Minneapolis protesters win court ruling limiting ICE use of force

US District Judge Katherine Menendez on Friday isssed a temporary injunction limiting when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can deploy chemical irritants into crowds

By Erik Larson

 

A federal judge ordered immigration officers not to arrest, detain, pepper-spray or otherwise retaliate against peaceful protesters in Minneapolis, where weeks of aggressive enforcement actions culminated last week with the killing of Renee Good.

US District Judge Katherine Menendez on Friday issued a temporary injunction restricting use of force by Immigration Customers and Enforcement agents and other federal officers after protesters alleged widespread abuse that violated their constitutional rights.

 

The ruling came a day after President Donald Trump threatened to deploy US military forces to Minnesota in order to quell protests in response to violent encounters involving ICE agents. The city has been the epicenter of anti-ICE protests since an officer shot and killed Good on Jan. 7 while she was in her car.

 

The Justice Department is likely to appeal the ruling, which for now is set to remain in effect until the lawsuit is resolved. 

 

The Department of Homeland Security “is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement. “We remind the public that rioting is dangerous — obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony.”

 

In her ruling, the Minneapolis judge said that the protesters had shown “an ongoing, persistent pattern” of intimidating conduct by ICE officers. She said she could not “ignore the almost-nonstop press reporting of continuing protest activity met with continuing aggressive responses by immigration officers operating in the Twin Cities.”

 

The judge was appointed in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden.

 

“Taken as a whole,” she wrote, “the record adequately illustrates” that ICE officers “have made, and will continue to make, a common practice of conduct that chills observers’ and protesters’ First Amendment rights.”

 

Among the specific restrictions the judge imposed:

 

Agents cannot use “nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” 

Agents cannot stop and detain “drivers and passengers in vehicles where there is no reasonable articulable suspicion that they are forcibly obstructing or interfering” with officers. 

The state of Minnesota on Monday filed a separate suit, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of targeting Minneapolis to “punish political opponents and score partisan points.”

 

The protesters’ suit was filed in December, weeks before Good was shot. The disputed circumstances of the shooting, which was captured on video by bystanders as well as the agent’s mobile phone, have caused a bitter rift between state and federal authorities.

 

Good’s death wasn’t discussed at a Tuesday hearing before Menendez, when she heard arguments on the protesters’ request for the injunction. The suit in Minneapolis was filed by six protesters who seek to represent all such individuals in the state in a so-called class-action suit.

 

The plaintiffs, who sued DHS and Secretary Kristi Noem, include Susan Tincher, a mother of three who runs a small consulting business with her husband. She alleges she was forced to the ground, handcuffed and locked up in the city’s federal building after she approached a group of ICE officers on a sidewalk and asked, from six feet away, “Are you ICE?”

 

“Agents cut off some of her clothes and her wedding ring, shackled her, and left her in a cell for hours,” according to the suit, which said she was released without being charged. “Mrs. Tincher believes ICE was retaliating against her for seeking information about and observing and protesting their activities.”

 

Another plaintiff and his wife say ICE officers boxed in their car and pointed semiautomatic weapons in their faces because they had followed the agents from the site of a potential sting operation at a church.

 

In court filings, the Justice Department defended ICE agents’ conduct, saying officers “have faced threats and violence.” A broad injunction, the US said, “would threaten officer safety and impede lawful enforcement activity.”

 

“Large crowds have surrounded ICE officers in the process of making an arrest and individuals have hurled projectiles at them to the point where the officers were ‘panicked’ and had to call for backup,” the government said.

 

The case is Tincher v. Noem, 25-cv-4669, US District Court, District of Minnesota.