Minnesota leaders subpoenaed in US criminal probe over opposition to immigration crackdown

SAINT PAUL, Minnesota – The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Jan 20 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 US 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”.

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 is a public official, whether it is a law enforcement officer, no one is above the law in this state or in this country, and people will be held accountable,” US Attorney-General Pam Bondi said in a Fox News interview after arriving in Minnesota on Jan 16.

“Our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe, and that is what we’re going to do in Minnesota,” Ms Bondi added, without explicitly addressing the newly issued subpoenas.

Walz, Frey say public at risk

Mr Trump, a Republican, has sent thousands of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the Minneapolis area in recent weeks to conduct deportation round-ups, unprecedented in scale, that have led to numerous violent encounters 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. 

Mr Walz and Mr Frey have denounced the ICE operations as reckless political theatre that was putting the public at risk and was designed to provoke chaos that Mr Trump would use as a pretext to exert an even greater show of force.

Although he has urged protesters to remain orderly, Mr Walz also has openly encouraged citizens to record video of any arrests or other encounters between ICE agents and the public to create a database for potential “future prosecution” of wrongdoing by federal law enforcement.

Trump administration officials have accused Mr Walz and Mr 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, Ms Renee Good

, in her car nearly two weeks ago. 

Federal officers have used tear gas and other chemical irritants against protesters, and have drawn outrage for racially profiling Black, Latino and Asian US citizens, including a man who was

wrongly arrested and pulled out of his home on

Jan 18

dressed in underpants and sandals.

The US 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 Jan 20 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, Mr ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56, a naturalised US citizen, said the agents who arrested him did not present a warrant.

Government agents are forbidden under the US 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 US Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation of Mr Walz, Mr Frey and other Democrats and outspoken critics of Mr Trump’s deportation drive in Minnesota.

Mr Walz, who unsuccessfully ran for vice-president in the 2024 election won by Mr Trump, said the federal justice system was being weaponised to intimidate Mr Trump’s political adversaries.

He has pointed to investigations opened in recent weeks against such figures as Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, whom Mr Trump has criticised as being too hesitant to lower interest rates, and several Democratic lawmakers who previously served in the armed forces, and issued a video statement urging members of the military 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 from grand juries, an unusual rebuke, given that prosecutors alone control the presentation of evidence and must only show probable cause that a crime was committed, a lower legal standard than 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 Mr 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 last week to order an end to what they call the unconstitutional excesses of his enforcement surge.

On Jan 16, 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,” Mr Walz said in a statement on Jan 16.

Mr Frey said in a separate statement that the federal government was trying “to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs” and that “every American should be concerned”.

“We should not live in a country where federal law enforcement is used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with,” he said. REUTERS