Judge rules ICE made warrantless, race-based stops of Somali, Latino Minnesotans

MINNEAPOLIS (CN) — A federal judge in Minnesota ruled Monday that federal immigration agents made warrantless arrests and stops based solely on an individual’s race and ethnicity in many cases during the recent immigration enforcement surge in the state.

In his 111-page-order, U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — and higher-ups in the Trump administration — have clearly violated the Fourth Amendment by targeting Somali and Latino Minnesotans.

“Defendants’ agents approached people on the street, or pulled them over in their vehicles, and requested identification without any explanation for why the stop occurred and often without identifying themselves,” the Donald Trump appointee said in his order. “The only salient factor in these cases was the individual’s race or ethnicity.”

While Tostrud noted the clear racial profiling displayed by ICE agents, he denied a request for a preliminary injunction that would have halted the relevant Homeland Security practices and enforced reasonable suspicion and probable cause legal standards.

Tostrud’s ruling stems from a class action filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in January. The three named plaintiffs and 30 declarants claimed racial profiling and warrantless arrests of Somali and Latino Minnesotans by ICE agents.

The plaintiffs say the Trump administration is “systematically lowering the threshold for stops” from reasonable suspicion to no basis at all, backing its claim with a mountain of evidence from individuals detailing excessive force by agents, including headlocks, pepper spray, and instances where agents detained people even though they offered proof of citizenship.

Had they shown a clear likelihood that the named plaintiffs and declarants would be stopped again in the future, Tostrud said he would have granted the injunction — but the significant drawdown of immigration enforcement in Minnesota “dramatically reduces” that chance.

He also denied the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification.

Nevertheless, the judge’s finding that immigration agents stopped and arrested people based solely on race is legally significant as it will likely be referenced in related and future cases involving ICE.

In Monday’s ruling, Tostrud combed through specific accounts of 33 individual witnesses to determine if a broader pattern of unconstitutional behavior existed.

Out of those 33, the judge found that 17 individuals were stopped or detained “based solely on their race or ethnicity,” and he concluded that 23, including the 17, were subjected to investigatory stops without the reasonable suspicion required by the Fourth Amendment.

Tostrud added that many of the 33 declarants were either handcuffed, detained, held for hours, physically assaulted or flown to Texas for seemingly no reason.

“Plaintiffs and declarants were stopped while going about their daily business — shoveling snow, delivering pick-up orders at Target, exiting a residence, arriving at work, walking to the mosque — when they were stopped and questioned about their citizenship status," he said.

Of the remaining 10 cases, Tostrud said a few showed probable cause, but he had insufficient information to make a definitive ruling on them.

While the Trump administration claims a handful of the interactions were “consensual encounters,” Tostrud noted there’s nothing consensual about armed officers surrounding people going about their daily lives.

“A reasonable person would not have felt free to leave in these circumstances,” he said.

Since the case was filed, the Justice Department has argued these stops were part of a lawful, targeted enforcement action, and it claims agents relied on reasonable suspicion from database checks, license plate searches and potential flight risks to justify stops.

During a hearing on Feb. 18, the Justice Department pointed to a Jan. 28 memo signed by ICE Director Todd Lyons giving ICE agents discretion to detain individuals who could reasonably be assumed to be in the country illegally.

The memo also states warrantless arrests are only legal if the targeted person is “likely to escape” before a warrant can be obtained — an argument the government made against many of the declarants in this case.

Tostrud dismantled many of these justifications in his ruling, calling the government’s explanations for specific stops “pretextual” and “senseless,“and he found agents often had no objective basis for their actions. A person’s failure, or refusal, to produce documentation in the moment they are stopped does not retroactively give immigration agents cause to stop them, the judge said in his ruling.

“Plaintiffs have made a clear showing that defendants adopted a policy authorizing federal immigration officers to conduct warrantless arrests without probable cause that the arrestees were violating immigration laws, and without probable cause that the arrestees were likely to escape before a warrant for their arrest could be obtained,” Tostrud said in the ruling.

Tostrud also pointed to public statements from former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino to establish that the government likely maintained a policy of conducting stops and arrests without the required constitutional thresholds.

Noem previously confirmed “targeted enforcement” included interrogating anyone on their citizenship status, while Bovino publicly claimed that reasonable suspicion alone justifies an immigration arrest. Tostrud flagged both as Fourth Amendment violations in his ruling.

Tostrud noted the lack of testimony or evidence the Justice Department brought to dispute the plaintiffs’ accounts, leaving the plaintiffs’ harassment and unlawful detention claims largely undisputed.

A Justice Department spokesperson denied the government engages in racial profiling.

“It will continue to take all lawful actions, including brief investigatory stops based on reasonable suspicion, to defend the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda to rid our country of violent illegal aliens to keep Americans safe,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.