealing with the chaos ICE is causing. This federal invasion of the Twin Cities has to stop, so today I am suing DHS to bring it to an end.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey voiced his support for the lawsuit, saying that his city “didn’t ask for this operation, but we’re paying the price.”

“When federal actions undermine public safety, harm our neighbors, and violate constitutional rights, we have a responsibility to act,” Frey added. “That’s exactly what we’re doing today.”

In a press conference Monday afternoon, Ellison denounced the “widespread unlawful conduct” by the federal immigration agents, including “making unconstitutional arrests and using excessive force,” citing multiple examples.

Read the Minnesota complaint here.

Later Monday afternoon, it was reported that Chicago and Illinois had also sued the Trump administration, filing their own lawsuit against DHS, ICE, Border Patrol, and multiple top agency officials in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The Chicago and Illinois complaint similarly accuses the Trump administration of “unleash[ing] an organized bombardment on the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago, causing turmoil and imposing a climate of fear,” with “uniformed, military-trained personnel, carrying semi-automatic firearms and military-grade weaponry, [who] have rampaged for months through Chicago and surrounding areas.”

These ICE and Border Patrol agents, the complaint continues, “have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law—randomly and brutally stopping and questioning residents, separating parents from their children, detaining without warrant or probable cause citizens and non-citizens alike, and using tear gas and other chemical weapons in urban environments against unsuspecting bystanders, injuring dozens including children, the elderly and local police officers.”

Read the Illinois complaint here.

This article has been updated with additional content.

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