Judge tosses DOJ immigration subpoenas to Minnesota officials

A federal judge threw out six Justice Department subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other state and local officials, delivering a sharp rebuke to Washington’s immigration-enforcement pressure campaign. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said the records demands were tied to any possible criminal violation only in a way that was “extremely weak to nonexistent” and concluded they were used to “harass, coerce, and retaliate,” not investigate.

The subpoenas were served on January 20, 2026, and sought records related to enforcement of federal immigration laws going back to January 1, 2025. They targeted the Office of the Governor of Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis, the City of St. Paul, the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners and the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners.

Schiltz, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, issued the 29-page order on June 17 and it was unsealed on June 22. In the ruling, he said the Justice Department had not identified “a single plausible investigatory justification” for the subpoenas and criticized the use of the grand-jury process for unlawful purposes. He quashed all six subpoenas and took the unusual step of ordering the grand-jury materials made public, while temporarily delaying disclosure to give the department time to appeal or argue for continued sealing.

The fight sits inside a larger clash over federal immigration enforcement and state autonomy. The Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge brought thousands of federal agents to the Twin Cities and set off major protests and clashes. Minnesota had already sued the federal government over the operation. The Justice Department separately sued Minnesota, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Hennepin County, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna S. Witt on September 29, 2025, arguing sanctuary policies interfered with federal immigration enforcement.

The ruling marked a major setback for the administration’s effort to pressure Democratic state and local leaders into cooperating with federal immigration demands. Walz called the decision “a victory for the rule of law and our democracy,” and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said the court took the “extremely rare” step of granting the motion to quash. For governors and local officials elsewhere, the order drew a hard line: federal prosecutors cannot use grand jury power as a political lever when the stated investigative basis does not hold.