Minneapolis Protesters Urge Judge to Restrict ICE’s Use of Force | Today News

(Bloomberg) -- Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis urged a judge to restrict immigration officers’ use of force, at a high-stakes hearing less than a week after a federal agent shot and killed a woman in her car.

The lawsuit was filed in December, weeks before an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed Minneapolis mother Renee Good during a confrontation. But the case took on fresh urgency after the shooting, with disputed circumstances that have caused a bitter rift between state and federal authorities.

Good’s death wasn’t discussed at the hearing Tuesday before US District Judge Katherine Menendez, who heard arguments on protesters’ request for an order restricting the use of force by ICE agents while the case proceeds. The judge said she would issue a ruling by early Friday.

The case in Minneapolis comes amid an influx of thousands of ICE agents into the area dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” part of a broader crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the Trump administration. The state of Minnesota on Monday filed a separate suit over the surge, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of targeting Minneapolis to “punish political opponents and score partisan points.”

“We are in unprecedented times,” Kyle Wislocky, a lawyer for the protesters, said at the hearing. “DHS themselves have described this operation as the largest immigration operation ever in the country, what’s going on right now in Minnesota.”

Protesters, who sued DHS and Secretary Kristi Noem, seek to stop officers from telling people that they can’t follow them on public roads and to ensure that protesters aren’t retaliated against for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The requested injunction would also restrict ICE in several ways, including barring the use of chemical irritants against people who do not pose a threat of imminent harm. Officers would be barred from pointing firearms at protesters “who don’t pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury.”

In filings, the Justice Department defended ICE agents’ conduct, saying officers “have faced threats and violence.” A broad injunction, the US said, “would threaten officer safety and impede lawful enforcement activity.”

“Large crowds have surrounded ICE officers in the process of making an arrest and individuals have hurled projectiles at them to the point where the officers were ‘panicked’ and had to call for backup,” the government said.

One of the plaintiffs in the case is Susan Tincher, a mother of three who runs a small consulting business with her husband. She sued over what she says happened to her after she approached a group of ICE officers on a sidewalk.

She says the officers were surrounding a house and she asked, from six feet away, “Are you ICE?” Seconds later, she was forced to the ground, handcuffed and taken to the federal building where she was locked up.

“Agents cut off some of her clothes and her wedding ring, shackled her, and left her in a cell for hours,” the suit says. “She was released without charge. Mrs. Tincher believes ICE was retaliating against her for seeking information about and observing and protesting their activities.”

Jeremy Newman, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told Menendez that officers ordered Tincher to “get back” and that she didn’t do so, and that she was arrested because the officer “reasonably believed she was physically impeding their operation” to detain a violent criminal.

The judge noted that the government hadn’t provided sworn explanations about the disputed incidents from the officers involved, despite having been given extra time to do so.

Another plaintiff and his wife say ICE officers boxed in their car and pointed semiautomatic weapons in their faces because they had followed them from the site of a potential sting operation at a church.

The case is Tincher v. Noem, 25-cv-4669, US District Court for the District of Minnesota (Minneapolis).

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