Two U.S. states and their respective largest metropolitan areas have filed lawsuits seeking to block the Trump administration’s anti-immigration activities there, alleging that immigration officials are causing harm to residents and are violating states’ rights to self-governance as laid out in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
On Monday, the state of Minnesota, joined by the “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed a lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, including Secretary Kristi Noem. The suit alleges that “Operation Metro Surge” — the name DHS uses to describe its activities in those cities — is illegal, and in violation of the state’s and cities’ rights.
DHS officials “claim this unprecedented surge of immigration agents is necessary to fight fraud,” the lawsuit states. “In reality, the massive deployment of armed agents to Minnesota bears no connection to that stated objective and instead reflects an alarming escalation of the Trump Administration’s retaliatory actions towards the state.”
The plaintiffs added that, rather than being born out of necessity, the deployment of DHS agents to the cities seems to be based on politics, stating:
Operation Metro Surge is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities…driven by nothing more than the Trump Administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points — at the direct expense of Plaintiffs’ residents.
The lawsuit specifically alleges that the Trump administration is violating the state’s and cities’ 10th Amendment rights, which stipulate that powers not explicitly conferred to the federal government are reserved to the states and the people.
The plaintiffs note that residents are unable to go about their daily lives “confident that their constitutional rights and civil liberties will remain intact and will not be infringed,” as federal agents’ actions in the cities amount to “reckless tactics [that] endanger the public safety, health, and welfare of all Minnesotans.” The suit seeks to enjoin the administration from continuing the operation in the Twin Cities.
“People are being racially profiled, harassed, terrorized, and assaulted. Minnesota police are spending countless hours dealing with the chaos ICE is causing,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement. “This federal invasion of the Twin Cities has to stop.”
The Minnesota-based lawsuit comes less than a week after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good.
Good was shot by the agent as she was attempting to drive away from ICE agents who had surrounded her car. Although witness statements and video evidence demonstrate that her actions did not put any ICE agent’s life at risk, the Trump administration has characterized her as a “domestic terrorist,” falsely asserting that she was trying to use her van as a weapon.
In an interview shortly after her killing, President Donald Trump peddled false claims about the killing. “[Good] behaved horribly, and then she ran him over,” Trump said in a recent interview, despite video from multiple angles of the incident contradicting this assessment.
On Monday, the state of Illinois, joined by the City of Chicago, also filed a federal lawsuit against the administration, alleging that DHS actions in that city were illegal.
Describing recent federal operations in the city as an “organized bombardment” that is “causing turmoil and imposing a climate of fear,” the Illinois-based suit makes many of the same arguments as the Minnesota one — chiefly, that the federal government is violating Chicago’s and Illinois’s 10th Amendment rights to self-rule.
“Though Defendants describe this assault as ‘immigration enforcement,’ the reality is that uniformed, military-trained personnel, carrying semi-automatic firearms and military-grade weaponry, have rampaged for months through Chicago and surrounding areas, lawlessly stopping, interrogating, and arresting residents, and attacking them with chemical weapons,” the lawsuit states, citing numerous examples of warrantless arrests, deployment of “riot control weapons” (including chemical weapons) against residents, the concealing of license plates by immigration officials, and trespassing on private and city property, among other violations.
The Trump administration’s “incursion into Illinois, and their unlawful and violent tactics, have disrupted the lives and undermined the liberties and property rights of the people, injuring Illinois’ and Chicago’s sovereign and proprietary interests,” the suit adds.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) expressed support for the lawsuit, noting the draconian methods the Trump administration has used against the city.
“We have watched in horror as unchecked federal agents have aggressively assaulted and terrorized our communities and neighborhoods in Illinois, undermining Constitutional rights and threatening public safety,” Pritzker said in a statement.
Recent polling shows that public sentiment regarding the Trump administration’s actions in cities across the U.S. is mostly negative.
An AP-NORC poll last month, for example, found that only 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance on the issue of immigration, with 60 percent of respondents expressing disapproval.
A YouGov poll conducted on the day of Good’s killing showed that most Americans disapprove of ICE, with 52 percent expressing that viewpoint and only 39 percent saying they approve of the agency.
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