For months, President Donald Trump’s administration has been trying to force Minnesota’s Democratic leaders to turn over detailed information about the state’s voters, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
State officials have said no. Now, Attorney General Pam Bondi is repeating those demands in a letter that also references the federal government’s aggressive deployment of immigration agents to the streets of Minneapolis.
Her letter, dated Saturday, presses the state on sharing the voter information, turning over public assistance data and assisting the federal government with immigration enforcement. It was sent the same day border agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, in Minneapolis.
Bondi’s approach has led Democrats in Minnesota and other states to accuse the administration of blackmailing and bullying them into ceding more power to the administration. It comes as she tries to extract similar data from dozens of other states.
“The states have power,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) said. “And Trump is saying, ‘No you don’t, not while I’m president. We’ll run you over. We’ll kill your people. We’ll shoot pepper balls at you. We’ll invade your city. We’ll terrorize everyone. We’ll kill citizens.’”
The Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge last month and has sent thousands of agents to Minnesota since then. Pretti’s death came 2½ weeks after another agent killed Renée Good in her vehicle. Both victims were 37.
The federal government has sweeping authority to enforce immigration laws, as a federal judge made clear Monday as she repeatedly expressed skepticism in response to Minnesota’s arguments in a lawsuit seeking to halt the surge of immigration agents to the state. The administration has far less power when it comes to elections because the Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for voting policies.
Bondi’s letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) appeared to try to leverage immigration enforcement to get the state’s voter list. Minnesota officials rejected the demand and said Bondi was trying to force them to give up sensitive voter data that the Justice Department is not entitled to have.
“This was never about immigration,” Ellison said. “It was never about fraud. It’s about coercion and bullying.”
The Justice Department recently launched an investigation into whether Walz and others were impeding immigration enforcement. Trump on Monday struck a new tone, writing on social media that he had talked to Walz and believed they were “on a similar wavelength.” He said he expected them to talk again soon.
But in court, the two sides clashed at a hearing over the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez asked a Justice Department attorney whether Bondi with her letter to Walz was trying to “achieve a goal through force, which it can’t achieve through the courts.” Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers waved off the possibility the enforcement activities were linked to what Bondi sought in her letter.
“I have all of these quotes in the record,” Menendez said. “You’re telling me that I’m reading them wrong?”
Throughout the hearing, the judge expressed skepticism that she has the power to curtail the administration’s immigration enforcement and said she would rule soon.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump “wants to work with local leaders to remove the worst of the worst from American streets.” The Justice Department declined to comment on the record.
Georgetown University law professor Stephen I. Vladeck said Minnesota officials, in their lawsuit trying to stop the federal immigration surge, were testing a legal theory about the limits of the federal government’s power that is “designed for novel times.”
“Our existing legal doctrines were not designed for rampant lawlessness on the part of the executive,” he said.
Ahead of the hearing, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) said she was watching the case closely, particularly now that immigration agents have flooded into her state. Mills, a former state attorney general, said Republicans were acting hypocritically, given the party’s historic support of states’ rights, which are granted in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
“Republicans have always loved the 10th Amendment,” she said. “Suddenly, they’re against it.”
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R) said he has a “long-standing pro-states’ rights, pro-10th Amendment point of view.” But the federal government has clear authority over immigration, he said.
He said Bondi was making a “policy recommendation” to Minnesota when she urged the state to change how it cooperates with immigration authorities. He said he didn’t think she was linking the request to the surge of agents in the state.
“She’s not threatening to do something,” he said. “I don’t think it’s coercive.”
The federal government has a right to data on public assistance programs because it funds them, he argued. The request for the voter rolls may be “tangential” to what is happening in Minnesota, Kobach said, but he believes the federal government has a right to that data, which he supports using in an effort to find illegal voters.
The dispute over the connection between voter rolls and immigration enforcement has played out over social media in recent days. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) said online that Bondi’s letter showed the surge of immigration agents “was always about rigging elections.”
Vice President JD Vance responded to her on Monday by stating that Democrats are effectively saying, “We really want illegal aliens to vote in elections and will riot to ensure that it is so.”
Democratic-led states have brought dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration over the past year. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said litigation has been an essential check on a federal government intent on pushing the limits of its power.
“The check of the Congress is completely absent,” he said. “A Republican-led Congress is completely supine, ready to jump when asked to jump by the Trump administration, and they ask how high it is.”
The Justice Department’s demand for Minnesota’s voter rolls comes after the agency spent months suing states to get personal information on voters, including their dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
In all, the Justice Department has sued two dozen states for their voter lists, but judges have not ruled in most of the cases. A federal judge this month threw out the lawsuit against California, saying the Justice Department is not entitled to the information. That case could sway how other courts look at the issue.
Justice Department officials have said they want the lists so they can check whether states are properly maintaining them. It has been sharing data it has received from some states with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement.
Under the Constitution, states, rather than the federal government, are responsible for running elections. Congress has not given the administration the authority to “centralize the private information of all Americans within the Executive Branch,” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter for the Central District of California wrote in his recent decision rejecting the Justice Department’s attempts to get that state’s voter rolls.
Allowing the Justice Department to get the list “would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” the judge wrote.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D), who oversees the state’s voter rolls, rejected Bondi’s latest demand and noted that most states have taken a similar stance.
“This isn’t a defiant Minnesota on its own,” he said. “A large majority of states that have been asked for this information have said no on a similar basis to ours.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) has fought the Justice Department’s demand for the voter list in her state.
“I think what Bondi’s letter makes clear is that ICE invading Minnesota and Maine was never about immigration, but rather about inflicting violence and creating chaos to try to control our states and our elections,” she said.
If the administration gathers state voter rolls, it can use them to challenge the ability of people to vote, said Uzoma Nkwonta, an attorney who represents Democratic voters who have intervened in the litigation over voter lists.
“This is how you steal elections,” he said. “This is the path — taking these lists and then submitting them either to prevent people from voting or after the fact in order to reject the results of an election.”
Jeremy Roebuck and Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.
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