Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told reporters about the legal fight his office is undertaking to preserve evidence in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol and the state’s lawsuit against the federal government to stop an unprecedented surge of immigration enforcement officers, that is causing unseen levels of chaos on the streets. “Operation Metro Surge appears to be the largest single deployment or surge of immigration agents in the history of the country. And as a result, tremendous damage has been inflicted upon our state,” he said. He accuses federal agents of blocking state investigators from the scene of the most recent fatal shooting of a protester, forcing Minnesota to obtain a court order to preserve evidence-something he says has never happened before. He argues that this surge is entirely politically motivated, and Minnesota ” can marshal facts to show that our targeting is not based on excessive amounts of undocumented immigrants or anything like that, but we’re targeted because of politics, which violates our First Amendment rights,” he said. “Under the Tenth Amendment: we are entitled, as a state, to equal sovereignty, and we have been denied that.” “The federal government is literally commandeering and coercing the state of Minnesota to bend to its will, which is the prerogative of the people of the state of Minnesota,” he said. “Let me remind everybody-let me take everybody back to eighth-grade civics. The states predate the United States and came into the union preserving their rights as states to be the states that the citizens of those states want them to be within a constitutional framework.”

MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL KEITH ELLISON: So let me just note that Superintendent Drew Evans of the BCA-another exemplary professional in our state-the BCA is the state’s investigative agency, and it is their job to investigate crime. They have a specialized unit to investigate use-of-force cases. They arrived on site after the shooting and were refused access. They then secured a judicial warrant-a warrant signed by a judge-which has never been needed before, and were still refused access. This is uncharted territory. Now, friends, this comes at the tail end of other offenses, like a shooting in North Minneapolis and another homicide in South Minneapolis-Renee Nicole Good-where they also were denied access to the scene, and investigators are, to this moment, still being denied access to the investigative file. This is not a rash decision for us to go to court and to seek a temporary restraining order from a judge to preserve evidence and prevent the destruction of evidence. I don’t care if you’re a conservative, liberal, or whatever, but you should at least be in favor of conserving evidence in a homicide. And to have to go get an order from a judge to preserve that evidence is extraordinary and should alarm everyone who believes in equal justice under the law, and who believes that every person-no matter how this case ultimately is resolved-deserves to have their case investigated to get to the truth of what happened. This is an extraordinary moment in an unprecedented time, and we’re doing all we can to step up to that moment. My office represents the BCA and joined the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in a lawsuit last night, as you know, and we moved to prevent the destruction and/or tampering with evidence related to Alex Pretti’s shooting. And this includes any evidence the federal agents took from the scene of the shooting, preventing the state authorities from inspecting it. We’ve never had to do anything like this before. Never before. We filed that motion last night for a temporary restraining order, asking the court to take immediate action to preserve the evidence. And last night, within two hours of the filing, a judge granted the motion. The Department of Homeland Security and the federal government are now enjoined from destroying or altering evidence related to yesterday’s shooting. The fact that anyone would ever think that an agent of the federal government might even think about doing such a thing was completely unforeseeable only a few weeks ago. But now this is what we have to do. As we said in our filing last night, the irreparable harm we would suffer if the federal government were allowed to destroy evidence is so weighty that any harm to the federal government does not even budge the scales in a court balancing. It’s imperative that we preserve as much evidence as possible so that the state investigators are allowed to access the evidence to ensure a fair, thorough investigation. And I will say: I’ve heard not one single law enforcement or investigative agent in the state of Minnesota say that they won’t share information with the federal government. I’ve heard quite the opposite from the federal government. Now, Operation Metro Surge, as I noted when I started, appears to be the largest single deployment or surge of immigration agents in the history of the country. And as a result, tremendous damage has been inflicted upon our state. We’ve had two killings within two weeks and an additional non-lethal shooting. We’ve had countless numbers of people who have been stopped and had the demand for their papers-to have to show their papers in America. We’ve had door-to-door knocks where people have had their homes barged into without cause or right. We’ve had stores have to shutter; students not going to school; a reduction in employees going to their job sites; little markets being shut down; restaurants being interfered with. We’ve had a countless number of harms. And so we took the action of suing the federal government over Operation Metro Surge. And tomorrow morning, I’m going to be in federal court with my team arguing for a restraining order against Operation Metro Surge. I filed this case almost two weeks ago, and this will be our first hearing. The lawsuit we filed is one caused by the unprecedented nature of this surge. It is a novel abuse of the Constitution that we’re looking at right now. No one can remember a time when we’ve seen something like this-when a state can marshal facts to show that our targeting is not based on excessive amounts of undocumented immigrants or anything like that, but we’re targeted because of politics, which violates our First Amendment rights. The Tenth Amendment: we are entitled, as a state, to equal sovereignty, and we have been denied that. The federal government is literally commandeering and coercing the state of Minnesota to bend to its will, which is the prerogative of the people of the state of Minnesota. Let me remind everybody-let me take everybody back to eighth-grade civics. The states predate the United States and came into the union preserving their rights as states to be the states that the citizens of those states want them to be within a constitutional framework. It is fundamental-it is in the DNA of American history-that the federal government cannot trample over the prerogatives of the state. And that is exactly what is happening here. And that is exactly why we’re going to court. This surge has drained local law enforcement time and resources. Jacob Frey, if he were here, could tell you that they’ve spent north of $ 2 million on overtime responding to ICE. They damage our economy, hurt our education system, and terrorize community members, and it must stop. And tomorrow is a big step in that direction. Now, as I noted a moment ago, people will ask: Well, why Minnesota? I’ll say this: Minnesota is dealing with targeted oppression from the federal government because of who we are and who we value. Minnesota is a place where we welcome the stranger. We have a number of nonprofits that focus on refugee resettlement in Minnesota. Minnesota is a place where we take care of the vulnerable among us. We’re a state that just passed paid family leave. We’re a state that believes in feeding our kids who are in school. And we’re a state that believes that Minnesota is a great place to live for everyone, no matter where you were born. Of course, we obey all laws, but we still believe that immigration is not a sin. We’re leading. They’re coming after our state, in my view, because of what we stand for-because we voted three times in favor of somebody not Donald Trump, which he has publicly said he resents deeply and believes is not even true. I can tell you it’s not about fraud. Because if he sent people who understand forensic accounting, we’d be having a different conversation. But he’s sending armed, masked men. This is a pretext, and it’s not supported by the facts at all, which has brought us to court challenging the justification that the president has offered. For those watching around the country, I would submit to you that just as Portland and Chicago and L.A. were precursors to Minneapolis, Minneapolis is a precursor to a whole lot of other places that they have their eye on right here, right now, including Maine and several other states. If we don’t stop this behavior here, it will only expand, and it won’t be good for anyone in our country. Minnesota is staying strong, and I want to join Governor Walz in my pride in being a Minnesotan. No football game victory could ever make me feel as good about our state as I do about people standing up, helping their neighbors, engaging in mutual aid, giving each other rides different places, making sure that there’s enough groceries, protesting, using their First Amendment rights. This state has a lot of spirit, and Minnesota nice is a real thing. I wasn’t fortunate enough to be born in Minnesota. I was born and grew up in Michigan. And I can tell you that this state has a lot of nice people. It really does. And a lot of people who believe in taking care of their neighbor, and welcoming the stranger-and as we see right now-resisting tyranny. So I just want to say that as the courage of protesters and others who are helping their neighbors is so evident on the streets of this great state of ours, we at the Attorney General’s Office and in Minnesota state government can do no less than match the courage you have already shown. And we will not back down. We won’t blink. We won’t bow. We will stand firmly on our constitutional rights and in favor of Minnesotans. We will do that in the ballot box, at the courts. We will do that in the streets in a peaceful, legal, First Amendment-protected way. And we will do it in a multitude of ways. But one thing we will not do is we will not back down, and we will not bend. And so let me wrap up by saying this: We will never forget Alex Prey. We will never forget-Nicole, I mean Renee Nicole Good. And we will never forget any of the Minnesotans who have suffered so unjustifiably in this time. Minnesota is a great place. That is why I believe we’ve been targeted. But it’s not going to work. And we’ll be in court tomorrow arguing for the rights of every Minnesotan to stand up and be the generous, courageous people that we are.

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