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Minnesota Sues Trump Admin Over Killings of Good and Pretti, Shooting of Sosa-Celis
"These shootings are just three examples of the violent actions committed by federal agents in Minnesota during the surge," the complaint notes.
Mar 24, 2026
Minnesota officials on Tuesday sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state investigators probing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents earlier this year, as well as the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was wounded but survived.
Agents with the US Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies descended on Minnesota's Twin Cities and surrounding communities in January. Protests and national outrage over President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge" mounted after a series of related shootings in Minneapolis, leading to the current funding fight in Congress that has partially shut down DHS.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, on January 7; an unidentified agent shot Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan national, on January 14; and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez fatally shot Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen and nurse, on January 24.
"These shootings are just three examples of the violent actions committed by federal agents in Minnesota during the surge," stresses the new lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC federal court by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans.
"Federal agents also carried out illegal stops, sweeps, arrests, and dangerous raids in sensitive public spaces," the complaint notes. "The surge created widespread fear among Minnesota residents, both citizens and noncitizens. It caused hundreds of millions of dollars in economic harm. And it flooded Minnesota's federal courts with lawsuits challenging the unlawful detentions that resulted from the operation."
With the three shootings, "Minnesota authorities responded to the scene of each shooting to investigate" and "expected federal cooperation," the filing explains. "At the scene of the first two incidents—the killing of Renee Good and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis—federal agents initially indicated that they would work with Minnesota authorities and share relevant information. State investigators thus began their work in reliance on that understanding."
"But in both cases, federal agents quickly reneged on their pledges to cooperate. Instead of sharing information, federal authorities took exclusive possession of evidence that had been collected, and they denied Minnesota investigators access to key information," the document details. "At the scene of the third shooting—the killing of Alex Pretti—federal immigration officers physically blocked investigators of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) from accessing the scene. That physical obstruction persisted even after state officials obtained a judicial warrant authorizing access to the scene."
The filing points out that when "faced with unprecedented noncooperation," the plaintiffs submitted formal requests to DHS and the US Department of Justice—which are named as defendants, as are their leaders, outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Noem's replacement, Markwayne Mullin, was sworn in Tuesday afternoon.
"Defendants' responses to those requests—indeed, by and large, their refusal to respond at all—confirm that the federal government has adopted a policy and practice of refusing Minnesota authorities access to investigative materials relating to uses of force by federal immigration officers deployed to Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge," the complaint says.
Emphasizing Minnesota's "authority and responsibility to protect against and address violence within its borders," as well as the history of cooperation between federal and state authorities in significant criminal investigations, the plaintiffs are asking the court to rule the administration's policy of noncooperation and their resulting refusal to comply with these shooting probes unlawful.
According to The Associated Press, while the two departments haven't responded to requests for comment, Moriarty of Hennepin County told reporters that "we are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid."
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Summer Lee Introduces Impeachment Articles Accusing Bondi of 'Breaking the Law' to Protect Trump, Target Opponents
"We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected," Lee said. "And that cannot continue to be our reality."
Mar 17, 2026
Democratic Rep. Summer Lee introduced articles of impeachment against US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday and accused the nation's top prosecutor of “breaking the law to protect pedophiles” and prosecute President Donald Trump’s “political opponents.”
"We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected. And that cannot continue to be our reality," Lee (D-Pa.) said in a video posted to her social media on Tuesday announcing the articles.
Two of the five articles pertain to Bondi's conduct surrounding the Department of Justice's (DOJ) release of files related to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the DOJ has been accused of covering up to protect Trump.
One article accuses Bondi of obstruction of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena in July 2025, which required the DOJ to release the full, unredacted files to the House Oversight Committee in August as part of a congressional inquiry.
"The Department of Justice refused to adhere to the subpoena and withheld substantial evidence; evidence logs indicate that amongst the withheld evidence are FBI interviews with a survivor who accused Trump of sexual abuse," the article reads.
In February, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee announced that they were investigating the DOJ's handling of an accusation made against Trump to the FBI in 2019. A woman accused the president of having sexually assaulted her at the age of 13 in the 1980s.
Another impeachment article accuses Bondi of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), signed into law in November, which required the DOJ to release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" pertaining to the Epstein case without redacting information to protect powerful figures from embarrassment.
The DOJ missed the December 19 deadline to release the files and has since released only about 3 million pages of documents as part of its "final" trove, while millions more remain unavailable.
The pages that have been released, the article says, "were heavily redacted" to scrub the names of Trump and other powerful figures, but sensitive information about many of Epstein's victims—including identifying details and nude photographs—was released, even though the law said redacting this information was permitted.
Meanwhile, it says the DOJ "continues to withhold documents," including FBI interviews with the Trump accuser.
Three of four memos detailing the interviews with the accuser were posted to the DOJ website in March. They include the victim's graphic claims that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex.
Trump has denied the allegations, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the alleged victim "disturbed."
Approximately 37 pages of FBI records related to the accusation, including the fourth memo and pages of agent notes, remain unreleased to the public, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
"Pam Bondi is complicit in the most egregious cover-up in American history, hiding documents that reveal a young woman reported being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she was just a minor," said Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), a cosponsor of Lee's impeachment articles. "Bondi’s actions are not only disgusting and wrong. They are also illegal."
Another article accuses Bondi of having "abused" the DOJ and FBI's powers in a partisan fashion—to target Trump's enemies and shield his friends from accountability. It also cites Bondi's attempts to criminalize protesters who express anti-Trump viewpoints by designating them as "domestic terrorism threats" and creating secretive lists of organizations and individuals to be targeted.
Bondi is also accused of misleading courts on several occasions—including in the cases against former FBI Director James Comey and the Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García and says she presented "demonstrably false allegations in court to support baseless prosecutions against protesters."
She is also accused of perjury before Congress during her confirmation hearing, where she pledged not to politicize her office or target journalists. It also accused her of lying during last month's contentious hearing in which she claimed that there was "no evidence" in the Epstein files "that Donald Trump has committed a crime."
No US attorney general has ever been impeached by the US House, which requires a simple majority. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled House during his first term of office, though neither resulted in a conviction in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority.
Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had articles of impeachment filed against her in January by more than 80 cosponsors following the shooting of two US citizens by immigration agents.
Earlier this month, Noem became the highest-ranking Trump official to be fired in his second term, and earlier this week, Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees referred her to the DOJ for prosecution, also for perjury.
In addition to Ansari, Lee's impeachment articles against Bondi are cosponsored by Reps. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.). Previous articles of impeachment against Bondi have been introduced by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) earlier this month.
Lee emphasized that while Bondi "deserves to be held accountable," this "is also about what we want our government to be, and who we want it to work for."
"This is our chance to get justice," Lee said, "to hold people accountable who, time and again, have gotten away with screwing us over."
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In Latest Blow to Trump's Mass Deportation Plan, Judge Blocks Overhaul of Immigration Appeals
"Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency," said an immigrant rights advocate who sued the federal government.
Mar 10, 2026
Immigrant rights advocates on Monday hailed a federal judge's ruling that blocked significant portions of President Donald Trump's proposed policy changes regarding the Board of Immigration Appeals, which had been scheduled to go into effect this week and would have "eviscerated noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases," according to rights groups.
In the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Randolph Moss issued a late-night order on Sunday calling Trump's rule titled “Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals,” which was proposed last month, “a fast-track mechanism for disposing of the vast majority” of immigration court appeals.
The proposed rule would have reduced the time immigrants have to file appeals from 30 days to just 10 days; required summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of the Board of Immigration Appeals' (BIA) 15 permanent members voted to accept the case for review within 10 days; and permitted case dismissals before records were transmitted to the board.
Moss said the administration had violated the legal requirement for the government to notify the public of its proposed changes to a federal rule and provide an opportunity for public comment. The Trump administration could potentially try again to change the immigration appeals process.
Laura St. John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, said the ruling "keeps in place a basic, yet critical, protection for immigrants facing removal: the ability to appeal their case."
"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated, all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."
"As the administration continues to try to deport as many people as they can quickly and often without a fair day in court, it is critical for everyone to have the opportunity to file an appeal," said St. John. "Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency.”
The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is one of several groups that sued the administration over the proposed rule, with Democracy Forward, the American Immigration Council, and the National Immigrant Justice Center representing the plaintiffs.
St. John argued in court that it can take at least a week for advocacy groups to prepare materials and file an appeal to the BIA after it has determined a noncitizen can be deported. Forcing immigrants and their legal teams to file an appeal within 10 days would leave many without any "meaningful review" of their cases, St. John said.
While the Executive Office for Immigration Review claimed the new policy would swiftly reduce the backlog of cases before the BIA, Moss wrote in his opinion, the plaintiffs argued that the provisions would "operate in combination to deprive almost all affected parties of the administrative appellate review 'that they were previously entitled to.'"
Erez Reuveni, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, said the decision "makes it clear that the Trump-Vance administration cannot play games with the immigration appeals system to eliminate basic due process and fast-track deportations."
Reuveni is a former Department of Justice lawyer who revealed in a whistleblower complaint last year that DOJ staffers had been advised by the Trump administration to ignore court orders in order to swiftly carry out Trump's mass deportation agenda.
“Once again, no matter how hard this administration tries to hide its cruel and unlawful actions behind an ‘immigration policy,’ a federal court has made clear that the government must follow the law and cannot strip people of their basic rights," he said. "We will continue representing our plaintiffs in court to defend their rights and hold this administration accountable.”
The Department of Homeland Security has not regularly disclosed the number of people it is deporting under the Trump administration; internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed last year that more than 10,000 people were being deported per month.
Moss' ruling came less than a month after US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in the Central District of California threw out a BIA decision that endorsed the administration's policy of denying bond hearings to immigrants with no criminal records who have been detained. A federal appeals court issued a temporary pause on that ruling last Friday after the White House appealed.
Mary Georgevich, a senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said Moss' ruling was "an important win in the face of an administration that is intent on dismantling our immigration system at any cost, including betraying our country’s shared values of the importance of due process and access to counsel."
"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated," she said, "all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."
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