MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison is with us now. He is a Democrat. He's suing the Department of Homeland Security over ICE tactics in the state. Here he is Friday at a House immigration subcommittee field hearing in Saint Paul.
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KEITH ELLISON: We do not need federal authorities to help us maintain order. We need them to stop doing things. That is what is needed in this situation, and that is what we're demanding in our lawsuit.
MARTIN: Good morning. Thank you for joining us.
ELLISON: Good morning, Michel. Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: So I will get to the lawsuit in a minute. But first, I wanted to ask you about the administration's threat to send active-duty troops to Minnesota. And then over the weekend, Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz directed the Minnesota National Guard to prepare to deploy, to help local police and emergency management agencies. Is there a possibility that Minnesota guard personnel could be in a confrontation with federal troops?
ELLISON: Well, we certainly hope not. I mean, the hope is that the National Guard will assist local police because the presence of the 3,000-plus ICE agents has taxed local police. But this is all driven by the illegal, unconstitutional escalation of the president. We don't need more people from Alaska or anywhere else. We need them to leave. We need to go back to normal levels of federal presence in our state, not this occupation that has been going on for, essentially, partisan reasons.
MARTIN: So tell us about the lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security. What is the complaint? What are the specific allegations in the suit?
ELLISON: So we allege and we will prove on January 23, coming up, that he has violated the Constitution, 10th Amendment, which is the amendment of the Constitution that requires the federal government to respect the states. And then the First Amendment because this is all driven by partisan politics. And then the Administrative Procedures Act, because this is arbitrary, capricious and, you know, not rationally related to anything. Not fraud, not public safety, nothing. And in fact, it hurts both.
MARTIN: So you're hoping that judges will, what, order the removal of these ICE agents or all of them, or some of them?
ELLISON: Yes, but also put some guardrails on their behavior. Like, you know, the masking, the unconstitutional stops, pulling people over with no basis to suspect that they might be in the category that they're legally allowed to look for. Stopping people because of things that essentially amount to racial profiling.
MARTIN: One court has already stepped in. On Friday, a federal judge...
ELLISON: Yes.
MARTIN: ...Ordered ICE agents participating in what's called Operation Metro Surge not to retaliate against peaceful protesters.
ELLISON: Right.
MARTIN: But as we have seen, the administration defines, you know, provocation very broadly. So the question is, how can that order be enforced?
ELLISON: I will tell you that when it comes to some of the international stuff, like what happened with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, clearly the administration openly defied the courts. But for the local ones, I've sued Trump over 50 times. And when the court rules in our favor, by and large, the court's orders are followed. So we have faith that they will be followed.
MARTIN: So now to the investigations or lack thereof. The FBI initially locked out Minnesota from investigating the shooting death of Renee Macklin Good, a U.S. citizen. Now the Department of Justice's second in command says it has no investigation into the ICE agent who shot her.
ELLISON: Right.
MARTIN: Do you plan to try to gain access to whatever materials they collected? Do you have any recourse here?
ELLISON: Yes. We have an absolute right to investigate this. And if we have a right to investigate, then they're going to have to, at some point, make the car, the gun and the shell casings and other things available to the state.
MARTIN: And...
ELLISON: Otherwise, it's a cover-up, right?
MARTIN: Well...
ELLISON: Otherwise, they're just covering up a crime.
MARTIN: Well, then, again, my question becomes, is who enforces that? If you have an investigative agency investigating individuals and then the party that they work for refuse to make them available, what's your recourse?
ELLISON: Well, the courts are available to order that, you know, the federal government has either got to investigate the case itself or turn it over to people who will. That's my position.
MARTIN: That is Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison. As we said, he's a Democrat. Thank you so much for joining us on this Martin Luther King Day.
ELLISON: Thanks for having me. Happy Martin Luther King Day. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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