Keith Ellison Amps Up His Fight Against ICE. Will He Get the Local Cops to Step In?

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s recently filed lawsuit against the Trump administration asks a federal judge to end the sweeping deportation efforts currently “terrorizing the Twin Cities.”

But as ICE raids have grown more aggressive, so have the pleas from people watching their neighbors get thrown into unmarked vehicles by unidentified masked men with guns. While a federal judge weighs the suit, there’s a thorny issue for Ellison — and other Democratic AGs like him — that so far few politicians have addressed: the growing call from concerned citizens for local police to actually protect them from federal agents.

Ellison’s suit describes several allegations of federal agents indiscriminately rounding people up, racial profiling, and using aggressive tactics that include pointing weapons at protestors or innocent bystanders and putting people into chokeholds. The administration has also thus far refused to investigate the fatal shooting of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.

On the phone from Minnesota, Ellison told NOTUS that the heightened tensions of the current situation harken back to the nation’s founding. He pointed to the 1770 Boston Massacre and the subsequent trial against the British soldiers who killed five American colonists.

“It is within our constitutional DNA that local officials can hold officials from a faraway power center responsible for the crimes that they commit in that community,” Ellison said, later adding to the parallel when he referred to the Trump administration as “a central imperial government that rams and runs over everyone.”

Any judicial intervention, at this point, would be reactive — it doesn’t seek to bring charges against any of those involved. A judge could legally bar ICE agents from retaliating against observers by smashing their car windows and dragging them out, but federal agents have so far shown little restraint — even in the face of legal orders.

A separate case in Minnesota serves as a timely example. After holding a 2.5-hour hearing last week stemming from a month-old lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez on Friday ordered federal agents to stop “using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” Over the weekend, agents caught on camera continued to spray observers anyway. Menendez’s order barred “retaliating” against peaceful people and pulling over drivers “where there is no reasonable articulable suspicion” they are committing a crime. On Wednesday, an appeals court put a temporary pause on those restrictions.

On Monday, the police chief of the Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park described how ICE agents pulled their gun on an off-duty officer in his department who was merely driving by agents — and knocked the woman’s phone out of her hand when she tried to record the interaction.

“I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident,” Police Chief Mark Bruley said.

Top White House officials argue that federal agents are “protected by absolute immunity,” but Ellison says that the door is still open to state prosecutions.

“There’s no legal barrier — Vice President Vance and Stephen Miller are 100% wrong on the law — there is no legal barrier to states enforcing their laws against people who break them, including federal officials,” Ellison said. “If the federal official is doing their regular job in a normal way, then they can enjoy immunity. But they’re not going to enjoy that immunity if they do stuff outside the scope of their employment.”

It’s then up to county prosecutors, like Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, to criminally charge ICE agents after-the-fact. And that’s if prosecutors can even identify federal agents, who refuse to wear name tags and hide behind masks. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s comments to Fox News Sunday that the Justice Department would not “bow to pressure” to review the way Ross killed the 37-year-old Good earlier this month casts doubt on whether the DOJ would ever cooperate with a local investigation.

The question, then, is whether Ellison — whose office has a narrow criminal authority but wide latitude on civil matters — has an active role to play in freeing local police departments to stand in ICE’s way. NOTUS asked whether Ellison would consider issuing an advisory opinion that guides local police on how to legally intervene.

“It’s not the custom of the AG to say, ‘Arrest people if they run a red light.’ They know their job. They’ve been doing it. I’ll certainly think about telling people water is wet,” he said.

Ellison could craft legal guidelines to detail what exactly local police can and can’t do and has taken steps to rein in law enforcement. Last month, his office issued a legal advisory saying that Minnesota sheriffs can’t unilaterally decide to enter into so-called “287(g) agreements” with the federal government that turn local cops into an ICE auxiliary force. The little-touted move was a defensive maneuver in a long-running strategic game with the state’s 87 sheriffs — several of whom tend to lean conservative and have been courted by the right-wing “constitutional sheriff” movement.

The move was something Ellison himself brought up on the phone call as a way to acknowledge the power his office still has to shape the shifting power plays as states across the country prepare for a more combative fight with the Trump administration.

But telling local police how and when to intervene is still on the table, Ellison said, even if he won’t “commit” to it now.

“It may be something I decide to issue. But there’s a lot of prep that goes into that,” he said. “If ICE keeps up their aggressive behavior, you’re going to see us use more tools to protect people.”

But when pressed on the issue — given that police, in fact, have not physically blocked ICE from attacking bystanders or taken the incendiary step of arresting any agents — Ellison took a different tone.

“I know what you’re asking me. What I’m saying to you is, we are all going through something that no one has ever seen before. And we’re doing the best we can to adjust to it,” he said. “At this point, I’m not willing to write an advisory that people can simply ball up and throw in the garbage. But what I am doing is having a series of conversations.”

Ellison hinted at backchannel discussions with other law enforcement agencies and government officials over how exactly to respond to ICE, although he wouldn’t detail what exactly those plans entail.

“Trust me when I tell you the level of urgency to protect Minnesota from this onslaught is top of mind for me. And I’m doing everything I can do,” he said.