‘They Won’t Be Pointed At Us’: Minneapolis City Attorney Says Local Police Aren’t Siding With the Feds

Since December, when federal immigration agents started pouring into Minneapolis, City Attorney Kristyn Anderson has been trying to get them out.

There are several lawsuits alleging lawless arrests of U.S. citizens, bullying by agents, and unfair detainment of migrants. That was all before agents shot and killed observer Alex Pretti. On Monday, two days after Pretti’s death, Anderson was back in court listening to lawyers for her office and the Minnesota attorney general try to convince U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez to intervene and stop the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge.

“The future of our democracy is hanging in the balance right now,” Anderson told NOTUS.

This court fight has become a rare case invoking the 10th Amendment that recognizes a locality’s ability to govern itself. Anderson said the “totality of the circumstances” have made daily life in Minneapolis difficult, something she hopes the judge takes into consideration.

“The totality has eroded our ability as a city government to protect our people,” she said.

Normally busy streets are empty. Popular shops and restaurants have been closed for weeks. Some schools have gone virtual to protect kids, whose parents have been taken by agents as they drop off or pick up their children.

One mother told NOTUS that she kept her children with her at the fast food restaurant she works at in St. Paul — where the doors remain locked in an effort to shield them from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Her child was more afraid to be left at home without her in case she never made it back.

Another couple, both U.S.citizens, said they kept their kids from attending an extracurricular gym class across town out of fear that federal agents would smash their car windows and drag them out for entering the wrong street — something half a dozen people told NOTUS they witnessed.

Those considerations could weigh on the judge, who has yet to make a decision in the case.

In all this, Minneapolis residents have once again grown wary of cops and sirens, something Anderson readily admits and laments.

Her voice cracked when she said “all the gains of trust since [George] Floyd have been set back.”

It’s a thorny subject — and not old history. Former police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder conviction led to a Biden Justice Department investigation that produced a consent decree in January 2025 to reform racist police department policies. The Trump administration ditched that deal just a few months later, leading Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to issue an executive order committing to abide by the previous terms anyway.

When Anderson rejected, on technical grounds, an attempt by the city council to bolster a separate police reform agreement it had with the state, the episode showed there is still simmering tension between city residents and the police department.

What she hopes residents realize, Anderson said, is that the Minneapolis Police Department is not siding with the federal government.

“Look at where their toes are pointed,” she said. “They won’t be pointed at us. They’ll be facing out, protecting people.”

NOTUS asked Anderson what it would take for local police to intervene if they see another observer, like Pretti, get assaulted by masked federal agents for holding a camera or blowing a warning whistle — and whether they would respond to them in the same way as if they witnessed a group of men beat up on a person walking the street.

“But MPD isn’t there when it happens. They can’t be everywhere,” Anderson said.

MPD Chief Brian O’Hara publicly said his department’s 600 officers are stretched thin, having to police the city’s everyday affairs while dealing with this. The task of tracking these unmarked vehicles carrying masked agents who swap g license plates has fallen on volunteer groups of everyday Minnesotans who call themselves “rapid responders” and coordinate through group chats.

But if local police did witness an attack, would they pull out their guns?

“We can’t have a civil war on the streets,” Anderson said.

At the moment, it is about striking a fine balance: maintaining the peace even as federal agents escalate violence against those trying to monitor them — and demonstrators keep showing up at hotels where federal agents are staying.

The day after Pretti was killed, MPD officers maintained a quiet and mostly distanced guard around the site of what’s become a memorial on Nicollet Avenue.

MPD was quick to the scene Sunday night when protesters showed up at a hotel and stormed the lobby, sprayed anti-ICE graffiti and beat trash cans like drums in an effort to disrupt federal agents’ sleep. But MPD’s apparent reluctance to get heavy-handed against the local population was evident when a visibly distressed federal agent from the Bureau of Prisons, masked and guarding the front entrance with a shotgun in hand, yelled, “Where’s the local PD?”

Judge Menendez hinted at doubts about the effectiveness or reach of her judicial power in the closing moments of Monday’s hearing, stressing that the current situation in Minneapolis could be reined in by the other two branches of government. Anderson echoed the sentiment.

“We have a place in this. But where is Congress?” she asked.