On Monday, the U.S. state of Minnesota alongside its two largest population centers, Minneapolis and St. Paul (jointly known as the Twin Cities), filed a sweeping federal lawsuit to block what local leaders describe as an unprecedented, unlawful surge of U.S. federal law enforcement agents deployed across the region. Local plaintiffs argue the sudden deployment violates the U.S. Constitution and poses an immediate threat to local public safety.
The 80-page complaint, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and top federal officials including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as defendants. It asks a federal judge to immediately halt the federal government’s "Operation Metro Surge", a large-scale immigration enforcement initiative. According to the plaintiffs, the operation has deployed thousands of armed, masked federal agents into Minnesota communities hundreds of miles from the southern border, overburdening local public infrastructure and stretching local law enforcement resources past their breaking point.
During a Monday afternoon press conference, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the lawsuit is intended to end what he calls an unlawful expansion of federal power in the state. “This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop,” Ellison stated. He accused DHS agents of sowing “chaos and terror” across the metro region through a pattern of warrantless arrests, excessive force, and enforcement actions carried out at sensitive community locations including schools, churches, and hospitals.
Ellison added that the surge has already forced school closures and emergency lockdowns, harmed local business activity, and diverted local police personnel and funding away from routine public safety work. He cited more than 20 documented incidents tied to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including multiple reports of masked agents pulling people into unmarked vehicles and leaving those people’s cars abandoned on public streets, and called the operation an “unlawful commandeering of police resources.”
The lawsuit also points to the recent fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent as a turning point that amplified widespread fear and unrest across the region. Ellison said the killing, paired with aggressive federal rhetoric following the incident, has left families and entire communities feeling unsafe in public spaces.
Good, 37, was a wife and mother of three. She was fatally shot by an ICE officer during a Minneapolis enforcement operation on January 7. The FBI has taken sole control of the investigation into Good’s death, effectively barring Minnesota state and local authorities from accessing evidence or participating in the probe. State officials say this move undermines transparency and erodes public trust in the integrity of law enforcement.
Plaintiffs argue the federal operation violates the Tenth Amendment, federal administrative law, and longstanding legal limits on the scope of domestic immigration enforcement. They also accuse the Trump administration of engaging in “retaliatory conduct based on Minnesota’s lawful exercise of its sovereign authority.”
When asked by a reporter from PBS Frontline — who shared that his reporting crew had been pepper-sprayed by federal agents earlier that same day — whether the lawsuit seeks to curb federal use of crowd-control weapons, Ellison urged any affected journalists to file official complaints. “Part of what our case is about is First Amendment protection,” he said. “The press is protected by the First Amendment, and it’s vitally important in this moment.”
In a separate lawsuit filed Monday, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago also sued DHS and senior federal officials. The suit accuses the Trump administration of unleashing a militarized immigration operation that has “rampaged for months through Chicago and surrounding areas, lawlessly stopping, interrogating, and arresting residents, and attacking them with chemical weapons.”