By Sarah Nelson
Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by the Justice Department targeting Minnesota’s laws prohibiting law enforcement from assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, saying state and local laws do not intrude on federal authority.
In a 56-page order, Chief U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud rejected the Justice Department’s claims that Minnesota’s laws unfairly target federal immigration agents and inhibit them from carrying out immigration work.
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“They do not command the federal government or its contractors to act. They do not forbid the federal government or its contractors from acting. They do not control how the federal government or its contractors undertake their work. Rather, they regulate how state and local officials perform their duties,” wrote Tostrud, a President Donald Trump appointee.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s request for comment about the order.
Filed in September, the lawsuit preceded Operation Metro Surge — the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that sent roughly 4,000 agents to the state. The administration asked the court to declare Minnesota’s policies unconstitutional and prohibit the state from enforcing them. In addition to suing the state, the Trump administration also sued Minneapolis, St. Paul and Hennepin County over ordinances that limited assistance with immigration enforcement.
The targeted policies included a prohibition on sharing driver’s license information with federal immigration agents and ordinances limiting what local police can share with federal immigration officers. Lawyers for the state and cities argued they should not be responsible for enforcing civil immigration law.
“Minnesota is not impeding immigration law, it is just not assisting,” wrote attorneys for the state in response to the lawsuit.
In his order, Tostrud said forcing Minnesota or cities to assist with civil federal immigration policies would violate the anticommandeering doctrine under the 10th Amendment, which prevents the federal government from compelling states to carry out its orders. He determined that forcing states to assist in federal immigration matters may cause the state budgetary concerns by shifting resources toward enforcing federal law.
He also rejected the federal government’s claims that Minnesota’s immigration laws single out the federal government, saying Minnesota laws also extend to private companies and state governments.
In a statement, Attorney General Keith Ellison praised the ruling and said Tostrud’s order “reaffirmed longstanding principle that the federal government cannot force Minnesota or any state to participate in its misguided immigration-enforcement efforts or commandeer state resources for it.”
“The Trump Administration , however, has no regard for this constitutional principle, so it nonetheless filed this lawsuit as part of its ongoing war against the people of Minnesota and its efforts to intimidate us into submission,” Ellison’s statement said. “They keep learning over and over that the people of Minnesota won’t be intimidated. Nor will I.”
The Trump administration has continued to make immigration a cornerstone of the president’s second term and target jurisdictions that have so-called “sanctuary” policies.
Last week, Maryland was among the latest to face a a Justice Department lawsuit over its laws. Some federal courts across the U.S. have dismissed similar lawsuits brought by the Justice Department , including in Los Angeles, Illinois, New Jersey and New York.
The suit against Minnesota came after Trump issued an executive order to identify jurisdictions that defy federal immigration law. Minnesota was later listed among a dozen states by the Justice Department for being a “sanctuary jurisdiction.”
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