The State of Minnesota and the cites of Minneapolis and St. Paul on Monday filed a sweeping federal lawsuit to halt what they call an unprecedented and unlawful surge of US federal agents in the Twin Cities, arguing the deployment amounts to a constitutional violation and a direct threat to public safety.
The 80-page complaint, filed in US district court in Minnesota, targets the US Department of Homeland Security and senior federal officials, including DHS secretary Kristi Noem. It asks a judge to immediately block what the federal government calls “Operation Metro Surge,” a large-scale immigration operation that plaintiffs say has sent thousands of armed, masked federal agents into Minnesota communities far from the border, overwhelming local infrastructure and law enforcement.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison said the lawsuit is intended to stop what he described as an unlawful federal escalation. “This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop.” He accused DHS agents of sowing “chaos and terror” across the metro area through warrantless arrests, excessive force, and enforcement actions at schools, churches, hospitals, and other sensitive locations.
Ellison said the surge has forced school closures and lockdowns, hurt local businesses, and diverted police resources away from routine public safety work. He cited more than 20 ICE-related incidents, including reports of people being pulled into unmarked vehicles by masked agents and vehicles left abandoned in the streets, calling it an “unlawful commandeering of police resources.”
The lawsuit also points to the recent fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent as a turning point that intensified fear and unrest. Ellison said that the killing, along with subsequent federal rhetoric, left families and entire communities feeling unsafe in public spaces.
Good, 37, was a wife and mother of three. She was fatally shot by an ICE officer during a Minneapolis enforcement operation on January 7. The FBI has assumed sole jurisdiction over the investigation, effectively barring Minnesota authorities from accessing evidence or taking part in the probe, a move state officials say undermines transparency and the integrity of law enforcement in the public eye.
Plaintiffs argue the federal operation violates the Tenth Amendment, federal administrative law, and long-standing limits on immigration enforcement. They also accuse the Trump administration of “retaliatory conduct based on Minnesota’s lawful exercise of its sovereign authority.”
Asked by a reporter from PBS Frontline who said his crew had been pepper-sprayed by federal agents earlier in the day whether the litigation sought to curb the use of crowd-control weapons, Ellison urged journalists to file complaints. “Part of what our case is about is First Amendment protection,” he said. “The press is protected by the First Amendment, and it’s vitally important in this moment.”
In a separate lawsuit Monday, the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago sued DHS and senior federal officials, accusing the Trump administration of unleashing a militarized immigration operation that has “rampaged for months through Chicago and surrounding areas, lawlessly stopping, interrogating, and arresting residents, and attacking them with chemical weapons.”
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