A US federal judge canceled legal actions taken by the Trump administration against the Minnesota authorities in January, in the midst of a massive operation of arrests of immigrants in this Democratic state in the north of the country, in a decision made public on Monday.
Launched at the end of December, Operation “Metro Surge”, which ended in mid-February with the arrest of “4,000 illegal aliens”, according to the Trump administration, was also marked by the death of two demonstrators protesting against the immigration police (ICE), killed by federal agents.
Eight days after Minnesota as well as the municipalities of the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint-Paul challenged in court the influx of federal agents in the metropolis, these local authorities were targeted on January 20 by a series of requests for communication of documents, underlines this federal judge of Minneapolis, Patrick Schiltz, in his decision dated June 17, but made public Monday.
These requests concern the communication of “documents relating to the application of federal immigration laws since January 1, 2025”, i.e. even before Donald Trump’s return to power, without establishing a credible link with possible criminally reprehensible acts, he adds.
“The court finds that the predominant purpose of the requests in question was to compel Minnesota officials to assist the federal government in its enforcement of immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so,” explains the judge.
He cites in his decision that rendered in March by one of his colleagues in Washington, canceling requests for communication of documents, in a move targeting the outgoing president of the Federal Reserve (Fed), Jerome Powell, since replaced in this position by Donald Trump.
“There is ample evidence that the main (if not the only) objective of these actions is to harass Mr. Powell into giving in to President Trump or resigning and giving way to a Fed chairman who will do so,” wrote this judge, James Boasberg.
Since Donald Trump’s return to power, several designated targets of his vindictiveness have been targeted by criminal investigations and even indictments. He also successively appointed two of his former personal lawyers as head of the strategic Ministry of Justice, Pam Bondi, replaced in April by Todd Blanche.
