Minnesota, Twin Cities sue Trump administration over unprecedented immigration operations
WCCO, CNN
By Danya Gainor, Priscilla Alvarez, CNN
(CNN) — The state of Minnesota and the Twin Cities are suing the Trump administration, arguing the unprecedented federal immigration operation in the state is “a federal invasion,” and seeking a court order halting the crackdown, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
“This has to stop; it just has to stop,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a Monday news conference announcing the lawsuit.
The suit was filed shortly after Illinois and the city of Chicago also sued the Trump administration, alleging the Department of Homeland Security has terrorized residents in “organized bombardment.”
Both suits argue the federal government is violating the Tenth Amendment.
“Sanctuary politicians like Ellison are the EXACT reason that DHS surged to Minnesota in the first place,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
“If he, Tim Walz, or 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,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin added that Chicago and Illinois’ lawsuit was “baseless.”
Minnesota claims political retaliation by Trump administration
The federal government initially launched Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, in December to target undocumented Somalis, but immigrants from other nations have also been arrested.
Around 1,000 additional US Customs and Border Protection agents are expected to deploy to Minneapolis, according to two federal law enforcement sources. The agents started deploying Friday and continued over the weekend, one of the sources said, coming on top of a deployment of about 2,000 federal agents to the area that CNN reported early last week.
“As long as federal agents are in our city acting unconstitutionally against our neighbors, we will continue to push back with everything we got,” Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Monday.
The lawsuit claims Operation Metro Surge is not a legitimate law enforcement action, but a retaliation effort against Democratic-led Minnesota, citing the president’s disparaging comments toward local officials.
“President Trump expressed the root of his displeasure in plain terms during a recorded interview: he essentially claimed that Minnesota is ‘corrupt’ and ‘crooked’ because its officials accurately reported election results and those results did not declare him the winner,” the lawsuit says, citing a January 9 interview by the president.
The Twin Cities are also being targeted because of its sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with the federal government during immigration enforcement efforts, the complaint alleges.
“Minneapolis and Saint Paul are now the latest of the cities widely considered to be Democratic cities with elected leaders who do not politically align with Trump to be flooded with federal agents,” the complaint says. “DHS has made clear that ICE ‘will continue to surge into sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide.’”
Officials in the North Star State have echoed each other’s calls for weeks for immigration officials to cooperate with local law enforcement and leave – which has prompted biting rhetoric in return from federal officials.
Tensions between federal law enforcement and local counterparts flared after an ICE-involved shooting last week left a mother of three dead.
New video shows minutes before Renee Good was fatally shot
On Saturday, DHS posted a new video on X showing the three minutes and 30 seconds that preceded an ICE agent’s gunfire, which struck and killed 37-year-old US citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
The new video shows Good’s vehicle — a maroon Honda Pilot — partially blocking the street. Several vehicles that stopped behind her appear to belong to federal agents, based on activity observed in other videos.
In its post, DHS claimed, without providing evidence, Good was “stalking and impeding a law enforcement operation over the course of the morning.”
Several vehicles pass Good’s car during the video. About 40 seconds into the clip, the camera focuses on Good moving in her vehicle as honking can be heard, but it’s unclear where the honking is coming from.
Three minutes in, law enforcement sirens go off and there are more car horns. At 3:11, two vehicles pass Good’s car. A truck that appears to belong to a federal agent pulls up perpendicular to Good, and agents get out of the vehicle. Good appears to be motioning to them with her hands.
The agents then exit the vehicle and the video cuts off right before the deadly shooting.
DHS’s post came the day after CNN obtained cell phone video of the interaction captured by the agent who fired at Good, Jonathan Ross.
The shooting itself is not visible, but three gunshots are heard as the phone in Ross’ hand jostles further and then is facing the house behind Ross.
Conflict between local and federal officials reaches new heights
National-level tensions mounted Sunday morning as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called on Minnesota officials to “grow up,” following their complaints that federal agencies aren’t cooperating with state and local officials investigating Good’s killing.
The Justice Department has blocked state investigators from participating in what initially was meant to be a joint FBI and state criminal investigation, state officials said.
Noem homed in on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Frey, Democrats she said have politicized the shooting and encouraged “destruction” and “violence” in the city.
“They have inflamed the public,” Noem said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“I would encourage them to grow up, get some maturity, act like people who are responsible, who want people to be safe, and the right thing be done,” she said.
Frey doubled down on his assertion the officer who shot Good was “a federal agent recklessly using power that ended up in somebody dying.”
“Anybody can see these videos, anybody can see that this victim is not a domestic terrorist,” he said.
The mayor called for an independent investigation into the shooting.
In DC, US Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, said the federal government is stoking “chaos” with its heavy-handed immigration enforcement efforts in the wake of last week’s shooting death of a US citizen.
CBP Commander Gregory Bovino was already in the Minneapolis area last week with hundreds of agents. He is conducting targeted operations, including door knocks, a federal law enforcement source told CNN. The documents provided to those who receive door knocks are either administrative warrants – which are signed by an immigration officer but don’t carry the same legal weight as a judicial warrant – or copies of their final orders of removal.
“What we have seen in Minneapolis is ICE agents oftentimes jumping out of their cars. These are unmarked cars. Oftentimes, they’re wearing a mask,” Omar, a Somali immigrant, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “What they are doing is creating confusion, chaos, trying to intimidate people from being able to exercise their regular, normal activities that they would.”
Omar, accompanied by fellow Minnesota Democratic Congress members, said she was denied access to a Minneapolis-area ICE facility on Saturday morning after being inside briefly.
Noem issued a directive on Thursday barring lawmakers from visiting detention facilities without a week’s notice, McLaughlin said in a statement, due to “escalating riots and political violence targeting buildings and facilities used by ICE.”
Even with Walz’s decision to put the National Guard on standby, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara is concerned that frequent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement may get out of control, O’Hara said in a podcast published Monday by The New York Times.
“It could very, very quickly explode,” O’Hara told the Times’ “The Daily” podcast. “And with the level of staffing that we have and the time that it takes to get the National Guard to come in, it will be too late. That’s my fear.”
‘Indiscriminate violence against Illinois’ residents’
Illinois and Chicago’s lawsuit is filed against DHS and its reporting agencies, including ICE, CBP and US Border Patrol, as well as agency leaders and Bovino, who led the operation in Chicago.
McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary, claimed politicians in the city and state “released violent criminals,” and their “dereliction of duty cost lives.”
Illinois and Chicago claim the federal agencies have “unleashed sweeping raids and indiscriminate violence against Illinois’ residents” with the hopes the city and state will “abandon their policies, which value and respect the State’s immigrants,” the lawsuit says.
The increasing violence is allowed by agency leadership, who “condone this activity and demand more of it,” the lawsuit says.
“We have watched in horror as unchecked federal agents have aggressively assaulted and terrorized our communities and neighborhoods in Illinois, undermining Constitutional rights and threatening public safety,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.
“In the face of the Trump Administration’s cruelty and intimidation, Illinois is standing up against the attacks on our people,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Taylor Romine, Sylvie Kirsch, Sydney Bishop, Taylor Galgano, Sharif Paget, Kaanita Iyer, Camila DeChalus and Aileen Graef contributed to this report.
