Despite the fatal shootings of two Americans by federal agents in Minnesota, the Trump administration’s surge of immigration officers into the Twin Cities will not be halted for now, a federal judge ruled Saturday.
The order, written by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez, acknowledged the “profound and even heartbreaking” consequences of having thousands of federal agents in the state, and said it “would be difficult to overstate the effect this operation is having on the citizens of Minnesota.”
Even so, Menendez said those are “not the only harms to be considered.”
“The Eighth Circuit has recently reiterated that entry of an injunction barring the federal government from enforcing federal law imposes significant harm on the government,” the order reads.
“Ultimately, the Court finds that the balance of harms does not decisively favor an injunction,” it adds.
At least 3,000 federal agents have been dispatched to Minneapolis and St. Paul since November as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Agents were sent against the wishes of local and state leaders, triggering a lawsuit from the state demanding an end to the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge.”
State and city attorneys argue that the massive presence of masked and armed agents has unleashed chaos in Minneapolis and St. Paul, violates the state’s sovereignty under the 10th Amendment, and amounts to a “federal invasion” that has caused local law enforcement resources to be stretched thin and terrorized residents.
Ahead of the judge’s order, border czar Tom Homan announced that the administration intended to draw down forces. That announcement was made only after backlash mounted against the administration following the killings of Renée Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.
Menendez’s Saturday order explained that the state had failed to show a “metric” determining how the surge of federal forces had crossed a line into “unlawful commandeering” of the state’s resources or sovereignty.
“A proclamation that Operation Metro Surge has simply gone ‘so far on the other side of the line’ is a thin reed on which to base a preliminary injunction,” Menendez wrote.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and expressed his disappointment at the decision.
“Of course, we’re disappointed,” Frey said in a statement to HuffPost. “This decision doesn’t change what people here have lived through — fear, disruption and harm caused by a federal operation that never belonged in Minneapolis in the first place. This operation has not brought public safety. It’s brought the opposite and has detracted from the order we need for a working city. It’s an invasion, and it needs to stop.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison voiced similar sentiments.
“We’re obviously disappointed in the court’s ruling today, but this case is in its infancy and there is much legal road in front of us, so we’re fighting on. We will continue to protect Minnesotans and raise the critical legal and constitutional issues at stake, and we will continue to be unrelenting in doing so,” Ellison said in a statement. “We know that these 3,000 immigration agents are here to intimidate Minnesota and bend the state to the federal government’s will. That is unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment and the principle of equal sovereignty. We’re not letting up in defending our state’s constitutional powers.”