President Donald Trump may have just shot himself in the foot in a court case that could decide the future of his crackdown in Minneapolis.
On Wednesday morning, the president took to his Truth Social platform to slam Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, with whom he claims to have had a productive conversation days before, but now isn’t striking the tone he wanted.
“Surprisingly, Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that, ‘Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws,’” wrote the president. “This is after having had a very good conversation with him. Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!”
The problem for Trump, wrote Politico’s Kyle Cheney, is that the Trump administration is currently smack-dab in the middle of a federal court battle with the state of Minnesota, which alleges “Operation Metro Surge” is not a legitimate immigration enforcement push, but an effort to deliberately cause chaos in the state to coerce local officials into changing local policies they don’t agree with. Trump’s words here, Cheney wrote, could be strong evidence for the state’s case.
“Trump could not have designed a better statement to convince Judge Menendez that Operation Metro Surge is meant to coerce policy changes,” wrote Cheney. “Courts have ruled repeatedly that the Fed govt cannot coerce states to enforce federal law. Nor is it illegal for states to decline to do so.”
Moreover, he added, “the menacing ‘playing with fire’ is exactly the kind of statement (‘retribution is coming’) that worked against the administration in court earlier this week.”
This comes as lower court judges have issued a flurry of rulings against the Trump administration’s heavy-handed tactics. Immigration officials, however, got a reprieve at least for now as the Republican-dominated Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit blocked a ruling that prohibited the use of certain tactics by federal agents against peaceful protesters.
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