Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Minnesota is taking center stage and an intensifying standoff between
Speaker 2: states and the federal government.
Speaker 3: My name is Keith Ellison. I'm the Attorney General for
Speaker 3: the State of Minnesota.
Speaker 2: On Monday, Minnesota sued the federal government.
Speaker 3: We're filing against the United States Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 3: to end the unlawful, unprecedented surge of the federal law
Speaker 3: enforcement agents into Minnesota because.
Speaker 4: This has to stop.
Speaker 2: Since the start of President Trump's second term, a growing
Speaker 2: number of immigration and customs enforcement officers have surged into
Speaker 2: big cities across the US. Ellison suit alleges in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: ICE agents have sown chaos and terror. It accuses aggressive
Speaker 2: and poorly trained officers of conducting warrantless searches and racist
Speaker 2: arrests and using excssive force. In Minneapolis. Last week, one
Speaker 2: of those ICE agents fatally shot Renee A Coole good,
Speaker 2: a mother of three, in her car. Goods killing set
Speaker 2: off a firestorm of competing narratives from federal and local officials.
Speaker 2: She then proceeded to weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted
Speaker 2: to run an law enforcement officer over.
Speaker 1: They are already trying to spin this as an action
Speaker 1: of self defense. Having seen the video of myself, I
Speaker 1: want to tell everybody directly that is both.
Speaker 2: Even as Minnesota tries to eject ICE with its lawsuit,
Speaker 2: the federal government says it's sending more ICE agents to
Speaker 2: the Minneapolis area. On the ground, ICE has been met
Speaker 2: with protests and with observers who track the officer's movements.
Speaker 2: The better equipped ICE forces outnumber local police, something local
Speaker 2: authorities say makes it harder for local police to maintain
Speaker 2: public safety. What Minnesota is ground with is a new ICE,
Speaker 2: according to Bloomberg Immigration reporter Alicia Caldwell, who's covered the
Speaker 2: Department of Homeland Security and ICE for two decades.
Speaker 4: So what we're seeing is this massive expansion.
Speaker 5: Remember the Big Beautiful Bill provided one hundred and seventy
Speaker 5: five billion dollars over the next several years. Big chunk
Speaker 5: of that is for ICE. This is a full scale
Speaker 5: evolution of the agency.
Speaker 2: From one perspective on this evolution, I spoke to a friend, Olivarees,
Speaker 2: a human rights lawyer and the vice president of Litigation
Speaker 2: and Legal Strategy at the National Immigration Law Center.
Speaker 6: The way ICE and ICE agents are operating under this
Speaker 6: administration is unprecedented in its twenty two years of existence. Right,
Speaker 6: they had never conducted this scale of operations around the country.
Speaker 2: What a friend says he's seeing in Minneapolis is ICE
Speaker 2: operating more boldly than it has in the past, with
Speaker 2: officers moving beyond their longtime brief.
Speaker 6: The amount of MONE money that ICE has gotten is
Speaker 6: more than the GDP of many countries in the world.
Speaker 6: The prospect of what ICE is going to look like
Speaker 6: and what immigration enforcement is going to look like in
Speaker 6: this country, I don't think we have come to terms
Speaker 6: with that. It's hard to imagine what an agency ten
Speaker 6: times the size of ICE, in terms of resources, weapons, equipment,
Speaker 6: and the tension could mean for the American public.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: I want to be clear that this is becoming of
Speaker 6: concern for immigrants and their families, but also for everybody
Speaker 6: regardless of immigration status.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today. On the show, how ICE's evolution under
Speaker 2: Trump's second term paved the way for violence in Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: How state and local officials are trying to get federal
Speaker 2: agents out of their cities, and what's next in the
Speaker 2: battle between state officials and ICE. The ICE agent who
Speaker 2: fatally shot Renee Good on January seventh, was part of
Speaker 2: a surge of heavily armed federal troops that had been
Speaker 2: deployed by the Trump administration to the Minneapolis area. Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: Alicia Caldwell says they began arriving in early December under
Speaker 2: what ICE called Operation Metro Search.
Speaker 5: So it's being described as a twofold operation fraud within
Speaker 5: the Somali community, which the state recognizes in the state
Speaker 5: has been trying to address along with the federal government,
Speaker 5: as well as the broader immigration approach that they've taken
Speaker 5: across the country. We've seen it in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington,
Speaker 5: New Orleans, Charlotte, and now it's Minneapolis's turn, if you will.
Speaker 4: But this is different.
Speaker 5: This is bigger, and this is much more expansive. They
Speaker 5: are describing it as the largest such operation of its kind,
Speaker 5: meaning just law enforcement. We've seen the National Guard elsewhere,
Speaker 5: but this is just law enforcement. It's accommodation of ICE,
Speaker 5: now Border Patrol and other federal agents from across the
Speaker 5: Department of Justice and elsewhere, sort of anybody with a gun,
Speaker 5: if you will.
Speaker 2: By now, you know, I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: have seen what happened in Minneapolis, seen the shooting of
Speaker 2: Renee Good. But after the shooting, two very different accounts
Speaker 2: took shape of what happened and who is at fault.
Speaker 2: Can you lay out those different narratives for me?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: So they're two star creep or views on this one
Speaker 5: is from the US government. They were very swift to
Speaker 5: say Renee Good was in the wrong. You know, her
Speaker 5: vehicle was blocking the road at some point, she seems
Speaker 5: to be waving cars on. But ice their perspective is
Speaker 5: she tried to run them over. Now, we've seen many
Speaker 5: many different angles, including a camera angle from the officer
Speaker 5: involved in the shooting, who actually shot multiple times into
Speaker 5: the vehicle. There's no video evidence that I've seen that
Speaker 5: he is hit. Now, I says, hey, this guy was
Speaker 5: protecting his own he was protecting his life.
Speaker 4: She did this, She tried to run them over.
Speaker 5: The President of the United States actually accused her of viciously.
Speaker 4: Running them over.
Speaker 5: There isn't video of that from the other side, which
Speaker 5: is a growing chorus and a very loud chorus from
Speaker 5: the state government on down in the public. She was
Speaker 5: trying to leave her tires appeared to be turned. You know,
Speaker 5: we can't see directly into the driver's seat, but she
Speaker 5: appeared to try to turn, according to them and leave.
Speaker 2: This dissonant response from federal and local officials has in
Speaker 2: part seated this conflict over who will actually run the
Speaker 2: investigation into Renee Goods killing.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: Trump officials have said that the FBI has taken over
Speaker 2: the investigation of the shooting. The Minnesota body that would
Speaker 2: usually investigate the sort of case says that the Trump
Speaker 2: administration has blocked its access to materials and evidence from
Speaker 2: the investigation. So what's the latest in this standoff?
Speaker 5: So the federal bearer of investigation has taken the lead
Speaker 5: this morning, there's been reports of resignations from the Department
Speaker 5: of Justice, from the Civil Rights Division because they are
Speaker 5: not apparently investigating, and that would normally be.
Speaker 4: A pretty routine course of business.
Speaker 5: And an officer involved shooting like this, and regardless of
Speaker 5: where you fall in the political spectrum, you have a
Speaker 5: US citizen who has deceased, the shooter, which is not
Speaker 5: in doubt is the United States government employee, a.
Speaker 4: Federal law enforcement officer.
Speaker 5: So traditionally you'd have multiple strands of investigation. The FBI
Speaker 5: is the lead. The Justice Department is in charge here.
Speaker 5: They have cut out, according to Minnesota officials, the Bureau
Speaker 5: of Criminal Apprehension, which is their top law enforcement agency
Speaker 5: in the state.
Speaker 4: Now that agency and state officials have.
Speaker 5: Said they are in fact receiving credible information from witnesses
Speaker 5: from community members, which they've asked for. That said, they've
Speaker 5: been pretty open that without the assistance of the federal government,
Speaker 5: without forensics, without access to the vehicle and other details,
Speaker 5: it may be difficult to compile the type of evidence
Speaker 5: they would need to make it determination.
Speaker 2: And another poll of the state local versus federal conflict
Speaker 2: is these lawsuits that were announced on Monday. State officials
Speaker 2: in Minnesota are filing a lawsuit against Christy Nome and
Speaker 2: Ice tell us who exactly is behind that suit and
Speaker 2: what they're seeking, But.
Speaker 4: It's the state of Minnesota.
Speaker 5: So the Attorney General, generally Keith Ellison, would run that
Speaker 5: lawsuit on behalf of the state of Minnesota, and the
Speaker 5: idea is to try to force them to either curtail
Speaker 5: their tactics or leave all together.
Speaker 2: It seems like the state's argument here is that they
Speaker 2: don't need federal forces on the ground they didn't ask
Speaker 2: for federal forces on the ground. Federal forces are in
Speaker 2: some cases disrupting local law enforcement efforts. What is the
Speaker 2: federal government's argument for being there and in fact sending
Speaker 2: more troops to Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Well, what they say they get to they have jurisdiction
Speaker 5: over the immigration laws wherever somebody may be suspect of
Speaker 5: being in the country unlawfully. Same with you know, the
Speaker 5: broader fraud allegations. They're making this very broad jurisdictional argument
Speaker 5: which is hard to you know, get around, right, they're
Speaker 5: the federal government. In other cities, the administration has said, hey,
Speaker 5: we're going in to curtail violent crime in addition to immigration,
Speaker 5: because the two are hand in hand, and they have
Speaker 5: suggested they are arresting the worst of the worst. But
Speaker 5: you know, in that mix, what we have seen is
Speaker 5: a growing percentage of non criminal immigrants whose only offense
Speaker 5: is being in the country without authorization or even suspected
Speaker 5: of not being in the country without authorization.
Speaker 2: After the break, how ICE's budget, recruitment process and tactics
Speaker 2: have changed under the second Trump administration and what comes
Speaker 2: next for the bolt up agency. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Speaker 2: is a relatively new agency for the US. It was
Speaker 2: created a little over two decades ago in the wake
Speaker 2: of nine to eleven. Its mandate is to enforce federal
Speaker 2: immigration laws, but Bloomberg's Alicia Caldwell says the agency has
Speaker 2: changed since then.
Speaker 5: It's a completely different agency in many respects. So I've
Speaker 5: covered DHS and all its components since two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: And when I started, ICE was still getting its sea
Speaker 5: legs because it was an amalgamation of previous entities from
Speaker 5: the Department of Treasury, from the old I ands under
Speaker 5: the Department of Justice, and this whole mix of officers
Speaker 5: and agents trying to figure out its new mission. And
Speaker 5: it's evolved during the first Trump administration. I went out
Speaker 5: with ICE and it was a very traditional sort of
Speaker 5: Sisyphian task. You have a list of one hundred people
Speaker 5: you want to find. You have vetted background on them,
Speaker 5: you know who they are, you know where they live
Speaker 5: theoretically or hopefully, you know where they work, and you
Speaker 5: try to go find them and you find very few
Speaker 5: of them because people aren't always readily available to open
Speaker 5: the door or willing to open the door. And that
Speaker 5: was a big hang up for ICE. They couldn't go
Speaker 5: in your house. They can't go in your house without
Speaker 5: a judicial warrant.
Speaker 2: As police can't either, right, I mean, no one can.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: You just don't get to barge through people's doors.
Speaker 5: And traditionally you don't just get to walk up to
Speaker 5: somebody on the street and say, hey, who are you,
Speaker 5: what's your immigration status? Border Patrol has expanded their use
Speaker 5: of their authority to do that. They get to do
Speaker 5: that within one hundred miles of the border. And now
Speaker 5: ICE is being far more aggressive. It used to be
Speaker 5: do not give chase. It's dangerous for you, it's dangerous
Speaker 5: for them.
Speaker 4: Let's not do it.
Speaker 5: Now we're giving chase that we're seeing smash windows, we're seeing,
Speaker 5: as we saw in Minneapolis, surrounding a car in this case,
Speaker 5: you know, and there's questions about whether the officer ever
Speaker 5: should have been in front of the vehicle at all.
Speaker 5: That's in fact against their own procedures and rules, and
Speaker 5: it's tactically not safe.
Speaker 2: Does that reflect a change in protocol or is just
Speaker 2: a change in action.
Speaker 4: It's a change in action because the rules haven't changed.
Speaker 2: What has changed is ICE's level of funding. The Big
Speaker 2: Beautiful Bill Act allocated an additional one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: billion dollars over four years for the administration's border and
Speaker 2: immigration cracked out.
Speaker 4: It's never been even close to this.
Speaker 5: It's expanded exponentially by the tens of billions of dollars.
Speaker 5: With the Trump administration took office, there was a budget
Speaker 5: allotment for about forty thousand attention beds and ten thousand or.
Speaker 4: So RO officers.
Speaker 5: They're looking to have twenty thousand RO officers and one
Speaker 5: hundred thousand beds. And they're making moves left and right.
Speaker 5: They're buying munitions, they're buying tactical gear, handcuffs, right restraints,
Speaker 5: all the things that would normally go into their business.
Speaker 5: They're spending a lot more money on now as they
Speaker 5: expand rapidly. This is the largest expansion we've ever seen
Speaker 5: of immigration enforcement.
Speaker 2: Efriend Olivarez of the National Immigration Law Center says as
Speaker 2: the agency has rapidly expanded in size, it's also been
Speaker 2: deployed in American cities at a far greater scale.
Speaker 6: They had never conducted this scale of operations. So the
Speaker 6: local officials with smaller teams with fewer resources, are trying
Speaker 6: to protect their residents, their constituents and maintain public order
Speaker 6: in the phase of these unprecedented operations by ICE.
Speaker 2: ICE has the power to arrest, detain, to port people
Speaker 2: who are in this country illegally. But what we're seeing
Speaker 2: in places like Minneapolis is that these agents are coming
Speaker 2: into contact with a much broader swath of the population
Speaker 2: than they previously have. Right since protesters, bystanders and green
Speaker 2: card holders, how has the scope of the work expanded?
Speaker 2: Has it officially expanded? Are we just seeing a change
Speaker 2: in operations? Can you help me make sense of the shift.
Speaker 6: You're absolutely right that the way ices operating has expanded
Speaker 6: beyond any reasonable way. But let's keep in mind the
Speaker 6: law has not changed, right, isis authority has not changed.
Speaker 6: They have the power in the authority to arrest people
Speaker 6: who are in the country unlawfully, to the poor people
Speaker 6: who should be deported. They don't have the authority to
Speaker 6: break down a door in a house without a warrant
Speaker 6: or probable cause, and they are doing that that is illegal, Like,
Speaker 6: let's be clear, that's breaking and entering. Then if somebody
Speaker 6: demands to see that warrant, they're just ignoring them and
Speaker 6: pushing forward, banking on the fact that it's going to
Speaker 6: be hard for that individual to find a lawyer to
Speaker 6: do something about it. But no, the law has not
Speaker 6: changed with respect to the authority of ICE. It's gotten
Speaker 6: more money significantly by Congress, but the scope of if
Speaker 6: an authority has not changed.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering how the shooting in Minneapolis has ramped up
Speaker 2: other cities and states attempts to limit ICE's power on
Speaker 2: the ground and to make more preemptive legislation here.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So at the federal level, there are some bills
Speaker 6: that have been introduced, but they do not appear to
Speaker 6: have the political support to move forward. Some states, like California,
Speaker 6: for example, have enacted laws that prohibit federal agents and
Speaker 6: all law enforcement from wearing masks and require that they
Speaker 6: identify themselves. Perhaps not unsurprisingly or not surprisingly, the Department
Speaker 6: of Justice now sued the state of California alleging that
Speaker 6: that law is unconstitutional, and that case is proceeding through
Speaker 6: the courts. But the Illinois as well has enacted laws
Speaker 6: and it's also been sued by the federal government trying
Speaker 6: to find ways to hold agents accountable when they violate
Speaker 6: the law.
Speaker 2: What could happen right now to prevent another incident like
Speaker 2: this from occurring.
Speaker 6: I think if the leaders of ICE and the HS
Speaker 6: and the federal government were to change their rhetoric and say,
Speaker 6: we do not want ICE murdering anybody, we don't want
Speaker 6: anybody else to die. We want to enforce immigration laws,
Speaker 6: but nobody should die. That would send a message to
Speaker 6: agents to de escalate any confrontation that they may encounter.
Speaker 6: But that's not what we're hearing from the leaders of
Speaker 6: those agencies and those departments unfortunately. So I think that
Speaker 6: could help, right if the messaging from the higher ups changed,
Speaker 6: that could make it less likely than another tragedy unfolds.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
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Speaker 2: back tomorrow.