As Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are suing the Trump administration to try to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from enforcing the law, the Department of Homeland Security is sending more than 2,000 additional agents into the region to address fraud.
President Donald Trump is also dealing with a similar lawsuit in Illinois and the city of Chicago.
Federal officials are defending their work in both Illinois and Minnesota, saying it is necessary to carry out the president's immigration agenda and address the ongoing issues caused by years of Joe Biden's open borders policies.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), does not think the lawsuits will accomplish much.
"ICE has the authority to operate anywhere in the United States, regardless of whether the local officials like it or not," he points out. "It's a federal matter."
Mehlman says these sanctuary jurisdictions are responding with political grandstanding.
"They want to show that they're standing up to the Trump administration, and part of it may be to find some judge who will throw a spoke in the wheel, slow things down a bit," he submits. "But in the long run, ICE can operate and has the mandate to operate wherever they want."
As rioters and sanctuary politicians demonized and attempted to obstruct law enforcement over the weekend, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced that ICE agents "continued to remove the worst of the worst from Minnesota," including child abusers, drug traffickers, domestic violence perpetrators, and armed assailants.
"We will not let rioters or sanctuary politicians slow us down," she declared.
Since Operation Metro Surge began, federal immigration officials have reportedly arrested 2,400 people.
