The Justice Department on Friday announced plans to subpoena Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The feds say this is part of a criminal investigation into whether the Democratic politicians have impeded federal law enforcement by criticizing the president’s mass deportation campaign. This is only the latest escalation in a deeply un-American spiral of lawfare, and unfortunately it won’t be the last.
Protests have been raging in Minneapolis since an immigration officer killed Renée Good. Local and national politicians have inflamed the situation, and the subpoena news came a day after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops.
The courts are now stepping in. On Friday night, a federal judge in Minneapolis prohibited Department of Homeland Security agents from arresting people peacefully protesting immigration officers unless they are suspected of criminal activity or obstructing agents.
If Walz or Frey face charges, it’s inconceivable that any Minnesota jury would convict them for criticizing the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And rightly so: going after constitutionally protected speech is a travesty.
In a televised address on Wednesday, Walz called the deportation operation a “campaign of organized brutality.” He urged residents to record ICE officers.
ICE’s maximalist approach has indeed led to needless confrontations. The day before Good was shot in her car, the Trump administration announced a surge of 2,000 federal officers into the Twin Cities. Across America, videos of masked agents in unmarked vehicles grabbing neighbors off the streets has soured many who otherwise support Trump’s efforts to secure the border and deport criminals.
Still, it’s wrong to say the ICE surge has nothing to do with enforcing the law. Most of the Trump administration’s deportation operations are targeting blue cities and states where sanctuary policies can make it overly difficult for local cops to cooperate with federal partners to turn over potentially dangerous illegal immigrants in their custody. ICE has said this leaves it with little choice but to cast a wider net, which leads to collateral arrests, risky encounters and a higher likelihood of clashes with angry citizens. That is no excuse to snatch up just anyone, but it’s an easy pretext for ICE to target a city like Minneapolis.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) released an opinion last year that said law enforcement cannot hold someone solely to comply with a civil detainer from the feds. A detainer is a request to a local law enforcement agency to hold an illegal immigrant for up to 48 hours after they are scheduled to otherwise be released so that ICE can pick them up.
Minnesota’s 87 counties take varying approaches to such requests. Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, “does not participate in civil immigration enforcement and does not work with federal agencies on civil immigration enforcement,” per the sheriff’s website.
What can that mean in practice? In May, ICE arrested an illegal immigrant from Ecuador who was charged with a drunk-driving crash that killed a Minnesota mother. DHS says he had been released twice by Hennepin County despite them placing detainers for the man both before and after he was charged. ICE said they arrested him three days after his release.
This week, DHS accused Minnesota of releasing nearly 470 criminals since Trump returned to office and called on the state to honor 1,360 other detainers. On Friday, the state Department of Corrections, which does not have jurisdiction over county jails, said it honors ICE detainers and called DHS’s claims “unsupported by facts” and “deeply irresponsible.”
To blunt ICE’s power, many liberal jurisdictions are doubling down on misguided sanctuary policies. In Virginia, shortly after being inaugurated on Saturday, Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) signed an executive order to repeal her predecessor’s order requiring state law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In Maryland, Democrats are moving to ban agreements that allow local law enforcement to notify ICE after they take custody of an illegal immigrant.
Yet if federal officers can’t apprehend criminals directly from law enforcement, agents won’t stop doing their jobs. Walz doesn’t deserve to be prosecuted for fighting with Trump. At the same time, leaders in the state would be wise to reexamine some of their sanctuary policies.
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