Minnesota sues over immigration raids

All right, we're following some breaking news. Right now, officials in Minnesota are announcing they are suing to halt the ICE surge. Now, this comes after the deadly shooting of an American citizen by an ICE agent sparked protests around the country. Let's listen in to the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison. They have detained law-abiding citizens, leaving them handcuffed for hours, just because of the color of their skin or what they're wearing or they speak English with an accent. And on January 7, 2026, a DHS agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, leaving her children without a mother and her six-year-old son without either parent. This has to stop. So let's be clear. It never should have started. These agents have no good reason to be here. Minnesota's noncitizen immigrant population is just 1 and 1/2%, which is half the national average. Our state's percentage is lower than Utah, Texas, and Florida's, but none of those states have thousands of federal agents swarming their streets or harming their people. The administration says that they're focused on finding criminals, worst of the worst, they say. But many of the people the DHS is arresting in Minnesota have no criminal history. That fits a pattern. In 2025, 93% of the people arrested by ICE had no violent criminal history. 65% had no criminal convictions at all. And randomly stopping people on the street because their skin color isn't the one that they expect or want isn't doing a thing to help public safety. I've heard the administration talk about fraud. No, not the 43 fraud convictions the president has or the 43 million-dollar fraudsters the president has pardoned but instead saying that ICE is here to look for fraud, somehow. We work with the federal government all the time, and if the federal government wants to help us with forensic accountants, we're open to that conversation. But these ICE agents who are engaged in the behavior that they're engaged in are not helping public safety at all. Immigration-enforcement agents aren't trained to investigate fraud, and randomly stopping people on the street because you don't like their accent isn't going to stop fraud. So enforcing federal immigration law and fighting fraud are just pretexts for this surge. The real reason? It's no secret. Donald Trump and his administration have been targeting people, cities, and states that don't agree with them politically. He singled out Minnesota countless times. He's called us corrupt and crooked. He's attacked our funding to the tune of billions of dollars, which we are challenging. And we fought back, of course. He's attacked programs that Minnesotans rely on and tried to shut them down and pay taxes for. And he's attacked Minnesotans with despicable, racist, xenophobic language. The truth is, Donald Trump doesn't seem to our state very much. But what's that about? He doesn't like our best in the nation safe-and-secure elections? And sometimes he doesn't like who we choose in them. Just last week, Trump claimed that he won Minnesota three times, when, in fact, he's never won Minnesota. He doesn't like how we take care of each other or how we make sure our kids have enough to eat. He doesn't like the strength that immigrant communities bring to our state. And he doesn't seem to like that we protect our neighbors, no matter where they were born. In short, the Trump administration's decision to target Minnesota and Twin Cities is motivated by a desire to retaliate against Trump's perceived political opponents, who are the people of the state of Minnesota and Twin Cities, rather than any good-faith concerns about immigration enforcement, public safety, or law enforcement. In conclusion, I didn't have the pleasure and the benefit of knowing Renee Nicole Good, but her friends and family knew her as someone who was kind, someone who loved her family deeply, and someone willing to stand up for her neighbors. That sounds like the Minnesota that I know. The administration wants to paint false political narratives about us, but we know who we are, and we know our rights. The Constitution gives Minnesota the sovereign authority to protect health and well-being of every single person who lives in our borders. The Constitution gives us the right to vote for who we want, pray however we want, and be whoever we want without fear of being racially profiled, assaulted, or killed in our own communities. We're going to defend those rights because as much as they like to believe it, DHS is not above the law, and the people of Minnesota are certainly not beneath it. Let me now bring forth my mayor, the mayor where I go home at night and is doing a wonderful job protecting our city, Mayor Jacob Frey. Thank you, Attorney General Ellison, for your leadership and your incredible team's work around this issue. Thank you to Mayor Her of St. Paul for your partnership. These are not normal times, and so the response that we are asking for from the judicial system and from the courts requires that we file suit at this particular moment. What we are seeing right now is not normal immigration enforcement. We are not asking ICE not to do ICE things. We are asking this federal government to stop the unconstitutional conduct that is invading our streets each and every day. You've seen the videos. At times, there are as many as 50 agents arresting one person. The scale is wildly disproportionate and has nothing to do with keeping people safe. In Minneapolis, we've done work extensively with the federal government under multiple administrations to keep people in our city safe. We have worked with the DEA, the ATF, the FBI, the attorney general's office, as well as the US attorney's office to successfully drive down crime in our city. We've seen the results of that work, but let's be clear. The stated reason of this federal government for bringing in this full invasion of ICE and Border Control is not safety. If it were safety, there would be other mechanisms to achieve safety. By the way, crime is down in virtually every category in virtually every neighborhood of this city. If this were about fraud, then you'd see an invasion, perhaps, of accountants, but that's not what you see. What you see is people being indiscriminately taken off our streets. Discrimination only takes place to the extent that determination has made that somebody is Somali or is Latino, or at least they look that way. And then there is virtually no discrimination thereafter. Here's the thing. You can't indiscriminately take people off our streets, American citizens off our streets. You cannot drag pregnant women through the snow. You're not allowed to take teenagers out of their car and detain them when they are, in fact, American citizens. That is against the law in every state. That is against our United States Constitution. And we're feeling the impact here in Minneapolis. Schools have closed. People are afraid to go to work, shop, or seek medical care. 911 calls are up. Police resources are, indeed, stretched thin. We have approximately 600 officers in the city of Minneapolis. Mayor Her has approximately 600 officers in the city of St. Paul. The number of ICE agents and border control are now in the thousands. They are in the thousands. If the goal was immigration enforcement, if the goal were simply to look for people that are undocumented, Minneapolis and St. Paul would not be the place where you would go. There are countless more people that are undocumented in Florida and Texas and Utah. Why are they in these much smaller cities in the middle of the Midwest? The answer is very clear. It is politics. Florida and Texas and Utah are Republican states. The reason that Minnesota and Minneapolis are being targeted is because you've got a Democratic governor, a Democratic attorney general, and you've got Democratic mayors. We are doing everything possible to keep our city safe through this unprecedented time. And at the same time, we have police officers that are tired. We've seen damage substantially because we're now having to pay a ton of overtime, millions of dollars of emergency overtime for law enforcement. Emergency operations have been activated across our city and state agencies, pulling focus on daily core services that we, by the way, are tasked with providing. Local police officers are being diverted from the very work that we need to be doing. And small businesses are losing significant revenue, with some worried that they may not survive this at all. People are scared to take their kids into school or daycare, to go into work. They're going to have difficulty paying rent. There is no doubt in my mind the kind of action that the federal government is taking is not just mean spirited. It's unconstitutional, and every one of us need to be standing up. Let me give you another example. Just last week, a group of our city's public-works employees were stopped by ICE agents. Three of the four employees were not white. The ICE agents asked to see the IDs of the three nonwhite employees and didn't even bother to ask the white employee for the identification. Minneapolis is being targeted because we stand up for our neighbors and we welcome immigrants because we believe in the law and, as I said, frankly, because we are in a blue city in a blue state. Donald Trump should know, as long as federal agents are in our city acting unconstitutionally against our neighbors, we will continue to push back with everything we've got. And let me just take a moment to say how grateful I am to the residents of our city and of our state. We are not victims in the city of Minneapolis. We've got heroes that are standing up for each other, that are standing by the neighbors that they love. And one thing that I can tell you for certain is that we aren't backing down.

This is a live press conference with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who spoke earlier, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey speaking there, announcing a lawsuit to halt a surge of ICE officials into Minnesota. Let's bring in CBS News Homeland Security Correspondent Nicole Sganga live for us in Minneapolis. I see there's a memorial there. Nicole, what stands out to you from what we just heard in that presser? Yeah, well, the attorney general of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, said that he was filing this federal lawsuit because of a federal invasion of the Twin Cities. He went on to call this an unlawful, unprecedented surge of federal law enforcement into Minnesota and told the press there, quote, "this has to stop." He claimed that the unprecedented number of federal agents in the Twin Cities area is a violation of the Constitution, of federal law, including the 10th Amendment. He cited the reckless impact of what he said was on schools, local law enforcement. In fact, citing that over the past couple of days, the incident here in Minneapolis that left Renee Good shot dead has cost local law enforcement over $2 billion, just given all of the happenings here in the Twin Cities area. He also claimed that the operation here in Minneapolis is a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, barring federal agencies from taking actions that are capricious and arbitrary. And he said it was an unlawful commandeering of local law-enforcement resources. Just to give you a sense, we're here at the site where Renee Good was shot dead by that ICE agent, and things have been tense. There have been somber moments, reflective moments. But there are also a number of demonstrators out here that are quite angry, quite upset at what's been going on. And we've been hearing cars pass us honking their horns all day long as we've been here. Earlier today, the governor, Tim Walz, also showed up for a moment, a reflective moment of remembrance, and he laid flowers on the growing vigil behind me. And, Nicole, it's worth noting that the filing of this lawsuit comes one day after DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says she's going to bring in hundreds more of ICE agents into that city. And, also, Minnesota isn't the only state taking legal action over ICE. What are you going to be looking for as this lawsuit moves forward? Yeah, well, you mentioned that Minnesota is not the only state that has taken legal action, even today, against the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul just an hour ago joined Chicago in filing yet another federal lawsuit. He accused the Department of Homeland Security of unleashing what he said was an unlawful, militarized immigration enforcement in Illinois that violated both constitutional rights and state sovereignty. It'll be interesting to see in the coming days if more states join suit. As we know, for months, there have been ongoing immigration enforcement activities/raids throughout the city of Chicago in the nearby suburbs. So whether or not the legal theories play out here in court, I mean, this is really the first test-- the first kinds of lawsuits we've seen like this. And we'll see in the coming days, weeks, and months whether or not this really stands up to the courts and whether the courts put an end to the law-enforcement surges we've been seeing here. All right, Nicole Sganga, thank you so much.