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Government officials in the Democrat-run states of Minnesota and Illinois filed federal lawsuits against the Trump administration on January 12th seeking court orders to strike down the Department of Homeland Security’s deployment of immigration agents in their states. Reminiscent of Democrat segregationist leaders’ states’ rights challenges against federal enforcement of the civil rights laws decades ago, these lawsuits claim that the large deployment of federal immigration law enforcement agents in their states violates their states’ sovereignty.
Federal District Court Judge Kate Menendez denied the Minnesota state and city plaintiffs’ request for an immediate two-week temporary restraining order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minnesota. This means that the operations can continue for the time being. However, Judge Menendez set an aggressive schedule for the parties to submit their arguments in the case, which she said would remain “on the front burner.” The Biden-nominated judge said that the lawsuit presents “frontier issues in constitutional law.”
While Judge Menendez declined to immediately issue the temporary restraining order that Minnesota requested, she showed that she was willing to impose some restrictions on various ICE tactics In a separate lawsuit filed last December by the ACLU on behalf of several activists.
In that lawsuit, Judge Menendez issued a ruling on January 16th that ordered agents not to retaliate against people “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” and not to use pepper spray or other “crowd dispersal tools” that could suppress protected speech. Judge Menendez also ordered agents to desist from stopping or detaining protesters in vehicles who were not “forcibly obstructing or interfering with” agents. This all may sound nice in theory but is very difficult to implement in practice.
When agitators bent on obstruction and use of violence against ICE agents insert themselves among more peaceful protesters, they are deliberately making it virtually impossible for law enforcement to target the lawbreakers with crowd control techniques without also interfering with the right of others to protest peacefully. Moreover, what should an agent do if agitators deliberately use their cars to block DHS vehicles and passively refuse to move or exit their cars when law enforcement orders them to do so? Can agents forcibly remove the agitators from their cars or have them all towed away? Or are they just supposed to watch and do nothing?
The plaintiffs in both the Illinois and Minnesota government lawsuits believe that the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment justifies their claim. The Illinois complaint, for example, states, “The Tenth Amendment preserves Illinois’s sovereignty.” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in the announcement of his state’s lawsuit that “I filed this lawsuit to stand up for the safety of the people of Illinois and the sovereignty of our state.”
The Minnesota complaint states, “Plaintiffs are entitled to a declaration that Defendants’ actions are unconstitutional and violate all Plaintiffs’ rights under the Tenth Amendment and that Defendants may not prevent the State from exercising sovereign authority reserved for the States by the Constitution.”
The drafters of the Illinois and Minnesota complaints should have read the Tenth Amendment more carefully, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” (Emphasis added)
Regulation of immigration is exclusively delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. Congress makes the immigration laws and the executive branch enforces them. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause precludes conflicting state or local government acts.
“It really is astounding that the left can miraculously rediscover the 10th Amendment when they don’t want federal law enforcement officers to enforce federal law,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She is correct that such enforcement is “a clear federal responsibility” under the Constitution.
The Minnesota and Illinois federal lawsuits try to sidestep the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by challenging the way in which the Trump administration is enforcing the immigration laws.
The Illinois lawsuit asks a federal judge to block the Trump administration “from conducting civil immigration enforcement” in the manner it is doing so in Illinois without “express congressional authorization.” It may come as a shock to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, but Congress has already authorized the executive branch with wide latitude to conduct immigration law enforcement operations. The Trump administration is fulfilling its constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The One Big Beautiful Bill, which President Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, reflects Congress’s intention to beef up strict enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws by allocating funding for ICE to hire 10,000 additional agents.
The Illinois complaint alleges that Border Patrol and ICE agents “have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law—randomly and brutally stopping and questioning residents, separating parents from their children, detaining without warrant or probable cause citizens and non-citizens alike, and using tear gas and other chemical weapons in urban environments against unsuspecting bystanders, injuring dozens including children, the elderly and local police officers.”
Last year, an Obama-appointed federal district court judge believed hyperbole like this and placed severe restrictions on the tactics that ICE may use in its enforcement operations in a lawsuit filed by activists, clergy members, and journalists. However, a federal appellate panel struck down those restrictions on the grounds that they were overly broad and violated “principles of separation of powers.” The appellate judges decided that the district court judge exceeded her judicial authority in entering an order that attempted to control virtually “all law enforcement officers in the Executive Branch.”
Illinois’ current lawsuit is a frivolous attempt to repackage some of the same challenges to ICE’s law enforcement tactics as old wine in a new bottle.
The Minnesota lawsuit disputes that the alarming amount of fraud uncovered in mostly Somalian American neighborhoods, costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, justifies the surge of DHS agents that the plaintiffs want the court to block. And the complaint rejects out of hand the danger to public safety from violent illegal immigrants who are protected by Minnesota’s sanctuary policies. Instead, the plaintiffs lodge the absurd accusation that the surge “reflects an alarming escalation of the Trump Administration’s retaliatory actions towards the state.”
The Minnesota complaint’s core constitutional argument is that “The Tenth Amendment gives the State of Minnesota and its subdivisions, including the Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, inviolable sovereign authority to protect the health and wellbeing of all those who reside, work, or visit within their borders.” That is true with respect to all those lawfully residing, working, or visiting within the borders of the State of Minnesota and its subdivisions. But the plaintiffs’ claim that the Trump administration is violating Minnesota’s and its subdivisions’ Tenth Amendment rights in conducting searches, apprehensions, and detentions of illegal immigrants who have violated federal law is bogus. The Tenth Amendment does not preclude DHS law enforcement agents from rounding up illegal immigrants within the state’s borders, including most importantly dangerous criminal illegal immigrants whom state and local officials have released onto the streets.
While “policing and crime control remain one of the most basic rights reserved to the States and their municipalities,” as the complaint declares, policing to enforce U.S. immigration laws is both the exclusive right and the exclusive responsibility of the federal government.
Contrary to the Minnesota complaint, DHS enforcement personnel have not attempted to “commandeer state and local law enforcement to assist federal agents in carrying out federal immigration laws.” However, when anti-ICE agitators physically harass and assault federal law enforcement agents in violation of Minnesota’s criminal riot statute, it is reasonable for DHS to expect that Minnesota’s state and local police would vigorously enforce Minnesota’s own law. But that has not happened. Instead, Minnesota’s Democrat elected officials blame ICE and inflame the mayhem. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey continues to stand by his expletive-filled tirade, telling ICE to “Get the f— out of Minneapolis.” Governor Tim Walz used the phrase “atrocities against Minnesotans” to describe what he believes ICE is doing.
We do not hear much about ICE agents embroiled in violent confrontations with rowdy protesters in red states like Florida. That is because ICE is getting full cooperation from state law enforcement, including turning over to ICE criminal illegal immigrant prisoners rather than releasing them onto the streets. Thus, ICE agents do not have to conduct as many high-risk operations in Florida with major deployments of ICE agents to capture criminal illegal immigrants at large, as they do in Minnesota, Illinois, and other sanctuary jurisdictions.
Governors and mayors in sanctuary jurisdictions are creating the dangerous chaotic conditions on the streets that they falsely blame on DHS personnel, who are being obstructed by unruly mobs from simply trying to enforce the federal immigration laws. These Democrat demagogues demonize ICE agents as criminals and worse, while they portray illegal immigrants as innocent victims who must be protected from the federal “invaders.” Their reckless rhetoric emboldens the anti-ICE agitators to escalate their lawlessness, with the objective of provoking an escalation of force used by federal law enforcement agents to defend themselves.
The agitators have exploited the fatal shooting of Renee Good on January 7th by an ICE officer who feared for his life as Ms. Good drove her car towards him after disobeying a lawful order to exit the vehicle. This agent was branded a murderer and has reportedly received death threats. And another incident on January 14th gave the agitators additional red meat to exploit. An ICE agent shot an illegal immigrant in the leg, whom he was trying to apprehend, after the suspect and two other illegal immigrants beat the agent with a shovel and a broom handle. This sparked more lawlessness by anti-ICE agitators, which included violence against law enforcement personnel and property.
Saul Alinsky, the author of “Rules for Radicals,” provided two pieces of advice that the anti-ICE agitators are carefully following: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,” and “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
The left-leaning legacy media is irresponsibly distorting the reality on the ground to fool people into believing the anti-ICE demagogues’ and agitators’ demonization of hard-working immigration law enforcement agents who are risking their lives for their country.
If progressive district court judges rule against the Trump administration again and are not quickly reversed on appeal, President Trump may have to resort to invoking the Insurrection Act.
