A Biden-appointed federal judge handed the Trump administration a significant legal victory Saturday, rejecting Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's attempt to halt immigration enforcement operations in the state. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez denied the request for a preliminary injunction in a 30-page decision that found Ellison unlikely to succeed on his constitutional claims.
The ruling allows "Operation Metro Surge" to continue unimpeded. Roughly 3,000 personnel from ICE and CBP remain on the ground in Minneapolis and St. Paul, enforcing federal immigration law in a state whose leaders have fought to obstruct that mission.
Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the decision on X:
Another HUGE @TheJusticeDept legal win in Minnesota just now: a Biden-appointed district judge denied Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's attempt to keep ICE out of Minnesota.
According to The Hill, Ellison and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul argued that the federal immigration surge violated the 10th Amendment's anti-commandeering doctrine—the constitutional principle that prevents Washington from compelling states to implement federal programs. The argument was creative. It was also insufficient.
Judge Menendez dismantled the claim methodically:
Plaintiffs ask the Court to extend existing precedent to a new context where its application is less direct — namely, to an unprecedented deployment of armed federal immigration officers to aggressively enforce immigration statutes.
She continued:
None of the cases on which they rely have even come close.
The plaintiffs wanted the court to halt the entire operation. Menendez noted that even a narrower injunction in a separate case had been deemed overreach by an appeals court earlier this week. Her conclusion was blunt:
If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here—halting the entire operation—certainly would.
Minnesota's lawsuit represented the latest attempt by blue-state officials to use the courts as a shield against immigration enforcement. The state argued that Operation Metro Surge pressured local governments to abandon their sanctuary policies—an argument that inverts the actual constitutional question.
The federal government isn't compelling Minnesota to do anything. It's enforcing its own laws with its own personnel. Sanctuary jurisdictions have always been free to refuse cooperation with federal immigration authorities. What they cannot do is stop the federal government from acting within its constitutional authority.
Bondi made the administration's position clear:
Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the ruling "a win for public safety and law and order."
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the ruling with language that revealed more about his priorities than his legal position:
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.
An invasion. Federal agents enforcing federal law in an American city constitute an invasion in Frey's telling. The rhetoric is instructive. For officials like Frey, the presence of immigration enforcement—not illegal immigration itself—represents the threat to public order.
Frey promised the city would continue pursuing the lawsuit "to hold the Trump administration to account." Account for what, exactly? Enforcing statutes that Congress passed and the Constitution permits?
Operation Metro Surge was first announced in December. Before federal agents had even completed their initial deployments, Ellison filed suit. The timing matters. This wasn't a response to documented abuses. It was a preemptive obstruction—an attempt to prevent enforcement before it could demonstrate results.
The strategy follows a familiar playbook. Blue-state attorneys general race to friendly courts seeking emergency relief. They invoke constitutional principles that don't apply to the facts at hand. They frame routine law enforcement as unprecedented aggression. When judges reject their arguments, they promise to fight on.
Ellison's statement after the ruling was a case study:
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.
Protect Minnesotans from what? From federal agents removing illegal immigrants? The framing assumes that immigration enforcement itself is the harm—that Minnesotans are threatened by the application of laws that have been on the books for decades.
The political dynamics of this ruling deserve attention. Judge Menendez was appointed by President Biden. She has, in other litigation, suggested that immigration agents engaged in racial profiling and excessive force. Earlier this month, she imposed an injunction in a separate case restricting ICE tactics during protests—an injunction that an appeals court promptly paused.
None of that prevented her from reaching the correct legal conclusion here. The anti-commandeering doctrine doesn't prohibit federal officers from enforcing federal law. It prohibits the federal government from forcing states to enforce federal law. There's a difference. Menendez recognized it.
The ruling also acknowledged practical reality. Issuing an injunction would impose significant harm on the federal government's ability to conduct operations it has every legal right to conduct. Courts don't grant sweeping preliminary relief based on novel legal theories that lack support in existing precedent.
Ellison and the cities have signaled they'll continue the litigation. The legal road ahead, as Ellison noted, remains long. But the denial of preliminary relief is significant. It means Operation Metro Surge continues while the case proceeds. It means the Trump administration's enforcement posture in Minnesota remains intact.
More broadly, the ruling signals the limits of the judicial obstruction strategy. Sanctuary jurisdictions can decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. They can refuse to honor detainers. They can prohibit their employees from sharing information with ICE. What they cannot do is obtain court orders blocking the federal government from acting independently.
The administration has deployed personnel to Minnesota. Those personnel are enforcing the law. A Biden-appointed judge has declined to stop them.
Keith Ellison wanted to keep ICE out of Minnesota. The Constitution had other ideas.
