MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — There was a tense mood in Minnesota on Tuesday after several days of protests against immigration agents.
Federal authorities used tear gas on Monday to disperse crowds of activists who were blowing whistles, and state and local leaders filed a lawsuit to challenge the immigration raid campaign that led to the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman.
Clashes between federal agents and demonstrators stretched across the day in several cities on Monday. Officers deployed tear gas in Minneapolis when a crowd surrounded immigration agents who were questioning a man, while to the northwest, in St. Cloud, hundreds protested outside a Somali-owned stretch of businesses after agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived.
Later that night, clashes erupted between demonstrators and officers guarding the federal building that had been used as the base for the raid campaign in the Twin Cities, the region that includes Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
The Department of Homeland Security pledged to dispatch more than 2,000 immigration agents to Minnesota, in what ICE described as its largest deployment to date, and the state, along with Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the Trump administration on Monday in an effort to stop or limit the expansion.
The lawsuit says the Department of Homeland Security is violating the First Amendment and other constitutional protections. It accuses the Trump administration of infringing on freedom of speech by targeting a progressive state that backs Democrats and welcomes immigrants.
“This is, essentially, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it must stop,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference.
Homeland Security says it has carried out more than 2,000 arrests in the state since December.
In the days since an ICE agent killed Renee Good by firing a shot to her head while she sat behind the wheel of her pickup, dozens of protests or vigils have occurred across the United States to honor the 37-year-old mother of three and to passionately criticize the Trump administration’s tactics.
In response to Monday’s lawsuit, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused Minnesota authorities of ignoring public safety.
“The job of President Trump is to protect the American people and enforce the law, regardless of who serves as mayor, governor, or state attorney general,” McLaughlin said.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the immigrant agent who shot Good, saying she and her vehicle posed a threat. But that explanation has been widely criticized by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and others, based on video of the confrontation.
The administration also faces a new lawsuit over a similar immigration raid campaign in Illinois. More than 4,300 people were arrested last year in the “Midway Blitz Operation” as masked agents swept through the Chicago area. The city and state’s lawsuit says the campaign had a chilling effect, causing residents to fear leaving their homes.
The suit seeks limits on certain tactics, among other remedies. McLaughlin called it “baseless.”
Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, federal authorities brought charges against a Venezuelan national who was one of two people shot there by the United States Border Patrol on Thursday. The U.S. Department of Justice said the man used his pickup to strike a Border Patrol vehicle and fled the scene with a woman.
The two were shot and eventually arrested. Their injuries were not life-threatening. The FBI said there was no video of the incident, unlike the Good shooting.
