The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota is filing a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of three Minneapolis residents who say their rights were violated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents during ongoing immigration crackdowns in the state.
“Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration has increased its deployment of federal forces by the thousands,” the union said in a statement on Thursday.
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“Masked federal agents in military gear have ignored basic human rights in their enforcement activity against Minnesotans, especially targeting Somali and Latino communities,” it continued, adding that the federal government has made clear its intention to target “Somali and Latino communities through Operation Metro Surge.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says the reason for targeting Minneapolis is to catch perpetrators of fraud, thieves and drug traffickers, and that the raids are justified in the interest of public safety.
In the lawsuit, the three plaintiffs challenge the administration by claiming it uses racial profiling to unlawfully seize and arrest people without a warrant or probable cause, which is “a violation of Minnesotans’ constitutional rights to equal protection and against unreasonable seizures,” the ACLU says.
U.S. President Donald Trump zoomed in on Minneapolis late last year after several Somali residents were implicated in a fraud case impacting Minnesota’s state-run agencies. Its targeting followed a series of immigration raids on other major U.S. cities and their surrounding areas, including Chicago and Los Angeles, both of which, the Trump administration claimed, were to detain illegal immigrants with criminal records.
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In September 2025, in a case known as Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, the U.S. Supreme Court authorized an emergency request from the Trump administration that allowed immigration officers in California to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States.”
The unsigned order halted an L.A. judge’s ruling prohibiting patrols from removing people from California streets and interrogating them based on their appearance, their first language or where they live and work.
This granted immigration officials in Los Angeles the power to detain people they suspected of being in the U.S. illegally based on their race or other indeterminate factors pertaining to legal status, according to the American Immigration Council.
“Both a Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that these actions amounted to illegal racial profiling,” it said.
After the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented, warned that the decision risked turning Latinos into second-class citizens and posed broader threats to constitutional rights.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
While the order was not final and applied only in California’s Central District, the immigration council said it “strongly signalled that the Supreme Court will not uphold strict constitutional limits on the authority of immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect to be immigrants.”
ICE in Minnesota
In December 2025, Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a 20-year-old plaintiff in the Minnesota class-action lawsuit, claims he was stopped by multiple masked ICE agents while walking to grab lunch in the Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood.
When Hussen realized he was being stopped by ICE, he said he began repeating, “I’m a citizen. I’m a citizen.” But the agents refused to look at Hussen’s ID, the ACLU says.
ICE agents allegedly put Hussen into an SUV and drove him to government administration headquarters in South Minneapolis, where he was shackled and had his fingerprints taken. After showing a photo of his passport card to an individual inside the building, he was let go, he said.
“At no time did any officer ask me whether I was a citizen or if I had any immigration status,” Hussen said. “They did not ask for any identifying information, nor did they ask about my ties to the community, how long I had lived in the Twin Cities, my family in Minnesota, or anything else about my circumstances.”
Catherine Ahlin-Halverson, staff attorney with the ACLU of Minnesota, said the federal agencies’ practices were “both illegal and morally reprehensible,” and that sweeping people off the streets was a “grave violation of Minnesotans’ most fundamental rights.”
Trump administration sued
Legal challenges are mounting against the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota.
The family of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three who was fatally shot in the head by an ICE agent last week, is bringing civil action against the U.S. Justice Department after it decided not to investigate the federal agent who killed her.
Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem labelled the agent’s actions as “self-defence” and called Good, who was unarmed when she was killed, a “domestic terrorist,” after footage of the incident came to light.
On Wednesday, Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly filed articles of impeachment against Noem. Kelly said last week that the DHS head was an “incompetent leader” and “a disgrace to our democracy.”
“I am impeaching her for obstruction of justice, violation of public trust, and self-dealing,” Kelly wrote.
On Tuesday, a group of Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned amid the forgoing of an investigation into the ICE agent.
On Monday, Minnesota and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul sued the Trump administration to stop an enforcement surge by ICE following the fatal shooting of Good.
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