America has never seen a moment in modern history like the federal occupation of Minneapolis. Thousands of masked federal officers with uncertain authority are rampaging through the region, assaulting protesters and innocent people, abusing constitutional safeguards, staking out daycares and schools, snatching people off the streets in unmarked vans based on the color of their skin or their accent, and recklessly, relentlessly provoking violent confrontations with civilians—all against the loud, repeatedly expressed wishes of local and state officials.
Saturday morning, federal agents—apparently from the Border Patrol—shot and killed a 37-year-old nurse, Alex Pretti, amid a chaotic scuffle in front of a well-known Minneapolis donut store after agents began hassling and shoving him in the street. It was the second time this month that federal agents resorted to deadly force within mere seconds after initiating an encounter with a Minneapolis civilian who never posed a threat to agents.
All of this unnecessary violence raises the question: Why can’t elected officials do more to stop this? Apart from the courts, doesn’t Minnesota’s government have cards it can play in the battle against the Trump-led occupation, like calling out the National Guard for a showdown with federal agents?
The answer, in its shortest form, is mostly no, due to the basic foundations of American federalism. Over and over, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota governor Tim Walz have asked President Donald Trump to call back his operation. On Saturday, they again told the public that they had pleaded with the federal government to reconsider and withdraw the upwards of 3,000 immigration officers, who together nearly outnumber the region’s 10 largest state and local police departments combined.
But Walz and Frey haven’t taken overt actions to use state and local governments to actively resist because a key part of federalism in the United States is that a state can’t really resist federal authority or kick out federal law enforcement officials. That principle primarily exists because the federal government is meant to be the “protector” of last resort if local and state officials fail to uphold the rights of ordinary citizens. What’s remarkable, and worrisome, is that Trump today is using that arrangement to punish political opponents based on his own whims, as un-American an action as any president has ever undertaken and one that threatens the very union of the United States.
Tension in Minnesota between national officials and state and local elected officials is already sky high—and there’s rising animus between the federal forces and local law enforcement as well.
Minneapolis police were quick to condemn the shootings of both Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on January 7. They have also been vocal in recent days about how their own officers have been harassed and even assaulted by immigration agents while off-duty. (“Every one of [the off-duty officers stopped by immigration agents] is a person of color,” one police chief complained.) DHS agents tried to bar local police from the shooting scene on Saturday, forcing them to return with a court order, and this time FBI agents again apparently resisted allowing access. “We’re in uncharted territory here,” the head of the state’s investigation bureau said.
A governor also has the state's National Guard at their disposal, which could hypothetically be deployed to counter ICE's actions. Yesterday, Minnesota governor Tim Walz announced that he activated them following the shooting, amid a tense series of hours that saw the NBA postpone its evening game in Minneapolis for safety reasons. In a statement whose banality and simplicity underplayed just how stunning it was, the governor’s office said the guard was needed because “local law enforcement resources are stretched thin because of the disruption to public safety caused by thousands of federal immigration agents in our neighborhoods.” So far it seems like Walz’s intent is to use the National Guard and local and state police as more of a buffer between federal forces and Minnesota residents, rather than as a supplement to the street resistance efforts.