Case Explained:This article breaks down the legal background, charges, and implications of Case Explained: Minnesota leaders subpoenaed in US criminal probe over opposition to immigration crackdown – Legal Perspective
ST. PAUL, Minnesota, Jan 20 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday subpoenaed the offices of Minnesota’s governor and attorney general, and mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as it weighed whether their public opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities amounts to a crime.
One of the jury subpoenas, shared with the media by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, orders his office’s custodian of records to produce documents since the beginning of 2025 related to “cooperation or lack of cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”
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The federal grand jury subpoenas were served on six offices of state and local Democrats, according to a Justice Department official, including those of Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
“Whether it’s a public official, whether it’s a law enforcement officer, no one is above the law in this state or in this country, and people will be held accountable,” U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi said in a Fox News interview after arriving in Minnesota on Friday.
“Our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe, and that’s what we’re going to do in Minnesota,” Bondi added, without explicitly addressing the newly issued subpoenas.
WALZ, FREY SAY PUBLIC AT RISK
Trump, a Republican, has sent thousands of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the Minneapolis area in recent weeks to conduct deportation roundups, unprecedented in scale, that have led to numerous violent confrontations with residents.
The agents have carried rifles through the city’s snowy streets, dressed in military-style camouflage, tactical gear and masks, drawing loud but mostly peaceful protests from residents.
Walz and Frey have denounced the ICE operations as reckless political theater that was putting the public at risk and was designed to provoke chaos that Trump would use as a pretext to exert an even greater show of force.
Although he has urged protesters to remain orderly, Walz also has openly encouraged citizens to record video of any arrests or other encounters between ICE agents and members of the public to create a database for potential “future prosecution” of wrongdoing by federal law enforcement.
Trump administration officials have accused Walz and Frey of deliberately stoking interference with ICE operations in “collusion” with anti-government agitators, which the governor denies. Justice Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
The hostility of many residents to the ICE crackdown has only deepened since one agent fatally shot an American woman, Renee Good, in her car nearly two weeks ago.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the Border Patrol, said officers who broke down the man’s door with gun’s drawn were seeking two “criminal illegal aliens” from Laos who are subject to deportation orders.
One of those men, who ICE officials pictured on “Wanted” posters and described on Tuesday as still at large, was actually in a prison south of Minneapolis serving a four-year term he received in late 2024 for kidnapping, according to public court records and the state online inmate locator.
The man who was wrongly detained, and later released, ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen, said the agents who arrested him presented no warrant.
Government agents are forbidden under the U.S. Constitution from forcing their way into homes and other private property without a warrant signed by a judge, or to arrest someone without “probable cause” that a crime was committed.
The grand jury subpoenas were delivered a few days after it became public that the U.S. Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation of Walz, Frey and other Democrats who have criticized Trump’s deportation drive in Minnesota.
Walz, who unsuccessfully ran for vice president in the 2024 election won by Trump, said the federal justice system was being weaponized to intimidate Trump’s political adversaries.
He has pointed to investigations opened in recent weeks against such figures as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has criticized as being too hesitant to lower interest rates, and several U.S. military veterans serving in Congress who issued a video statement urging members of the armed forces to resist illegal orders.
It would be highly unusual for federal prosecutors to bring a criminal conspiracy case based on statements from public officials about government policies.
The Justice Department has struggled in some cases to secure indictments, an unusual rebuke from grand juries given that prosecutors alone present evidence to those panels and need only show probable cause that a crime was committed, a lower legal standard than it takes to obtain a conviction at trial.
Grand juries twice rejected the DOJ’s attempts to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James after a judge threw out a criminal case against her and also refused to sign off on several cases connected to Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington last summer.
DEMOCRATS HAVE CALLED FOR CALM
Democratic politicians in Minnesota have also sued the Trump administration, asking a judge to order an end to what they call the unconstitutional excesses of his enforcement surge.
On Friday, a federal judge in Minnesota barred immigration agents deployed en masse in the Minneapolis area from arresting, detaining or using pepper spray and other crowd-control munitions against peaceful protesters or individuals who were merely observing ICE activities.
The injunction was granted in response to a lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of citizens who said their constitutional rights had been infringed by federal agents.
“Minnesotans are more concerned with safety and peace rather than with baseless legal tactics aimed at intimidating public servants standing shoulder to shoulder with their community,” Walz said in a statement on Friday.
Frey said separately that the federal government was trying “to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs” and that “every American should be concerned.”
Reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in St. Paul, Minnesota, Jana Winter in Washington and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Additional reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Costas Pitas; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Steve Gorman; Editing by Franklin Paul, Rod Nickel, Donna Bryson and Michael Perry
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