Federal judge rules against Minnesota’s lawsuit on immigration enforcement, citing constitutional grounds.
The outcome should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment, on which Minnesota AG Keith Ellison relied for his lawsuit. What may come as a surprise is that not even the normally sympathetic federal judge hearing the case would swallow it.
Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden-appointed jurist whose recent stay on ICE operations got sharply overturned by the Eighth Circuit, threw in the towel early this time. She ruled that Minnesota couldn’t make its case for judicial intervention to stop Operation Metro Surge, the Homeland Security effort to find violent illegal-alien criminals released by state and local authorities into the Twin Cities:
The surge of immigration agents into Minnesota can continue, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.
Why it matters: The decision is a win for the Trump administration, which has argued that „Operation Metro Surge“ has „succeeded“ with thousands of arrests.
The decision, from U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, comes just days after 37-year-old Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents.
What she’s saying: „Ultimately, the Court finds that the balance of harms does not decisively favor an injunction“, the judge said.
Menendez‘ ruling takes 30 pages to unroll, but the first two paragraphs explain the issue:
In recent weeks, several thousand federal agents have arrived in Minnesota and its two largest cities as part of “Operation Metro Surge,” an immigration enforcement campaign. The flood of federal agents has had profound effects on Minnesotans, requiring the state and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul to respond in many ways. In thiscase, Plaintiffs (the State of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Saint Paul), ask the Court to declare that the unprecedented surge of Defendants’ agents in Minnesota is unconstitutional and unlawful, and enter an injunction halting Operation Metro Surge. (Dkt. 1 at 76–77.1)
To that end, Plaintiffs filed a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (Dkt. 7), which the Court converted to a motion for a preliminary injunction (Dkt. 21). The Court pauses to observe what it is not deciding. At this stage, the Court makes no final determination on the merits of any claims asserted by Plaintiffs. Nor does the Court offer any opinion about the wisdom of Operation Metro Surge. And the legality of many of the specific actions taken by federal agents during the operation is not before the Court in this case.
