With limited political power, Minnesota Democrats navigate resistance to Trump

MINNEAPOLIS – When President Trump took office last year for a second term, he vowed to curb legal migration and deport those who are in the U.S. without legal status.

Now after nearly one year in office, Minnesota offers a prime example of how his administration is enforcing immigration policies in a blue state.

The fatal shooting of Renee Macklin Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last week became a flashpoint for the simmering opposition to federal agents operating within the state.

More than 2,000 federal immigration agents are in Minnesota, and that number is expected to increase.

On Wednesday night, an ICE agent shot a man in the leg. Homeland Security authorities say they were trying to arrest the immigrant when they were “ambushed and attacked” by two other people.

In response, President Trump threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to the state.

Officials for the Trump administration say they have had to increase the number of ICE agents in Minnesota because the state’s leaders are not working with them to enforce immigration.

But Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers, from the mayor of Minneapolis to its U.S. senators, are pushing back against the federal government’s intervention.

On Thursday, Minnesota’s Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison responded to Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act.

“Donald Trump is clearly trying to create an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, but none exists,” Ellison said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is also among those calling for federal agents to leave.

“This is not sustainable,” Frey said about ICE’s increased presence during a press conference Wednesday night. “We have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another.”

“This is an impossible situation our city is being put in,” Frey said.

An ICE detention facility visit cut short 

Some Congressional Democrats have tried to use their oversight authority to check the federal government’s actions.

Last weekend, Reps. Angie Craig, Kelly Morrison and Ilhan Omar walked to the front of an ICE detention center just outside Minneapolis, along with some protesters.

The lawmakers said they had called the facility before showing up and told them they were coming to conduct an oversight check. Dozens of ICE agents stood in a line facing the congressmembers.

The three were allowed in for about 10 minutes then turned away.

“What happened today is a blatant attempt to obstruct members of Congress from doing their oversight duties,” Omar said following the visit.

Rep. Kelly Morrison, a physician, said she was interested to see the conditions inside.

“We were very briefly allowed to go in, but we saw no beds,” Morrison said. “We saw a lot of young men sitting with their heads in their hands. We were not allowed to speak to any of them.”

Under federal law, members of Congress have the right to make unannounced visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. A D.C. federal court ruling affirmed this last month, saying it applies to facilities that are funded by regular congressional appropriations.

But in a Jan. 8 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem obtained by NPR, Noem instructed her staff that visits should be requested at least seven days in advance.

Craig disputes Noem’s reasoning for turning them away.

“It is our job as members of Congress to make sure that those folks detained are treated with humanity because we are the damn United States of America,” Craig said. “We don’t treat people the way that this administration is treating people.”

Noem spoke to reporters outside the White House Thursday, saying the Insurrection Act is one tool the president has at his disposal. She called on the state’s Democratic officials to work with them.

“My hope is this leadership team in Minnesota will start to work with us to get criminals off the streets,” Noem said Thursday.

Minneapolis officials say that the Trump administration’s claims they are fighting fraud in the state are a “pretext,” arguing that “randomly stopping people on the street and demanding their papers does nothing to combat fraud.”

Walz drops bid for reelection 

Minnesota has been a focal point for Trump’s political ire since the year began, and that includes the state’s Governor Tim Walz.

Last week, he backed out of his bid for a third term saying running for reelection would prevent him from devoting his full attention to governing the state and fighting fraud. State and federal officials are conducting ongoing fraud investigations into state social service programs, which the Trump administration has cited for the surge in federal agents. 

Walz continues to plead with the Department of Homeland Security to loosen its grip on the state. The former vice presidential candidate said last week that protesters here need to hold the line.

“The nation is looking to us to hold the line on democracy, to hold the line on decency,” Walz said. “We can look out for one another. We can have differences. But we’ve proved to the world for 250 years that our democracy can hold. It feels to me like we’re at one of those inflection points.”

Vice President JD Vance was asked to respond at a White House briefing.

“Look, Tim Walz is a joke. His entire administration has been a joke. The idea that he’s some sort of freedom fighter? He’s not,” Vance said last week.

Walz urged Minnesotans to peacefully and legally record ICE activity in the state in part to “create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans” and “to bank evidence for future prosecutions.”

There’s now an online form on the Minnesota attorney general’s website where people can share photos and videos.

Democrats look to midterms  

In many cases, Democrats have not been able to completely push back against the Trump administration.

University of Minnesota political science professor Michael Minta said there was some dissent from moderate Republicans during Trump’s first term. This time around Democrats don’t control the House or Senate. They could use the support of moderate GOP members but Minta says Republicans are rarely willing to buck Trump.

“They’re not necessarily coming out in favor of Republicans or Trump policies, but they’re not doing anything to stop it. And so that makes it very difficult for the minority party, for Democrats, to really mount any type of opposition,” Minta said.

In an interview with MPR News this week, Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar says she is seriously considering a run for governor since Walz backed out of a reelection bid.

Klobuchar acknowledges that in order to have a political pathway to push back against President Trump’s actions, her party needs to focus on picking up a majority in one of the chambers next year.

“We need a check on Donald Trump,” Klobuchar said. “He will not have this unbridled power if there can be a House of Representatives or a Senate that can rein him in.”

But it’s still months until the outcome of the midterm elections could change the makeup of Congress, depending on the results of several races across the country.

While Democrats don’t have many political options for stopping the increased surge of immigration authorities in the state, they do have legal avenues they are pursuing.

Ellison, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the federal government this week to try and halt ICE operations in the state.

NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán contributed to this report