The ruling marks another defeat in the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Democratic leaders to carry out the president’s immigration agenda.
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A federal judge rejected Justice Department subpoenas issued to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), another defeat in the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Democratic leaders to help carry out the president’s aggressive immigration agenda.
Minnesota’s chief federal judge, Patrick J. Schiltz, determined that the Justice Department issued the subpoenas to coerce officials in the state to take specific actions around immigration enforcement. Walz, Frey and other state and local officials received subpoenas which, while not identical, broadly sought records relating to federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
“The Department has struggled — without success — to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas,” Schiltz wrote.
The Justice Department issued the subpoenas in January as President Donald Trump and other federal officials alleged that the Democratic leaders were impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs in the state. The subpoenas were issued amid a bitter political battle between the Trump administration and state officials following the fatal shooting of protester Renée Good in Minneapolis by an immigration officer earlier that month. That shooting happened amid a surge of federal immigration officers in the state ordered by Trump.
Other Democratic leaders, including Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison, also received subpoenas.
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Efforts by the officials in Minnesota to challenge the subpoenas have played out in sealed proceedings. Schiltz, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, issued a ruling voiding the subpoenas last week. The judge unsealed that ruling Monday.
“This course of events — in and of itself — establishes beyond reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were a part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws,” Schiltz wrote. “And, of course, this campaign played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s well-established history of using criminal investigations to retaliate against and pressure the President’s political and personal adversaries.”
Walz called the ruling a “victory for the rule of law and our democracy.”
“I will never stop exercising my constitutional rights to stand up for Minnesotans and the American freedoms we hold dear,” he wrote in a statement posted on social media.
The Washington Post previously reported that the law under which the Justice Department investigated the officials was a federal statute on conspiracy to impede a federal investigation. That is similar to the charges filed against protesters who federal officials allege have attempted to block immigration officers as they do their work.
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This is a developing story and will be updated.
