‘Huge Legal Win’: Trump Admin Celebrates As Judge Blocks Minnesota’s Bid To Keep ICE Out

Last Updated:February 01, 2026, 00:32 IST

The court ruled that Minnesota’s challenge to the ICE deployment was unlikely to succeed at this stage.

A member of the Enforcement and Removal Operations of ICE stands guard while a man is detained by ICE agents during an immigration raid, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US. (IMAGE: REUTERS)

The Donald Trump administration on Saturday welcomed a federal court ruling that blocked Minnesota’s attempt to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from carrying out a major immigration enforcement surge in the state.

US District Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden-era appointee, ruled that a lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was unlikely to succeed at this stage, declining to issue a preliminary injunction that would have halted the federal operation.

Reacting to the decision, Attorney General Pam Bondi described the ruling as a significant legal victory for the administration.

“Another HUGE @TheJusticeDept legal win in Minnesota just now: a Biden-appointed district judge denied Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s attempt to keep ICE out of Minnesota," Bondi wrote on X.

“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota," she added.

In her ruling, Judge Menendez said the plaintiffs were asking the court to stretch existing legal precedent to a new and far more aggressive context.

“Plaintiffs ask the Court to extend existing precedent to a new context where its application is less direct — namely, to an unprecedented deployment of armed federal immigration officers to aggressively enforce immigration statutes," she wrote.

“None of the cases on which they rely have even come close," Menendez added, according to The Hill.

The lawsuit challenged what the state described as a sudden spike in ICE deployments under “Operation Metro Surge". Minnesota argued that the move violated the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution, which limits the federal government’s ability to compel states to carry out federal regulatory programmes.

The plaintiffs contended that while Washington can enforce federal law, it cannot “commandeer" state governments by forcing them to assist or implement federal policy. The US Supreme Court has previously upheld this anti-commandeering doctrine, but Menendez said the legal threshold for immediate court intervention had not been met in this case.

While the judge said the suit was not without merit, she noted that the bar for granting a preliminary injunction is high.

Menendez even suggested that immigration agents may have engaged in racial profiling and used excessive force, but said the record was not yet clear enough to justify halting the operation.

She also said stopping the surge now would cause significant harm to the federal government’s immigration agenda.

In her order, Menendez pointed to a recent appeals court decision that paused a separate injunction she had issued in another case limiting ICE tactics during protests.

“If that injunction went too far, then the one at issue here — halting the entire operation — certainly would," she wrote.

The ruling comes amid mounting tensions in Minneapolis, where the Trump administration has deployed waves of heavily armed, masked federal agents. The operation has sparked fierce opposition from local officials in the Democratic-leaning city of about 400,000.

According to officials, aggressive raids at bus stops and outside hardware stores have led to the arrest of thousands of undocumented migrants, as well as some US citizens.

In less than a month, federal agents have shot an undocumented Venezuelan man in the leg and detained a five-year-old Ecuadoran boy, Liam Ramos.

Two US citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were also shot dead during enforcement operations. Administration officials initially described both as domestic terrorists, claims that were later challenged by witness footage.

News world ‘Huge Legal Win’: Trump Admin Celebrates As Judge Blocks Minnesota’s Bid To Keep ICE Out

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