By:J. Patrick Coolican
Minnesota Reformer
Days after news leaked of a criminal investigation of Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over their handling of immigration enforcement in Minnesota, the U.S. Department of Justice has delivered subpoenas to the offices of Walz and Frey, as well as St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
The New York Times first reported the delivery of the subpoenas, and other national outlets also confirmed that reporting. A spokesman for Ellison said they were in receipt of the subpoena and working on a response.
The subpoenas are an extraordinary escalation of the ongoing conflict between the Trump administration and Minnesota, where heavily-armed, masked federal agents now outnumber all the metro police departments combined, frequently using tactics a federal judge has called unconstitutional.
When the investigation became public last week, Walz replied in a statement: “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly,” he said, referring to the U.S. senators who made a video telling U.S. servicemembers that they can and must refuse illegal orders, as well as the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who has refused to lower interest rates as quickly as Trump desires. “Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Walz said.
Frey called the investigation “an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement and our residents against the chaos and danger this administration has brought to our streets.”
He added: “I will not be intimidated.”
The Washington Post reported that “the subpoenas suggest that the Justice Department is examining whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements disparaging the surge of officers and federal actions have amounted to criminal interference in law enforcement work.”
Walz, who announced earlier this month he won’t seek a third term, also used his statement last week to criticize the federal government for not properly investigating the killing of Renee Good by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her,” he said.
Six prosecutors in the Minnesota Office of U.S. Attorney quit last week, The New York Times reported, because they objected to their bosses’ push to investigate the widow of Good and their ties to anti-ICE groups.
The ICE surge, which has put as many as 3,000 federal agents in the state — or nearly five times the number of sworn officers with the Minneapolis Police Department — is just the latest round of an ongoing conflict between Minnesota and the federal government. Fraud in Minnesota’s social programs — often funded in whole or part by the federal government — has caught the attention of right-wing media and activists, and the Trump administration has followed with a wide array of investigations of Minnesota programs across a range of agencies.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is auditing Hennepin Healthcare — Minnesota’s largest safety net hospital — for compliance with immigrant employment eligibility laws.
The Trump administration has frozen child care payments and halted small business grants. The administration also says it’s investigating possible housing assistance fraud and looking into Minnesota’s unemployment insurance program. The federal government has also attempted to withhold funds to Minnesota for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, but a federal court issued a preliminary injunction.
Earlier this week, Trump said he would cut all federal funding to Minnesota and other states that have sanctuary cities beginning Feb. 1, but it’s unclear what that means and few details have been released.