The US 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”.
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 or 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 Friday.
“Our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe, and that’s what we’re going to do in Minnesota,” Bondi said, without explicitly addressing the newly issued subpoenas.
Walz, Frey say public at risk
Trump, a Republican, has sent thousands of border batrol and immigration and customs enforcement agents (ICE) into the Minneapolis area in recent weeks to conduct deportation roundups, unprecedented in scale, that have led to many 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 theatre that was putting the public at risk and was designed to provoke chaos Trump would use as a pretext to exert an even greater show of force.
Though he has urged protesters to remain orderly, Walz has also openly encouraged citizens to record videos 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 denied. Justice department officials did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
The hostility of many residents to the ICE crackdown has deepened since an agent fatally shot an American woman, Renee Good, in her car nearly two weeks ago.
Federal officers have used teargas 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 Sunday dressed in underpants and sandals.
The 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 the men, who ICE officials pictured on “Wanted” posters and described on Tuesday as at large, was 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 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.
It would be highly unusual for federal prosecutors to bring a criminal conspiracy case based on statements from public officials about government policies
The grand jury subpoenas were delivered a few days after it became public that the justice department had opened a criminal investigation of Walz, Frey and other Democrats who have criticised 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 weaponised to intimidate Trump’s political adversaries.
He has pointed to investigations opened in recent weeks against such figures as Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, who Trump has criticised as being too hesitant to lower interest rates, and several US 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 prosecutors alone present evidence to the 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 justice department’s attempts to re-indict New York attorney-general Letitia James after a judge threw out a criminal case against her and refused to sign off on several cases connected to Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington last summer.
Democrats call 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 on Friday.
Frey said separately the federal government was trying “to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs” and “every American should be concerned”.
Reuters
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.