In an extraordinary 80-page ruling that reads as a profound defense of public witness, U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez has barred federal immigration agents in Minnesota from arresting peaceful protesters and observers or using chemical irritants, rubber bullets, and other so-called “less-lethal” munitions against them.
The court order comes after a New York Times video analysis showed falsehood throughout the narrative President Donald Trump and members of his administration have shared concerning Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was ruthlessly killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Administration officials falsely claim Good, “weaponized her vehicle” against the agent who shot her — and they claim that untrue interpretation is confirmed by the agent’s cellphone video.
“She didn’t try to run him over,” Trump lied, on the day of the shooting. “She ran him over.”
That description has been contested by local and state officials, who have blamed the federal government for the tension, saying aggressive tactics that violate police protocol had stirred unrest. The truth becomes clear in a series of video angles that show a more complete picture.
Demonstrators have taken to the streets nationwide to protest the killing of Good, a U.S. citizen. The administration has responded by sending 1,000 additional agents to Minnesota.
In a video analysis, The New York Times focuses on some of the key contested moments of the agent’s cellphone video alongside other footage.
More videos are likely to emerge, but the visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over.
The footage provides visibility into the positioning between the agent and Good’s S.U.V., and the key moments of escalation. It also establishes how Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place.
The order, issued late Thursday, creates a judicial firewall between federal agents and the citizens who watch them, landing amid an increasingly volatile and tragic confrontation on the streets of Minneapolis.
Minnesota officials accuse federal agents of manufacturing fear.
Judge Menendez granted in part a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by six Minneapolis-area residents who argued that their constitutional rights to free speech, assembly, and protection from unreasonable seizure were systematically violated by agents of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations during “Operation Metro Surge,” a massive immigration crackdown launched in early December.
The ruling meticulously dissects several incidents where agents, clad in tactical gear and masks, arrested individuals for the apparent crime of watching.
The judge found the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their core First Amendment claim: that peacefully observing and recording law enforcement in public is protected activity, not obstruction.
The court order forbids federal agents from arresting, threatening with arrest, or using physical force against any person “solely for observing, recording, or peacefully protesting” ICE activities from a public space, provided they do not physically impede an operation.
It also explicitly bars the use of chemical irritants, impact projectiles, flash-bang devices, and similar crowd-control tools against such individuals.
In one detailed account from the evidence, plaintiff Susan Tincher, a longtime neighborhood resident, drove to her own block after receiving alerts that ICE was present on the morning of December 9.
She approached agents outside a home and asked, “Are you ICE?”
According to sworn declarations from other observers, within about 15 seconds and without resisting, she was grabbed, pulled face-down into the snow, and handcuffed.
An agent was heard stating, “This is what you get for interfering.”
ICE’s own sealed report, submitted to the court, offered a starkly different version of events, alleging Tincher attempted to push an officer.
The judge noted the government could produce no video evidence to support its account, and her decision in the matter suggests that she found the Trump administration’s story lacked credibility.
“The record here shows a pattern,” the ruling states, “where individuals engaged in core First Amendment activity—observation and recording—were met with detention, arrest, and force based on claims of obstruction that appear, on this preliminary record, to be unfounded.”
The injunction represents a stunning judicial rebuke of federal tactics that have transformed residential Minneapolis streets into scenes of paramilitary enforcement.
It underscores a fundamental American tension laid bare: the power of the state to enforce its laws versus the right of the people to see that power exercised.
For now, in Minnesota, the court has declared that the public’s eye is not the enemy, but Trump has personally suggested that he might send in military forces to suppress his political opponents, with a chilling threat to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“Plaintiffs allege they have been subject to a variety of retaliatory behavior by Defendants, including traffic stops, arrests, the indiscriminate use of chemical irritants, and pointing of firearms,” Menendez wrote in her order. “These kinds of conduct are those that undoubtedly give rise to an objective chill of First Amendment rights.”
The lawsuit named Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd M. Lyons, and local ICE field office directors and agents as defendants. The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota represented the plaintiffs.
In a separate lawsuit, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are asking a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop or limit the Department of Homeland Security’s “Operation Metro Surge.”
The Minnesota officials allege that “thousands of armed and masked DHS agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids” at sites including schools and hospitals. DHS said last week that its Minnesota effort would be the agency’s largest immigration enforcement operation ever, with 2,000 federal agents and officers involved.
“This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop,” Ellison told reporters Monday afternoon. “DHS agents have sown chaos and terror across the metropolitan area and in cities across the state of Minnesota.”
But Hwa Jeong Kim, vice president of the St. Paul City Council, has been volunteering as an ICE observer and praised the lawsuit. “When agents are asked to show warrants, they say they don’t have to,” Kim said. “They are overtly racially profiling our neighbors. They went to one of my constituents’ doors and asked them to point out neighbors who are not White. No warrant. None of this is constitutional.”
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