A federal judge has ordered sweeping restrictions on what tactics can be used by immigration agents when responding to demonstrations against their operations in Minnesota after a spate of claims of arbitrary detentions and excessive force being used against protesters.
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U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez’s ruling in a preliminary injunction on Friday bars agents from using pepper spray, arresting, detaining, or retaliating against “persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.”
It also bans agents from stopping and arresting drivers who are not “forcibly obstructing or interfering.” The ruling specifically states that a vehicle safely following immigration agents’ vehicles does not, on its own, justify a traffic stop. Many immigration activist groups track and follow the activity of immigration enforcement officers using their vehicles.
Read More: ‘I’m Embarrassed’: ICE Agents Speak About the Shooting in Minneapolis
Menendez specifies that the order applies only in Minnesota and only to agents involved in Operation Metro Surge—the official name for the massive deployment of nearly 3,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol to the Minneapolis region, ostensibly to arrest immigrants in the U.S. illegally and investigate fraud.
The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in December on behalf of six individuals who say that ICE infringed upon their constitutional rights. One woman who was arrested when observing ICE actions in her neighborhood says that the agency was “retaliating against her for seeking information about and observing and protesting their activities in her community.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said in a statement responding to the preliminary injunction that it is “taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”
The DHS did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.
What has been happening in Minnesota
The ruling comes ten days after the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, sparked mass protests in the city of Minneapolis.
Good was shot four times in her vehicle by ICE agent Jonathan Ross as she tried to drive away from a protest. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has defended the agent’s actions, claiming he was acting in self-defense and labeling Good a “domestic terrorist.”
The demonstrations in Minneapolis have become increasingly violent in recent days, with protesters reporting the use of pepper spray, arbitrary detentions and “non-lethal rounds.”
Two protestors were blinded by “non-lethal” rounds at one protest in Santa Ana, California.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a 72-page lawsuit on Thursday on behalf of three community members alleging that ICE in Minnesota violated citizens’ constitutional rights and has relied on racial profiling in its crackdown on protestors.
“Masked federal agents in the thousands are violently stopping and arresting countless Minnesotans based on nothing more than their race and perceived ethnicity irrespective of their citizenship or immigration status, or their personal circumstances,” the lawsuit reads.
A separate federal agent shooting of a civilian in Minneapolis this past week escalated tensions further, as city officials continue to call for ICE to leave the city.
“There is still a lot that we don’t know at this time, but what I can tell you for certain is that this is not sustainable,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press conference on Wednesday night after this latest shooting. Frey previously told ICE to “get the f—k out” of Minneapolis after the shooting of Good.
The Trump Administration has repeatedly used self-defense as justification for the recent violence committed by federal agents, and has argued that federal agents have absolute immunityfor their actions committed in the name of the US government. Local leaders and Democrats like Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have vehemently disagreed with that interpretation of the law.
Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, but said this past week: “I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it.”
Read More: Why Trump Invoking the Insurrection Act Over ICE Protests Would Be So Alarming
The last time a U.S. president invoked the powers to put down an insurrection was during the Rodney King protests in 1992, after George H.W. Bush was asked by the then-California Governor to quell protests in Los Angeles after four police officers beat King in the street.
The news of the restrictions comes as the Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly investigating Walz and Frey, both Democrats, over possible obstruction of federal law enforcement for comments they made about the federal deployment in Minneapolis. Both leaders have loudly criticized ICE’s presence in the state.
“Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic,” Walz said in a statement. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”
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