Minnesota’s chief federal judge blocked a half dozen subpoenas by the U.S. Department of Justice against Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other elected officials that were issued as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed immigration enforcement during Operation Metro Surge.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz ruled that the subpoenas were politically motivated, unconstitutional and without merit.

His blistering 29-page opinion, which was unsealed today, marks a blow to the Trump administration’s use of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to go after his political foes. The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment Monday.

Attorney General Keith Ellison said Schiltz “took the extremely rare step” of granting Ellison’s motion to quash subpoenas issued to him and other Minnesota officials.

The DOJ served subpoenas on Jan. 20 — during the surge — to Ellison, Walz, Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and the Hennepin and Ramsey county boards of commissioners. Ellison and the other officials filed a motion to quash the subpoenas shortly afterward.

Calling the DOJ’s justification for the subpoenas “risible” — or laughable — Schiltz found that the subpoenas violated the 10th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from forcing states to enforce federal laws and from retaliating against state officials for refusing to do so.

Schiltz concluded the “dominant purpose of the challenged subpoenas is to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration law and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”

He also said initiating a criminal investigation “in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action — particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take — is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process.”

Schiltz is a George W. Bush appointee who clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and mentored Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but has criticized the Trump administration’s tactics in Minnesota via his rulings.

The subpoenas sought communication records that would show “possible violations of federal criminal laws” during Operation Metro Surge, a 12-week immigration crackdown Trump launched in Minnesota after the president railed about Somali people being involved in fraud.

The Trump administration backed down in mid-February after Minnesotans came out in droves to oppose ICE; two protesters were killed; and a third person was shot and injured.

Schiltz said the DOJ’s examples of conduct to justify the criminal investigation fell short: Two involved conduct by members of the Minneapolis City Council who weren’t served subpoenas. The other two examples involved guidance provided by Hennepin and Ramsey counties instructing staff how they should interact with ICE agents on county property, which the judge said was not unlawful.

“One would expect that, before launching a sweeping investigation into nearly the entire political structure of a sovereign state, the Department would have identified at least one instance in which a county employee actually obstructed a law-enforcement officer after being told of his or her employer’s policy,” Schiltz wrote. “Yet the Department has been unable to identify a single such instance.”

The judge’s order quashing the subpoenas was dated June 17, but he indicated he wanted to unseal it because the public has a “very strong interest in learning of this abuse of the grand-jury process by the Department.”

Ordinarily, proceedings concerning a motion to quash a subpoena would be highly likely to reveal secret grand jury matters, but in this case, the existence of the grand jury and subpoenas had already been made public, “most likely” because it was leaked by the DOJ, Schiltz said.

Before unsealing the order, the judge gave the DOJ the opportunity to challenge the move in the Court of Appeals. There’s no indication that it did.

The governor and other elected officials targeted by the DOJ said the subpoenas were an attempt to infringe on their First Amendment rights to express opposition to the Trump administration’s actions.

Walz released a statement calling the ruling “a victory for the rule of law and our democracy.”

Frey said the DOJ investigation “was never about justice, law, and order, but the absence of it.”

Ellison released a statement saying it’s clear the Trump administration targeted him for “standing up for the people of Minnesota.”

“In America, we settle our political differences at the ballot box, and it should disturb every American that Donald Trump is weaponizing the criminal justice system against people he disagrees with,” Ellison said.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Ellison launched an independent review of an ICE agent’s fatal shooting of Good after the FBI removed the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from its investigation, leaving state investigators without access to evidence such as Good’s SUV, a shell casing and witness interviews.

On Jan. 12, Ellison filed a lawsuit challenging Operation Metro Surge; eight days later, the DOJ issued its subpoenas.

St. Paul Mayor Her said she’s grateful the judge saw the subpoena for what it was: “a politically motivated retaliation against our city for lawfully standing up to ICE and fighting for our residents.”

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Sarah Nelson, Ryan Faircloth, Jeff Day and Josie Albertson-Grove of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.

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