Minnesota Is The Eye Of The Trump Storm

Donald Trump’s most aggressive — and fiercely disputed — efforts to expand presidential power have all collided in Minnesota.

A year into his second term, Trump has turned this Midwestern blue state into a testing ground for his most draconian policies — including mass deportation,the threat of military deployments on U.S. soil and the unilateral cancellation of nutrition assistance and disaster relief funding for cities and states run by his adversaries.

The onslaught has placed Minnesota in the eye of a storm that is roiling the entire nation.

Trump lost the state in all three of his presidential campaigns but has falsely claimed to have won it every time. It’s a state led by Democrats — including Gov. Tim Walz, who ran on the ticket against Trump in 2024. It has a large immigrant population, including Somalis, who Trump has described as “garbage.” It became a hotbed of anti-Trump sentiment and civil unrest after George Floyd’s killing by a police officer in 2020. Allegations of fraud in federally funded programs have given Trump an opening to assert control.

“There's really nowhere else in the country that ticks all of those boxes,” said Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor, who added that the White House’s push in Minnesota comes with a strategic benefit: the federal appeals court that would review legal challenges to Trump’s actions in the state is dominated by Republican appointees.

The administration and its allies see Minnesota as uniquely recalcitrant and forceful in its pushback to the Trump administration’s agenda on almost every front. Though other Democratic-led cities and states and have resisted Trump’s deportation push and have battled his policies in court, they say the across-the-board opposition in Minnesota — and the uniquely aggravating factor of a burgeoning fraud scandal — has led to the culmination of legal and political battles in the state.

Here’s a look at the legal battles playing out in Minnesota, a microcosm of the nation:

Mass detention of deportation targets

Trump’s most visible assertion of power in Minnesota is the infusion of federal officers and agents — dubbed “Operation Metro Surge” — into Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding region. Courts estimate that as many as 3,000 federal officials have descended on the state to carry out immigration operations,which have drawn protests and inflamed tensions with local residents and elected officials.

Those efforts have resulted in a corresponding surge of litigation, particularly by detained immigrants targeted for deportation, who say they're being held illegally without the opportunity for bond.

Judges across the country have almost uniformly rejected the administration’s position in similar cases. Cases in Minnesota have been skyrocketing since Operation Metro Surge began, with dozens of new petitions filed each day. And the results have been consistent: Judges, even those appointed by Trump, have called the mass detention illegal and ordered the administration to provide bond hearings or release detainees outright.

Force against protesters

Protesters in Minnesota are challenging the use of force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and others involved in Operation Metro Surge as well, mirroring litigation that followed deportation operations in Los Angeles and Chicago.

That led to a ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez barring ICE and other federal agents involved in the surge from using certain crowd control tactics, arresting peaceful protesters and conducting vehicle stops in ways intended to chill free speech. Menendez found that ICE agents had repeatedly used retaliatory force against peaceful protesters, a dynamic that became even more fraught after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good.

Appeals courts blocked or narrowed rulings curtailing Trump’s actions in Chicago and Los Angeles, and the administration is betting the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals will follow suit and block Menendez’ ruling.

Protected status for Somali immigrants

Trump has repeatedly railed against Somali immigrants in the wake of allegations of pervasive fraud in federally funded programs. And last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to revoke “temporary protected status” from several thousand Somalis living in the U.S. after fleeing war and strife in their homeland.

That move mirrored similar cancellations of protected status for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and others. Lower-court judges sought to block those cancellations, saying they were authorized on false or discriminatory pretenses — only for appellate courts and the Supreme Court to allow the administration to proceed.

“The Trump Administration is enforcing the law without apology," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said. "Minnesota Democrats have turned a blind eye to rampant Somali fraud and attempted to obstruct the Trump Administration’s efforts to remove dangerous criminal illegal aliens from their communities. Violent rioters have stormed churches and attempted to obstruct federal law enforcement operations while local Democrats do nothing. Every action taken by the Administration is well within the President’s lawful authority to protect the American people. Minnesota leaders should work with the Administration to protect Americans instead of doing everything to oppose us.”

Threat to invoke the Insurrection Act

Trump sent the National Guard into Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon over the wishes of state and local officials to shore up what he characterized as immigration operations besieged by violent resistance. And in each case, federal courts found the deployments exceeded Trump’s authority.

The Supreme Court agreed last month, finding that Trump did not have the authority to deploy National Guard troops — typically controlled by governors — into American cities without first determining the “regular forces” of the military were unable to control the unrest. That leaves Trump with an option he’s long flirted with: Invoking the Insurrection Act to send the military directly into U.S. cities.

Trump made his threat to Minnesota explicit last week, noting that other presidents had invoked the Act to quell unrest. But state and local leaders say the presence of uniformed military on the streets of an American city would further inflame tensions and violate historical norms about turning the military on civilians.

Targeting political adversaries

Trump has been increasingly overt about his desire to turn the machinery of the Justice Department against those he sees as political foes, pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi to move quickly even when career prosecutors view his preferred cases as weak or meritless.

Now, the Justice Department has signaled it is investigating Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — both Democrats, and two of the state’s most outspoken critics of ICE’s actions — for impeding immigration officials. Little is known about the status of the investigation, but the probe appears rooted in the officials’ public opposition to the federal government’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota and ICE’s tactics in the Twin Cities.

Walz and Frey have rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing and argued they’re being targeted for their opposition to federal policy and views.

Unilateral funding cuts

Trump has also vowed to yank billions in funding from Minnesota over allegations that Somali fraudsters had bilked federally funded programs. The administration has already sought to pull funds from so-called “sanctuary” cities and states, where local leaders decline to assist with federal immigration enforcement, and has targeted nutrition assistance funding in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Last week, a federal judge in Minnesota, Laura Provinzino, blocked the Department of Agriculture from slashing funding to Minnesota for administering the SNAP program, saying that the state had fully complied with legal requirements for verifying eligible recipients. Instead, the judge said USDA had “pulled the rug out from under Minnesota without offering any reasoned explanation” by making new, onerous demands that were virtually impossible to satisfy.

Judges have blocked the administration from nixing disaster relief fund over “sanctuary city” policies, but Trump has recently vowed to pull all federal funds out of Minnesota over what he has characterized as rampant, unchecked fraud in federally funded programs.

Suing over the voter rolls

Minnesota is also one of 22 states the Justice Department is suing to gain access to voter registration files, a nationwide push that has begun to meet resistance in courts as well.

A federal judge in Californialast week shot down DOJ’s effort in the state, calling it a thinly veiled effort to disenfranchise legal voters.

“There cannot be unbridled consolidation of all elections power in the Executive without action from Congress and public debate,” wrote U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench in Santa Ana. “This is antithetical to the promise of fair and free elections our country promises and the franchise that civil rights leaders fought and died for.”

In Minnesota, the battle is taking place before Menendez, who has a hearing scheduled on the issue for early March.

Blocking lawmakers from ICE oversight

A day after the Good shooting rocked Minneapolis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem implemented a new policy blocking members of Congress from visiting ICE detention facilities without one week’s notice. That policy echoed a similar one that had been blocked by a federal judge last month.

Noem didn’t publicly announce the updated policy, and three Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were turned away when they sought to enter an immigration detention facility in Minneapolis — one of them even carrying a printout of the December ruling in their favor.

The earlier, blocked policy was rooted in an effort by DHS to keep Democratic lawmakers from making unannounced visits to ICE facilities to spotlight what they have described as abuses or unsafe conditions — but visits that DHS officials have described as publicity stunts. But U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb found that the policy violated federal appropriations law that prohibits the use of certain funds from being used to interfere with congressional oversight visits.

The new policy, while substantially similar, claims to rely on funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump last year, which doesn’t include the same restriction. Cobb, on Monday, declined to block the new policyon technical grounds, saying the lawmakers had to file a new challenge before the court could consider it.