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Affording Your Life with Attorney General Keith EllisonThe Minnesota Attorney General's Office works to help Minnesotans navigate today's economy and live with dignity, safety, and respect. These are stories of that work. Author: MN AG Keith Ellison
Affording Your Life with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is your podcast about fairness, justice, and consumer information to help you afford your life. affordingyourlife.substack.com Language: en Genres: Government Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Matching Minnesotans Bravery
Friday, 20 February, 2026
Chair Latz, Senator Limmer, and members, thank you for inviting me to be here today.I am glad that we are here when, if the federal government is to be believed, Operation Metro Surge will soon be winding down. Tragically, whenever the real end to this surge finally comes, it will come too late for Renee Good and Alex Pretti and all who loved them. We will continue to seek justice for them.The surge will end too late for Liam Conejo Ramos and the other children who will have to live with the trauma of their detention.It will end too late for everyone who was wrongfully and illegally detained.It will end too late for Minnesotans who have endured racial profiling, for businesses that have closed, for children that couldn’t go to school, for the people who have fallen behind on their rent because they couldn’t safely go to work.The unprecedented, unconstitutional, and unnecessary exercise of force that is Operation Metro Surge leaves much pain in its wake.Despite this pain, when this surge ends, it will be a victory. It will be a victory for the rule of law, for the power of creative, lawful resistance, and for the strength of unity over division. Minnesotans organized themselves. They exercised their legal rights to observe and protest, by the tens of thousands, in sub-zero temperatures. They helped their neighbors who needed help. In the face of a massive display of force and acts of intimidation and violence, they held their — and our — constitutionally protected ground: bravely, creatively, and peacefully.I promised during the surge that I would match Minnesotans’ bravery. My office and I did much to hold ICE, DHS, and the Trump Administration accountable under the law and the constitution.* On January 9, just two days after the death of Renee Good, my office joined forces with the Hennepin County Attorney’s office to create a portal for witnesses to submit evidence.* This was necessary because almost immediately after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee, the federal government made the extraordinary announcement that it would not include the state in its investigation or share evidence with state investigators.* It is normal and routine for state and federal law enforcement and investigators to work together: in Minnesota, it happens all the time. The trained investigators of the Minnesota BCA are completely professional and non-political. I cannot stress enough how extraordinary it is for federal law enforcement to refuse to work with state investigators on this case.* On January 12, we filed a lawsuit in federal court to end the surge.* We argued — and continue to argue — that the surge is unconstitutional, violating the First and Tenth Amendments to the constitution and the Equal Sovereignty principle.* On January 15, my office launched a form on our website for Minnesotans to share the impacts of federal government actions, including DHS actions have had on them personally or someone close to them, or that they have personally witnessed.* To date, we have more than 1,500 submissions.* And on January 24, the day that Alex Pretti was killed, my office represented the BCA in filing a lawsuit along with Hennepin County to compel the federal government to preserve evidence.* We won a temporary restraining order just two hours after we filed the lawsuit.* Disappointingly, the FBI has announced that it will not cooperate with the BCA in the Pretti matter, either.Allow me to make clear that although the surge is winding down, the two lawsuits we filed during the surge continue. We will keep challenging the constitutionality of the surge, so that this administration — or any administration — cannot ever again attempt to compel a state to kneel to its policy demands. And we will keep fighting for truth and accountability for the killings of Alex and Renee.Minnesotans had a right to expect that their federal government would have a credible, rational basis for sending more than 3,000 federal agents to our state for the largest immigration-enforcement action in our nation’s history. The federal government has never deployed as many immigration agents to one place at one time as it has here.Instead, every rationale the Trump Administration has offered is a pretext.The government has said the purpose of the surge is to fight unauthorized immigration. Yet Minnesota ranks 28th among all states in the percentage of undocumented immigrants: Florida and Texas alone have nearly as many undocumented people as the entire population of Minnesota.The federal government has said the purpose of the surge is to fight fraud in government programs. I abhor fraud, and my office is already in this fight: We have convicted 300 Medicaid fraudsters in the last seven years.But the government did not surge forensic accountants or computer scientists who could actually help us fight fraud. Instead, it sent 3,000 masked, armed men.In fact, the surge has harmed the fight against fraud in Minnesota. Because of it, the federal government’s work of fighting fraud in Minnesota has ground to a halt. The surge has triggered a wave of experienced prosecutors resigning from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota, and the remaining staff are drowning under a flood of habeas corpus petitions.The government has also said the purpose of the surge is to fight violent crime and rid our streets of “the worst of the worst.” Yet violent crime rates in Minneapolis were falling before the surge. Furthermore, ICE’s own data shows that 67% of those it has detained in Minnesota have no criminal records, and only a very small percentage have a record of committing violent crime.Notoriously, some of those detained have been children. Is five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos the worst of the worst? Or 10-year-old Elizabeth Zuña Caisaguano?The federal government has also said the purpose of the surge is to gain cooperation from state and local officials in immigration enforcement. Other elected officials in Minnesota have echoed those claims, saying that if only Minnesota had “cooperated” with ICE, the surge would not have been necessary and Renee’s and Alex’s lives would have been spared.So let me be perfectly clear: Minnesota already fully complies with the law when it comes to federal immigration enforcement.The Minnesota Department of Corrections already follows the state law — Section 631.50 — that requires it to notify federal authorities when a non-citizen convicted of a felony nears their release date. The federal government had to back off their false claims to the contrary when DOC presented the facts.Minnesota sheriffs and county attorneys already comply with state law that they may not keep someone incarcerated on an immigration detainer longer than they are otherwise legally allowed to incarcerate them. In February 2025, I issued a legal opinion that restated the law, which is supported by a noted Minnesota case called Esparza vs. Nobles County, as well as cases from other states. When I met in person with Border Czar Tom Homan, he acknowledged that this is the law.So Minnesota already follows the law.After dismissing all the pretexts, it’s clear: This surge is about what President Trump said it was about. In a Truth Social post on January 13, he wrote that “retribution and reckoning” was coming to Minnesota. Operation Metro Surge was Trump’s retribution for our policies, our values, and how we vote.In the face of Donald Trump’s campaign of revenge and retribution against Minnesota, we as a state stood for the rule of law and our constitutional rights, and stood for what we believe in our beloved state: that we are stronger when we stand together, that we all do better when we all do better, and that everyone deserves to live with dignity, safety, and respect — no exceptions. Now, our attention turns to healing and to ensuring that what happened here over the past several weeks can never happen again — not to us, and not to any state, city, or neighborhood in this country. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit affordingyourlife.substack.com
