A federal judge nominated by President Trump has thrown out the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Minnesota’s sanctuary immigration policies, ruling in a 56-page opinion that the Constitution does not allow Washington to force states into carrying out federal immigration enforcement. Chief U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud dismissed every claim the DOJ brought against Minnesota, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Hennepin County, a ruling that hands the administration a significant legal setback in its broader campaign against sanctuary jurisdictions.
The decision, reported by Fox News Digital, landed Monday and turned on the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering doctrine, the principle that Congress may regulate individuals but may not conscript state officers into administering federal programs. That a Trump appointee reached this conclusion sharpens the sting for the administration, which has staked considerable political capital on breaking the sanctuary model state by state.
Tostrud’s opinion drew a firm constitutional line. Minnesota’s challenged laws, he wrote, “do not command the federal government or its contractors to act. They do not forbid the federal government or its contractors from acting. They do not control how the federal government or its contractors undertake their work. Rather, they regulate how state and local officials perform their duties.”
That distinction matters. The DOJ had argued that Minnesota’s restrictions, which bar local officials from holding immigrants solely on ICE detainers, limit participation in federal immigration enforcement, and restrict sharing driver’s license and immigration-related data with ICE, illegally hinder federal enforcement and violate the Supremacy Clause.
Tostrud rejected that framing outright. He invoked the Founders’ design directly:
“The framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States.”
The federal government, Tostrud continued, “may not command the States’ officers… to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” And in a line that captures the core of his reasoning, the judge wrote that “refusing to help is not the same as impeding.”
The Trump administration has pursued similar lawsuits challenging sanctuary policies in several other states, though the specific jurisdictions were not named beyond a reference to Virginia. This ruling weakens the legal foundation for all of them. If refusing to cooperate with ICE is constitutionally protected, rather than an obstruction of federal supremacy, the DOJ’s theory of the case faces trouble well beyond Minnesota.
Fox News Digital reached out to both the White House and the Justice Department for comment. Neither response was reported in the article.
The ruling fits a broader pattern of federal judges, including Trump appointees, checking executive branch enforcement actions in court. In a separate case, a New York federal judge forced ICE back to Biden-era limits on courthouse immigration arrests, illustrating how the judiciary continues to shape the boundaries of immigration enforcement regardless of which party holds the White House.
Not everyone in conservative legal circles agrees with Tostrud’s reasoning. Eric Wessan, an attorney with the Iowa Solicitor General’s Office, told Fox News Digital that the ruling may conflict with binding precedent from the Eighth Circuit, the federal appeals court whose jurisdiction covers Minnesota.
“States across the country have passed laws making state immigration crimes. The Eighth Circuit (which includes Minnesota) found one of those laws obstructed federal immigration enforcement, and so it was preempted. Judge Tostrud cited that opinion to explain that preemption is narrow. I think that his opinion is hard to square with the binding precedent.”
Wessan did not name the specific Eighth Circuit decision. But his argument points to a live tension: Tostrud used the same appellate ruling to support a narrow reading of preemption, while Wessan reads it as establishing a broader one. That disagreement almost certainly foreshadows an appeal.
Wessan acknowledged the basic constitutional principle at stake, that states are not required to help the federal government enforce federal immigration law. But he called the harder question whether states can actively ban cooperation when individual state or local officials want to participate. The DOJ’s case against Minnesota sits squarely on that fault line.
His sharpest words, though, were aimed at Minnesota’s political leadership. In other recent cases, federal judges have halted DOJ actions on procedural or constitutional grounds, but Wessan framed Minnesota’s posture as a policy failure more than a legal victory:
“The country is facing an immigration crisis. Rather than figuring out the fine line between impeding and refusing to help, Minnesota should appreciate the federal government’s willingness to help with the illegal immigration crisis, and the waste, fraud, and abuse that accompanies it.”
The lawsuit did not exist in a vacuum. Months before the ruling, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, a large-scale ICE initiative that drew national attention and sparked protests. The operation also produced serious consequences: two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by federal agents just weeks apart in January. The specific circumstances of those shootings were not detailed.
After the deaths, President Trump removed then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from overseeing the operation. Border czar Tom Homan took over. Homan has argued that the confrontational dynamic between federal agents and Minnesota communities is itself a product of sanctuary policies.
“Cooperation with local authorities, especially jails and prisons, will give federal agents better access to people in the United States illegally. This would then lead to fewer federal law enforcement [agents] on Minnesota streets.”
Homan said his “main focus now is drawdown”, but stressed that reducing the federal footprint requires greater cooperation from Minnesota officials. That argument carries real weight. When local jails refuse to honor ICE detainers, federal agents must track targets in the community, on streets, in apartments, in neighborhoods. The risk to bystanders rises. The cost to taxpayers rises. And the political friction rises with both.
The Washington Examiner reported that then-Attorney General Pam Bondi had framed the stakes in blunt terms when the lawsuit was filed, stating that “Minnesota officials are jeopardizing the safety of their own citizens by allowing illegal aliens to circumvent the legal process.”
Tostrud’s ruling does not address whether sanctuary policies are wise. It addresses whether the federal government can sue to override them. On that question, the judge said no.
The administration has options. An appeal to the Eighth Circuit is the most obvious path, and Wessan’s comments suggest the legal arguments for reversal are already being sharpened. The tension between Tostrud’s narrow reading of preemption and the Eighth Circuit precedent Wessan cited gives appellate judges a clear doctrinal question to resolve.
Meanwhile, the ruling emboldens every other sanctuary jurisdiction currently facing or anticipating federal litigation. If the Tenth Amendment shields state laws that merely decline to participate in federal enforcement, without actively obstructing it, the DOJ will need a different legal strategy or a different set of facts in each case. That is expensive, slow, and politically uncertain.
The pattern of judicial pushback against executive action extends well beyond immigration. In recent months, a federal judge permanently blocked a Trump order requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and in another matter, the administration pressed a federal judge to lift an injunction on separate grounds. The courts are not a rubber stamp for any administration, and this White House has learned that lesson repeatedly.
The deeper problem, though, is not judicial. It is political. Minnesota’s sanctuary laws exist because Minnesota’s elected officials chose to pass them. The voters who put those officials in office bear responsibility for the policy consequences, including the friction, the federal operations on city streets, and the two dead American citizens whose cases remain largely unexplained.
Judge Tostrud may be right on the law. The Tenth Amendment is not a technicality; it is a structural guarantee. But a constitutional right to refuse cooperation is not the same as a moral argument for doing so. Minnesota has the legal authority to stand apart from federal immigration enforcement. Whether its residents are safer for it is a question the courts cannot answer, and one the state’s leaders have shown little interest in asking.
When the law lets you walk away from a problem, the question becomes whether walking away makes the problem someone else’s, or everyone’s.
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