The 80-page complaint, filed in US District Court in Minnesota, targets the US Department of Homeland Security and senior federal officials, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. It asks a judge to immediately stop what the federal government calls “Operation Metro Surge,” a massive immigration operation that the plaintiffs say has sent thousands of armed, masked federal agents into Minnesota communities far from the border, straining local infrastructure and law enforcement.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said the lawsuit is aimed at stopping what he described as an unlawful federal overreach. “This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop.” He accused DHS agents of spreading “chaos and terror” in the metro area through warrant-less arrests, excessive force and enforcement actions at schools, churches, hospitals and other sensitive locations.
Ellison said the surge has forced school closings and lockdowns, harmed local businesses, and diverted police resources away from routine public safety operations. He cited more than 20 ICE-related incidents, including reports of people being pulled over in unmarked vehicles by masked agents and vehicles left on the streets, calling it an “unlawful use of police resources.”
The lawsuit points to the recent fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent as a turning point that has heightened fear and unrest. Ellison said the killing, along with subsequent federal rhetoric, left families and entire communities feeling unsafe in public places.
Good, 37, was a wife and mother of three children. He was fatally shot by an ICE officer during a Minneapolis enforcement operation on January 7. The FBI has assumed sole jurisdiction over the investigation, effectively blocking Minnesota officials from accessing evidence or participating in the investigation, a move state officials say undermines the transparency and integrity of law enforcement in the public eye.
The plaintiffs argue that the federal campaign violates the Tenth Amendment, federal administrative law, and long-standing limits on immigration enforcement. They also accused the Trump administration of “retaliatory conduct based on Minnesota’s lawful exercise of its sovereign authority.”
Asked by a reporter from PBS Frontline, who said his crew was pepper-sprayed by federal agents earlier in the day, whether the lawsuit sought to curb the use of crowd-control weapons, Ellison urged reporters to file a complaint. “Part of what our case is about is First Amendment protection,” he said. “The press is protected by the First Amendment, and that’s extremely important at this time.”
In a separate lawsuit on Monday, the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago sued DHS and senior federal officials, accusing the Trump administration of launching a militarized immigration campaign that “has rampaged through Chicago and surrounding areas for months, unlawfully detaining, interrogating and arresting residents and attacking them with chemical weapons.”
<a href