A federal appeals court blocked an injunction on Wednesday that had imposed restrictions on how immigration agents interact with protesters in Minnesota.
The order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit was one sentence long and included no explanation. It granted the Trump administration’s request for an administrative stay of the district court’s preliminary injunction, which was issued on Friday.
The district judge, Kate M. Menendez, had ordered agents not to retaliate against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” and not to use pepper spray or other “crowd dispersal tools” in retaliation for protected speech. The judge also said that agents could not stop or detain protesters in vehicles who were not “forcibly obstructing or interfering with” agents.
Lawyers for the Trump administration argued to the appeals court that the preliminary injunction “transforms a handful of alleged constitutional violations into a broad injunction regulating D.H.S. officers’ operations.” They said in a court filing that the “injunction harms D.H.S. officers’ ability to protect themselves and the public in very dangerous circumstances.”
The case originated with a group of protesters who accused federal agents of violating their constitutional rights when the protesters tried to observe enforcement actions or voice opposition to the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to Minnesota.
The protesters’ lawsuit, which was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, described a “federal campaign to besiege cities across the United States in an unprecedented attack on civil liberties.” It said the suit’s purpose was “to ensure that Minnesotans can assemble, observe, document, and criticize defendants’ activities, safely and unburdened by the fear of retaliation.”
Kyle Wislocky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, noted in a statement that an administrative stay is not a decision on the merits of the appeal. He said that the plaintiffs planned to respond to the appeal soon, and to request a swift ruling “so that protesters and observers can again be protected by the district court’s injunction.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, called the appellate court’s stay “a win for the safety of the public and every law enforcement officer.” She added that “D.H.S. does not use force against peaceful protesters or stop cars without reasonable suspicion of a crime.”
The case is one of several lawsuits filed in recent weeks related to the administration’s dispatch of some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota.
The surge has led to at least 3,000 arrests, as well as repeated clashes with protesters and two shootings, including the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen who was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. In another incident in Minneapolis last week, a federal agent shot and injured a man who officials said was in the country illegally and had assaulted an agent while resisting arrest.
Judge Menendez, who was nominated to the bench by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is also weighing a separate lawsuit filed by the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. That case argues that the surge of immigration agents is unconstitutional, and seeks an order blocking the operation from continuing. The state asked Judge Menendez to issue an immediate ruling in that case, but she declined last week to do so.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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