Judge Rules ICE Cannot Retaliate Against Minnesota Protesters

Federal officers cannot retaliate against, detain, or attack people who are peacefully protesting and observing immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

The ruling comes a little more than a week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed legal observer Renee Nicole Good, supercharging protests against an immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities that the Department of Homeland Security claims is its largest ever.

"This is an important preliminary win for all Minnesotans exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest and witness," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote on social media in response to the ruling. "Thanks and congratulations to the ACLU and the plaintiffs for standing strong for this bedrock principle."

The ruling was issued by Biden appointee and US District Judge Kate Menendez, who is based in Minneapolis. It restricts federal officers involved in "Operation Metro Surge"—an immigration-enforcement blitz in the Minneapolis area—from retaliating against, arresting or detaining, or targeting with nonlethal munitions such as pepper spray anyone "engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity," including observing ICE operations.

"We are relieved that in Tincher v. Noem et al. the court has issued a preliminary injunction. The ACLU-MN is hopeful that it will prevent further First Amendment violations like the ones that have been harming Minnesotans since the start of 'Operation Metro Surge.'"

Menendez further stipulated that people could not be detained for following ICE and other immigration enforcers with their vehicles if they were not interfering with the agents.

"The act of safely following Covered Federal Agents at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop," Menendez said.

The ruling is a preliminary injunction in response to Tincher v. Noem et al., a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) in December 2025 on behalf of six community members who said their constitutional rights were violated by ICE in response to their protests.

Plaintiff Susan Tincher, for example, wrote that she was arrested merely for driving to the place where an ICE operation was taking place.

“I was on a public street,” Tincher in a statement. “I did not cross any lines. I did not interfere with anything. I did not disobey an order. I asked a single question–‘are you ICE?’–and almost immediately, officers rushed me, grabbed me, and slammed me face-first into the snow.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, ICE activity in the Twin Cities continued to escalate, culminating with an influx of 2,000 agents on January 6 and the shooting of Good the next day.

On January 8, the day after Good's murder, the plaintiffs' lawyers sent an emergency letter to the judge urging action.

"Thousands of peaceful observers and protesters turned out in the streets of the Twin Cities in the wake of Ms. Good’s murder," the letter reads in part. "Peaceful observers and protesters turned out again today, they will turn out again tomorrow, and they will continue turning out every day until Operation Metro Surge is over. These Minnesotans who are peacefully exercising their core constitutional rights to speak and gather continue to be met with unconstitutional and terrifying violence at the hands of federal agents on a daily basis, including unwarranted pepper spraying and unfounded arrests... And things appear to be getting worse, not better: Even more federal agents are being deployed to Minnesota at this very moment."

The ACLU-MN applauded the fact that Menendez had moved to restrain ICE.

"We are relieved that in Tincher v. Noem et al. the court has issued a preliminary injunction. The ACLU-MN is hopeful that it will prevent further First Amendment violations like the ones that have been harming Minnesotans since the start of 'Operation Metro Surge,'" the group wrote on social media.

Beyond Good's killing, the ruling follows several other high-profile incidents of ICE violence in Minnesota, including a nonlethal shooting of a man at a traffic stop and the hospitalization of three children after ICE tear-gassed the van they were driving in.

Menendez's decision came the same day that news broke that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice was investigating local leaders who had criticized ICE activity, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.