President Donald Trump received bad news on Friday from a federal judge whom he lavished with public compliments earlier this week.
The case concerned a lawsuit from the state of Minnesota that seeks to rein in the increasingly brutal tactics being used on protesters in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Unrest has mounted in the area in the wake of a federal agent’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old mom of three Renee Nicole Good, at close range through the open window of her car as she appeared to be trying to drive away from the agents blocking her in.
U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, previously put off a ruling to give the Justice Department time to respond — a move that led Trump to take to Truth Social and sing her praises.
“A highly respected judge declined to block I.C.E. operations in the very politically corrupt State of Minnesota,” wrote Trump on Thursday. “I.C.E. will therefore be allowed to continue its highly successful operation of removing some of the most violent and vicious criminals anywhere in the World, many of them murderers, from the State.”
On Friday evening, however, Menendez handed down her actual decision — and it was to sharply curtail the tactics ICE is allowed to use in their Minnesota operations.
In her ruling, Menendez barred federal agents from “Retaliating against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity, including observing the activities of Operation Metro Surge,” from “Arresting or detaining persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” or from using “pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools” on peaceful protesters.
Perhaps most relevant to the shooting that escalated the protests, Menendez also ruled agents are prohibited from “Stopping or detaining drivers and passengers in vehicles where there is no reasonable articulable suspicion that they are forcibly obstructing or interfering with Covered Federal Agents.”
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