Judge declines to immediately halt Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota with more protests slated across the US Saturday
- - Judge declines to immediately halt Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota with more protests slated across the US Saturday
Elizabeth Wolfe, Zoe Sottile, CNNJanuary 31, 2026 at 8:08 PM
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Demonstrators participate in a protest at the Whipple federal building organized by religious leaders calling for an end to ICE operations in Minnesota on Friday, in Minneapolis. - Scott Olson/Getty Images
A judge has ruled that Operation Metro Surge – the federal immigration operation that has seen thousands of agents dispatched to Minnesota’s Twin Cities and two Minnesotans killed – can continue.
Minnesota, St. Paul and Minneapolis sued federal officials earlier this month, calling their immigration enforcement operation a “federal invasion” involving warrantless arrests and excessive force. The operation, said to target undocumented Somali immigrants, has triggered weeks of heightened tensions between city officials and the federal government and heated confrontations on the streets of Minneapolis.
The Trump administration argued the lawsuit was an overreach. “Put simply, Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement,” it said in a court filing.
In the ruling declining the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary junction, US District Judge Katherine Menendez noted evidence federal agents have “engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions” and the operation’s negative impacts throughout the state, ranging from “the expenditure of vast resources in police overtime to a plummeting of students’ attendance in schools, from a delay in responding to emergency calls to extreme hardship for small businesses.”
She acknowledged that the plaintiffs “have made a strong showing that Operation Metro Surge has had, and will likely continue to have, profound and even heartbreaking, consequences on the State of Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and Minnesotans.”
Still, the judge said that the harms of the operation must be balanced with the harms an injunction would pose to the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration law.
Menendez said in the decision the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed in their claim that the Trump administration was violating the 10th Amendment, which establishes the division of powers between states and federal government.
She pointed out that a “much more circumscribed injunction” barring federal agents involved in Operation Metro Surge from arresting or detaining peaceful protesters or using certain crowd control measures against them was vacated.
“If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here – halting the entire operation – certainly would,” she wrote.
Day of protests
The ruling comes as more demonstrations are expected Saturday and after a nationwide strike in protest of the federal immigration enforcement crackdown Friday . Restaurant tables sat empty, business windows went dark and students’ desks were abandoned in several cities across the country.
“No work, no school, no shopping” was the organizers’ rally cry, leading to school walkouts, canceled classes and marches in places as distant from the Midwest as California, North Carolina and Maine.
People gather to form a human distress signal on Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis on Friday. - WCCO
In Minnesota, waves of demonstrators spilled into the streets for the second week in a row – and some gathered onto a frozen lake to spell out a human SOS on Bde Maka Ska.
In neighboring Wisconsin, students at Preble High School placed flowers and a yellow poster full of messages at a campus memorial in honor of Alex Pretti, the second Minnesotan to be killed by federal agents in the state this year, who attended the Green Bay school, according to CNN affiliate WLUK.
The deaths of Pretti and Renee Good have transformed the national conversation on immigration enforcement and appear to have driven a tone shift from the White House in recent days.
Students at Preble High School place a memorial banner honoring Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota last week. - WLUK
But even after White House border czar Tom Homan announced the possibility of a drawdown of agents in Minneapolis, federal and local officials cannot seem to agree on what compromise might look like.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted on social media Friday, “Actions speak louder than words,” adding Minnesotans have “yet to see meaningful change.”
Baltimore demonstrators joined a national day of protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and federal immigration enforcement actions, showing solidarity with ongoing demonstrations in Minnesota and other U.S. cities tied to recent fatal encounters involving federal agents. - Robyn Stevens Brody/Sipa USA/AP
While the Trump administration works to contain backlash over the shootings in Minnesota, it has created a fresh wave of outrage from free speech and press freedom advocates over the Friday arrests of former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort on charges related to their coverage of a church protest.
Here’s the latest:
Justice Department to investigate Pretti killing: US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the agency has opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Pretti, which will probe whether federal officers violated the law when they disarmed and shot him multiple times. The FBI is taking the lead on the investigation, CNN has reported. Still, Blanche said he did not want to “overstate” the probe. “I don’t want the takeaway to be that there’s some massive civil rights investigation that’s happening,” he said, noting it is a “standard investigation by the FBI.”
Former CNN anchor vows to fight charges: Lemon and Fort were arrested Friday in connection with their coverage of a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month. An indictment alleges Lemon, Fort and the protesters “oppressed, threatened, and intimidated the Church’s congregants and pastors.” Lemon was charged with conspiring to violate someone’s constitutional rights and violating the FACE Act, which prohibits the use of force or threats to intentionally interfere with someone expressing their First Amendment right to religion. Lemon pledged to fight the charges after his release following a court appearance Friday in Los Angeles, saying he “will not be silenced.”
“Do we have a constitution or not?”: Fort asked after she was released from detention Friday. The arrest of journalists on charges related to doing their job has drawn widespread outrage and condemnation from free press and free speech advocacy groups, as well as several politicians. CNN in a statement said Lemon’s arrest “raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment.”
Lawsuit challenges ICE warrant policy: Immigrant rights advocates have filed a lawsuit in Boston challenging an ICE policy allowing its officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant. In the past, ICE agents have generally been required to get a warrant signed by a judge before they could enter private homes and businesses. But a whistleblower complaint revealed an ICE official told agents in a memo last May they could use administrative warrants instead.
Will New York ban police collaboration with ICE?: Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has been a sharp critic of DHS immigration operations, said she is proposing legislation which would prohibit cooperation agreements between local police departments and ICE. The governor is targeting a program called 287(g), which allows ICE to authorize state and local law enforcement to carry out some immigration enforcement duties. DHS data shows there are 14 New York agencies with 287(g) agreements in place. The proposal is likely to pass the Democrat-controlled state legislature.
Jail cooperation: Border czar Homan reiterated on Fox News on Friday that cooperation from Minnesota jails is essential for an eventual drawdown of immigration enforcement activity in the state. But federal and state officials have butted heads over even basic facts, like the number of inmates with ICE detainers in the state. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has said state law requires state and local authorities to share information with federal immigration authorities on non-citizens convicted of felonies, but county jails cannot hold people beyond their release date.
“None of this feels normal,”: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in an interview with The New York Times filmed Thursday. The mayor said he’d had a “relatively collegial” but disorienting call with President Donald Trump about the operation involving thousands of federal agents in the Twin Cities: “Never in a million years did I think that I would be having a phone call with President Trump about this large-scale invasion that we’re experiencing in the city that I love.”
This story has been with additional information.
CNN’s Andy Rose, Cindy Von Quednow, Taylor Romine, Kara Scannell, Gloria Pazmino, Holmes Lybrand, Brian Stelter, Emma Tucker, Devan Cole, Jennifer Feldman and Lechelle Benken contributed to this report.
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