How the federal raid unified the fractious Minneapolis City Council against Trump, sort of

The Minneapolis City Council began its Thursday meeting with a resolution honoring Immigrant Heritage Month, and ended it with a rare show of unity when members agreed to probe whether police violated the city’s “sanctuary city” principles over federal immigration enforcement.

In between, it wasn’t so harmonious.

While local officials — all Democrats and Democratic socialists — appear united in condemning a high-profile federal raid this week as a Trump administration flex of heavy-handed policing, the event has emerged as a flashpoint to expose familiar political fault lines between the left and the farther-left in a city election year.

On Tuesday, masked, armed agents from several federal agencies swarmed a south Minneapolis Mexican restaurant, roiling the Latino and immigrant hub and sparking fears that it was an immigration raid, particularly since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were on the scene.

Federal officials have said the raid was one of eight conducted across the metro as part of an investigation into money laundering and human and drug trafficking by a “transnational criminal organization.”

Elected officials, immigrant allies and protesters, many of them masked as well, quickly converged on the Lake Street scene Tuesday and began recording, questioning and scuffling with officers as a firestorm of outrage erupted on social media.

This is the same Lake Street area where fear is rampant amid the Trump immigration crackdown, and emotions remain raw after protests erupted there after George Floyd’s 2020 murder by a police officer.

Now City Council members want to know whether the city’s ordinance was followed when Minneapolis police officers showed up about an hour into the federal operation. Minneapolis is a “sanctuary city” with an ordinance barring its police from helping enforce federal immigration laws.

Across social media posts and in dueling news releases, the raid reignited core political divisions, with the most progressive in Minneapolis criticizing the comparatively moderate Mayor Jacob Frey as an enabler of heavy-handed policing, while farther-right groups outside the city decried the leftists as anti-police.

At Thursday’s council meeting, the council voted 12-0 — albeit for different reasons — to have the city auditor perform an after-action review of the city’s involvement in the raid. A spokeswoman for the mayor said he welcomed the review and “looks forward to the findings on how city leaders responded.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara has said MPD wasn’t involved in the planning or execution of the federal search warrant but was asked to help with crowd control and de-escalation after about an hour.

Council Member Jason Chavez has said, “Assisting with crowd control is assisting ICE.” Chavez went to the raid and condemned the MPD presence.

“What happened is disgusting, it is wrong, and we will not tolerate that in the city of Minneapolis,” Chavez said Thursday. “No one should ever have to experience military vehicles being escorted by our own city employees in Minneapolis.”

Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said there was no justification for the feds’ militaristic approach and no reason law enforcement officers should have had their faces obscured by masks “other than to scare community members.” She noted national media reports that the Trump administration has ordered ICE officials to begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day.

“What happened on June 3 was not in a vacuum,” she said. “If we allow even an inch, make no mistake, they will take a mile.”

Both O’Hara and Frey on Wednesday called the militarized response “tone deaf,” but were also critical of politicians who they said went to the scene and stoked panic. Several candidates running against Frey for mayor showed up at the raid, and condemned it on social media.

Council Member Linea Palmisano accused “some of my colleagues” of making inflammatory statements at the scene.

“Let’s not blame City Council members for wanting to alert their community,” Chowdhury replied.

Council Member Aisha Chughtai went to the scene, as well as state Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, who is running for mayor. Fateh called it “blatant fascism,” accused MPD of cooperating with ICE, and said it would be “unconscionable” for police to help with crowd control. Several progressives on the council support Fateh’s mayoral bid.

Council members publicly questioned who the police chief and mayor were referring to when they excoriated elected officials, with Chavez looking into the camera and challenging the police chief to “name them.”

Council Member Michael Rainville, a moderate aligned with Frey, said he wants an after-action review to “get the truth out there,” including some of the elected officials’ communication, “what mutual aid is” and the extent of police officers’ injuries. A Minneapolis man was charged Thursday with assaulting a Minneapolis police officer after the raid.

Several activist groups including the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) and Indigenous Protector Movement (IPM) held a news conference outside Frey’s office in City Hall on Thursday afternoon as they demanded city officials be held responsible for what they called a “display of military force meant to terrorize Minneapolis residents.”

More than 70 people were on hand including City Council members Payne, Chavez, Chugtai, Chowdhury and Wonsley.

Pablo Tapia-Mendoza, executive director of the Asamblea de Derechos Civiles (the Civil Rights Assembly), said the message sent by law enforcement on Tuesday was that “communities of color are dangerous.”

Organizers and attendees repeatedly said they did not believe Minneapolis officials when they said city police did not work with ICE.

“No one is illegal on stolen land,” said Rachel Dionne-Thunder of IPM.

The state’s largest policing group condemned elected officials for making “irresponsible, false statements” that it said inflamed the situation.

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association accused Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, Fateh and some County Board members of making false statements that antagonized people.

Moriarty said “ICE is being deployed to terrorize people.”

MPPOA’s general counsel, Imran Ali, a former Washington County prosecutor, said in a news release that as a former trafficking prosecutor, he knows such cases rely on federal partnerships to dismantle criminal networks that can cross boundaries to other states and countries.

“It appears these leaders are more interested in division that could erupt into chaos,” Ali said.

Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt also was critical of elected officials she said impulsively went on social media and released “highly irresponsible” information that could have incited a riot. During a Wednesday news conference, she said it was not an immigration raid, but a criminal investigation.

Elliot Hughes of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.