MINNEAPOLIS — Federal agents executed multiple searches in Minnesota on Tuesday, seizing records and other evidence in an ongoing fraud investigation by the Trump administration of publicly funded social programs for children, authorities said.
Few details were released, though armed agents were seen at child-care centers in the Minneapolis area. KSTP-TV said one crew even had a battering ram.
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who has been on the defensive amid Trump administration claims that he hasn’t done enough to root out fraud, welcomed the raids. The state child welfare agency said it shared key information with law enforcement to “hold bad actors accountable.”
“We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it,” Walz said.
The searches were being conducted at daycares, businesses and some residences, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
Tensions between Minnesota officials and the federal government were high during an extraordinary immigration crackdown that led to the deaths of two people before Operation Metro Surge was eased in February.
Before that crackdown, the government had brought fraud charges against dozens of people, many of them Somali Americans, who were accused of fleecing a federal program that was meant to provide food to children. The investigation began during the Biden administration. More than 60 people have been convicted.
Various state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, participated in searches Tuesday. Officers from Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were removing boxes at some sites.
“The American people deserve to know how their taxpayer money was abused. … No stone will be left unturned,” DHS said.
Jason Steck, an attorney who represents childcare centers, said the names of targeted businesses that were shared with him show they’re operated by Somali immigrants. They were not his clients.
“A few childcare centers, a few autism centers, a few healthcare agencies of some type,” Steck said, adding that it appeared to be a “particular sweep for fraud.”
The executive director of Child Care Aware of Minnesota, a nonprofit that serves childhood educators, said the publicity will be unflattering.
“The majority are in business to do good business. You’re going to come across individuals who try to capitalize on systems that are broken and need to be fixed,” Candace Yates said.
Right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video in December that caught the attention of the Trump administration. He alleged that members of Minnesota’s Somali community were running fake child care centers so they could collect federal subsidies, fueling suspicions on top of the food aid scandal. The claims were disproven by inspectors.
President Trump, meanwhile, has used dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and “low IQ.”
In February, Vice President JD Vance said the government would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns. Minnesota sued in response, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families, but a judge on April 6 declined to grant a restraining order.
Walz told Congress in March that he wanted to work with the federal government in fraud investigations, but that the immigration surge had made it more difficult.
“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” he said at the time.
Vancleave and Richer write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer contributed from Washington. AP reporters Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Corey Williams and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week over whether the Trump administration may revoke temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants.
TPS allows people who are already in the United States to legally reside and work here if they are unable to safely return to their home country because of a sudden emergency such as war or a natural disaster. The humanitarian program, enacted by Congress in 1990, has since been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has terminated such protections for immigrants from 13 countries. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians have been consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices will hear Wednesday.
The high court’s ruling could eventually have sweeping repercussions for all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries that were designated for TPS at the start of this administration. That’s because the federal government is arguing that decisions regarding the program are almost entirely immune from review by courts.
“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not provide their name, wrote in response to a request for comment.
Lower courts have repeatedly deemed the administration’s actions improper.
“We’re seeing clear gamesmanship from government to insulate all TPS decision-making from any oversight,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is counsel in the case for Syrians and in other cases challenging five of the terminations. “They’ve created a farce of a process to justify the ends that they sought, which was to strip humanitarian protections from over a million people.”
In the Trump administration’s appeal, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
He pointed to a provision that says: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”
Citing this hands-off provision, Trump’s lawyers won brief emergency orders last year that allowed the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans. In that case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had quickly reversed an extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in.
The circumstances surrounding the Syria and Haiti cases are different. Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions.
They point to emails in July from a Homeland Security official to a State Department official. The Homeland Security official listed TPS designations coming up for review — Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, the State Department official wrote: “I confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with ending these TPS designations.”
State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. U.S. citizens are advised to prepare a will.
For Syria, the advisory cites active armed conflict since 2011. For Haiti, it says the country has been under a national state of emergency since March 2024.
But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had sufficiently improved. The notice for Syria, for example, says “the Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”
If the government loses, Homeland Security officials would have to reevaluate the TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make a decision based entirely on the country conditions themselves.
The government could start over, in that case, and still find that TPS is no longer warranted — if the process bears that out.
In a friend-of-the-court brief led by immigration law scholars at Georgetown and Temple universities, they explained that before TPS existed, similar forms of humanitarian relief were determined by the executive branch “without reference to any statutory criteria or constraints, and with little if any explanation for why nationals of certain countries received protection while others did not.”
With TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end that “unfettered discretion,” they wrote. Instead, the statute requires the Homeland Security secretary to terminate TPS if the review finds that conditions justifying the designation no longer exist. Otherwise, the law states, it “is extended.”
“The point of the TPS statute was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions,” said MacLean, the ACLU attorney. “Secretary Noem in all of her TPS decisions has completely undermined that fundamental goal.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, who is arguing for the Syria case on Wednesday, added that if the government wins, “it also means they could probably grant TPS to countries that don’t deserve it.” Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, has represented the National TPS Alliance in separate litigation during this administration and Trump’s first.
Top Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations filed a brief arguing that the Trump administration’s terminations of TPS for Syria and Haiti were “not based on evidence and sharply departed from past inter-agency practices.”
Haiti was originally designated for TPS in 2010 after a massive earthquake devastated the country and redesignated because of subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would terminate TPS for Haiti, effective Feb. 3. She wrote in the Federal Register that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti” that prevent Haitians from safely returning.
But even if there were, she continued, “termination of Temporary Protected Status of Haiti is still required because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”
The Homeland Security spokesperson said TPS for Haiti “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.”
Syria, meanwhile, “has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades,” the spokesperson wrote, “and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.”
In the Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem added that maintaining its TPS designation would “complicate the administration’s broader diplomatic engagement with Syria’s transitional government” by undermining peace-building efforts.
The Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the Homeland Security secretary can use national interest as a reason to revoke TPS. Attorneys for the TPS holders believe any decision to revoke TPS must come down to the country conditions alone.
Syria and Haiti are among the countries for which the Trump administration has also paused processing all immigration benefits. If their TPS protections expire, those immigrants would become vulnerable to detention and deportation even if they are eligible for other forms of relief.
U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
(Aaron Schwartz / Getty Images)
Attorneys for the TPS holders say the terminations were also driven by racial animus. They point to various statements by Trump over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio, that they “probably have AIDS” and that Haiti is among the “shithole countries” from which he would permanently pause migration.
Among those affected is a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and is raising her four U.S. citizen children in a Southern state. The woman requested to be identified by her middle and last initials, B.B., out of concern for her immigration case.
After graduating high school, B.B. got into nursing school but couldn’t attend because she didn’t qualify for financial aid. She said later getting TPS allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and she now works as a medical coordinator while owning a nail salon and three real estate properties.
Though B.B.’s TPS remains active because of the court proceedings, her driver’s license expired Feb. 3 and she has since had to rely on friends and rideshares to get around while repeatedly requesting a renewal.
She said she worries most about her children. If she were deported back to Haiti, she said, she would leave them in the U.S. for their own safety.
“It’s like planning your death,” she said. “I’m 35 and I already have a will — not because I’m going to die but because of the situation.”
On a call with reporters, attorneys and advocates, a Syrian man said he earned his master’s degree in the U.S. and now works in the healthcare industry. The man, who was identified by a pseudonym, said he and his wife are afraid of what their future will look like.
“TPS gave us something we had not had in years: a place to settle and a moment to grieve,” he said, later adding that “telling Syrians to go back right now is not a policy — it’s abandonment.”
Among the public, there is broad support for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a poll conducted last month by the firm Equis Research, 68% of Latino and 65% of non-Latino voters support fighting to give back legal protection to those who have lost their temporary protected status or asylum protections as a result of the current administration’s actions.
Earlier this month, the House voted in favor of a bill that would require new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to redesignate Haiti for TPS. Among those who crossed the political aisle to support it were 10 Republicans and Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent from Rocklin, Calif., who caucuses with Republicans. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
In an interview with The Times, Kiley said his vote was about common sense and being humane.
“It’s particularly dangerous for people that would be returning where the gangs that are ravaging the country are just lying in wait outside the airport in Port-au-Prince,” he said, referring to the Haitian capital.
And because most won’t return willingly, Kiley added, “really all you’d be doing is removing work authorization from 350,000-some people who are going to mostly remain in the country, who will not be able to work anymore and may end up being more reliant on public assistance in states where they’re eligible.”
At the same time, Kiley said, the TPS system hasn’t worked as intended because most so-called temporary designations drag on.
“The system needs to be reformed,” he said. “But that’s all separate and apart from what we do with the folks who were already given this designation.”
Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice seeking Massachusetts’ state voter rolls, marking the latest setback in a wide-ranging effort by the Trump administration to collect detailed data on the nation’s voters.
The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin marks at least the fifth time a judge has rejected similar attempts by the Justice Department. Sorokin, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said the U.S. attorney general’s office did not take the necessary steps required to access voter rolls, as outlined in federal law.
“Put simply, the statute requires a statement of why the Attorney General demands production of the requested records,” Sorokin wrote. That statement has to be factual, “not just a conceivable or possible basis.”
In an emailed response, the Justice Department said it “does not comment on ongoing litigation.”
It has said it’s seeking the voter data as part of an effort to ensure election security, but Democratic and Republican officials in several states have refused, saying the demand violates state and federal privacy laws. Some have raised concerns that federal officials will use the sensitive data for other purposes, such as searching for potential noncitizens.
During a hearing last month in Rhode Island, a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge that the department was seeking unredacted voter roll information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status. Homeland Security over the past year has beefed up the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, for just this purpose.
“Our intention is to run this against the DHS SAVE database,” Department of Justice attorney Eric Neff told U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy during a March 26 hearing challenging the federal government’s authority to access the voter data.
The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking to force release of the data, which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have either provided or promised to provide their detailed voter registration lists to the department, according to the Brennan Center: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.
In the Massachusetts case, the the judge found that the Justice Department failed to follow the requirements for demanding the voter rolls set by a 1960 civil rights law.
That law, enacted as part of an effort to end racial discrimination in elections, says state voter records must be made available for inspection by the U.S. attorney general if the office includes a statement outlining why the information is being demanded and how it will be used.
The department’s letter demanding Massachusetts’ voter data made no reference to the Civil Rights Act and didn’t cite any concerns about the way Massachusetts complied with federal voting laws, the judge said. Most importantly, it didn’t include any factual basis for the demand, Sorokin wrote.
In court documents, the Justice Department said it was demanding the data to check for “Massachusetts’ possible lack of compliance” with federal voter registration list requirements. It also said the Civil Rights Act was designed to be an investigatory tool to identify federal election law violations and argued that the U.S. attorney general can’t be required to prove a violation before seeking evidence of one.
“These arguments miss the point,” Sorokin wrote.
Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Andrea Joy Campbell called the ruling a decisive win for voters and the rule of law.
“The privacy of our voters is not up for negotiation, and I will continue to defend the integrity and security of our elections from the Trump Administration’s cruel and harmful agenda,” she said in a news release.
Four federal judges in other states have dismissed similar lawsuits from the Department of Justice.
A federal judge in Michigan found the laws cited by the Justice Department do not require the disclosure of the voter records sought by the federal government. A federal judge in California said the administration “may not unilaterally usurp the authority over elections,” which the Constitution gives to the states and Congress. A federal judge in Oregon said the federal government was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists containing sensitive data.
A federal judge in Georgia dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit because he found it had been filed in the wrong city. The federal government then refiled the lawsuit in the city specified by the judge; that case is ongoing.
The Justice Department has appealed the Oregon, California and Michigan dismissals.
Boone writes for the Associated Press. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. AP writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Los Angeles officials are expressing growing fears that taxpayers and the city treasury could be hit with a round of crippling costs to support the 2028 Olympic Games if the city doesn’t ink a rigorous deal to assure a “zero–cost” Games.
Some city officials have long been concerned that taxpayers could be left with massive bills if the Olympics don’t generate the income organizers have promised. Delays in finalizing a deal between City Hall and the Olympics committee have heightened those tensions.
The exact costs to L.A. and other local governments remain unknown, as officials wait to hear from LA28 and federal security agencies about exactly what services they will need. Recent controversy over the ties between Casey Wasserman, the head of the L.A. Olympics, and Jeffrey Epstein have added to the uncertainty over the finances in the minds of some city leaders.
City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and Councilmember Monica Rodriguez both issued letters demanding a contract pledging that LA28 cover any of the city’s future costs that arise as the city plays host to hundreds of thousands of athletes and fans.
The contract, more than six months overdue, is needed “to foreclose any scenario in which funds might go back to the wealthy backers and investors of the LA 28 organization without reimbursing taxpayer funded extraordinary costs,” the city attorney wrote to council members.
Rodriguez agreed in a separate letter this week that the city needs a contract that assures that the Olympics organization will pay any excess costs for policing, transportation, trash pickup and more, so that taxpayers are not burdened or “core city services” slashed.
That should take priority over the private nonprofit LA28 building a “Legacy Fund” to bankroll future youth sports programs, public sports facilities and the like, argued the city officials, who are both up for reelection this year.
“Bankruptcy cannot be the legacy of these Games,” Rodriguez wrote, without elaborating on what she meant, though L.A.’s top budget official recently projected a deficit, unconnected to the Olympics, of “several hundred million” dollars.
LA28 officials responded with a statement they issued previously, saying, in part, that “LA28 remains committed to delivering the safest, most secure, and fiscally responsible Games that will benefit Angelenos for decades to come,” adding, “We remain engaged in good faith negotiations and look forward to our continued partnership with the City of Los Angeles.”
LA28 Chief Executive Reynold Hoover said at a press event Wednesday that ticket sales were one vehicle for the host committee to assure that taxpayers didn’t get stuck with a big bill down the road.
The stakes remain high for both sides. The private LA28 group needs the city’s police, fire, sanitation, streets and transportation services to deliver a successful event. The city wants the sports extravaganza to succeed, not only to burnish its image on an international stage, but also to assure there is enough money to pay for all the extra tasks city workers will perform.
The LA28 leaders project the Games will cost more than $7.1 billion. They say that money will come from a variety of sources: nearly $1 billion from the International Olympic Committee, $437 million from international marketing rights, $2.5 billion from corporate sponsors in the U.S., $2.5 billion from ticket sales and hospitality packages, $344 million from licensing and merchandise and $405 million in other revenue.
LA28 reports being ahead of schedule on the revenue front. But city officials worry that unforeseen events — including an economic downturn or natural disaster — could blow up the income model, with one of many wild cards being the willingness of President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to follow through with a funding pledge to the Democratic-controlled city.
L.A. officials have long expressed concern that Trump and Congress might belatedly yank away $1 billion already set aside to reimburse state and local governments for security, planning and other Olympics-related costs.
While the two elected officials and some others, including an attorney representing city employees, raised alarms, an individual with knowledge of the talks between the city and LA28 said that a tentative agreement would likely be before the City Council “within two or three weeks.”
The knowledgeable individual, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the discussion, said negotiators on both sides must bear in mind how a third party, the federal government under Trump, is integral to the financing model.
The source tracking the negotiations said that both sides needed to make sure the pact creates a path to “maximize federal resources, which were dedicated by Congress for the Games,” adding: “The contract needs to avoid saying that LA28 is going to pay, for example, for all of the LAPD’s extra costs in such a way that the federal government says, ‘Fine, then you don’t get any of the federal money.’ We can’t afford to leave a billion dollars on the table.“
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, one of those bargaining for the city, struck a positive note.
“We are invested in a successful Olympics. The organizing committee knows that it needs the city and city services to have a successful Games,” said Szabo. “It’s in both the city’s and the organizing committee’s best interest to have a successful Games. We’re joined at the hip and we’ll succeed together, or not.”
The 2028 Games have been designated a National Special Security Event, placing it in the same category as major party political conventions and Super Bowls. The U.S. Secret Service sets the security plan for those events.
Officials in L.A. have said they are still waiting to learn from the Secret Service how broad the security “blast area” should be around each athletic venue. The federal agency will then dictate how many police and federal agents will flood those zones, which include the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Exposition Park and Crypto.com Arena.
Attorney Connie Rice, who represents L.A. city employees concerned about how the city will pay for the Games, said that her clients still had questions. Rice, whose past litigation helped force LAPD reforms, said that employees helping to plan for security said they had estimated that the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alone, would need at least $1 billion to pay for extra security during the Games.
The current federal allocation would not get the city and county of Los Angeles $1 billion since many other jurisdictions, including Long Beach, Oklahoma City and the state of California also will be competing for U.S. funding. And the federal government has not yet released its “notice of funding opportunity” — laying out the parameters for claiming a part of the $1 billion.
Rice argued that the city gave up its best leverage when it signed an earlier agreement to host the Games. “Who is going to pay the bill, or who are they even going to send the invoices to, when the Games are over and LA28 is dissolved?” Rice asked. “LA28 has no obligation to raise money once the event is over.”
Los Angeles city officials expect to have requests by October from LA28 for the services the Games organization needs at each venue. The Games organizing group has agreed to pay any costs that exceed the city’s typical expenditures. But there is not a clear understanding of what constitutes a customary level of service. The massive event is expected to require an array of services, including trash pickup, bus service, street closures, park maintenance, drinking water stations and building inspections of temporary Olympic structures.
In her letter late last month to City Council members, the city attorney raised a slew of questions about the fiscal contract with LA28. Feldstein Soto contended the Games had a “heightened risk exposure … given the recent claims against LA 28 Chairman Casey Wasserman.”
Wasserman’s name appeared in the files about convicted sexual predator Epstein, with records showing the then-28-year-old sports marketer had gone on a two-week tour of Africa sponsored by Epstein and later exchanged risque emails with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Though some activists demanded Wasserman leave his post as LA28 chair and called for a Games boycott, there has been no apparent reduction in sponsorships or ticket sales because of the furor.
As city attorney, Feldstein Soto is advising the city officials negotiating the Olympic contract. Her letter says she will insist that “transparent audit rights and procedures” be put into place to assure the city treasury does not take a hit in supporting the Games.
The letter raises the possibility that natural disasters or other emergencies could cut into LA28’s bottom line. It also asks: “What happens if the federal government does not pay the assume $1 billion [or] … [w]hat happens if the city’s actual expenses exceed $1 billion?” Feldstein Soto’s answer: “In either situation, this office believes that all surplus funds must reimburse the city and its taxpayers first, as promised, before any surplus funds are available for a [LA28] legacy or tribute fund.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump spent much of last week railing against the courts. The courts, in turn, spent it ruling against him.
While Trump made history as the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, where he stared down justices as they questioned his bid to end birthright citizenship, quieter courtrooms across the country were challenging his agenda.
The challenges came in on immigration, on his White House ballroom project, on his own liability in the run-up to Jan. 6.
“Dumb Judges and Justices will not a great Country make!” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
By Friday, judges had served him loss after loss, each finding the administration had taken executive authority too far, too fast.
Immigration rulings
On immigration, the keystone of Trump’s policy platform, he faced a number of setbacks.
On Monday, a federal judge in California took a step that would allow a class-action lawsuit against the administration’s handling of certain asylum claims. The case concerns thousands of asylum seekers who had made appointments with immigration officials by using a Biden administration phone app called CBP One.
In many cases, migrants from around the world had waited months in Mexico for their turn to speak with border agents after securing appointments through the app.
Those appointments were suddenly canceled after Trump took office. The judge certified those asylum seekers as a class that can challenge the administration’s action in court.
In a similar case, a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that the administration had unlawfully terminated the temporary legal status of as many as 900,000 immigrants who entered the country after using the phone app. Tens of thousands of those told by the administration to leave the U.S. “immediately” have since left or been deported.
It was an awful week for Donald Trump. It’s not that the courts are anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot.
— Adam Winkler, constitutional law professor
The judge ordered the administration to reinstate the legal status and work authorization of those remaining.
“Today’s ruling is a clear rejection of an administration that has tried to erase lawful status for hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a legal organization that represented the migrants.
Sanctuary laws
Also Tuesday, a federal judge threw out a Justice Department lawsuit that accused Denver and Colorado of interfering with immigration enforcement and claimed that the city and state’s “sanctuary” laws violated the Constitution.
The ruling found that the federal government had not shown it could override state and local decisions about how to use their own resources. The Constitution, the judge said, does not let Washington commandeer local governments.
“Colorado gets to make a choice: How will our law enforcement operate in Colorado. The federal government, they don’t get to make that choice for us,” Colorado Atty. Gen. Phil Weiser said.
Birthright citizenship
The next day, the Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Trump’s claim that birthright citizenship doesn’t apply to babies born in the U.S. to parents who are here unlawfully or temporarily.
Conservative and liberal judges alike questioned the arguments of Solicitor Gen. John Sauer, who represented the administration, saying he relied on “some pretty obscure sources,” including precedents that dated back to Roman law.
“We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” he wrote shortly after departing.
Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University professor who studies immigration enforcement, wrote on Substack after the Supreme Court hearing that, on immigration policy, there is always a gap between what an administration says it will do and what the government can actually deliver. That gap, he argued, is particularly evident in the second Trump administration.
“The White House has built its political identity around the promise of mass deportation, and the rhetoric has been relentless: record arrests, expanded detention, military flights, the spectacle of enforcement as governance,” Kocher wrote.
“But over the past several days,” he added, “developments from multiple fronts suggests that the operational foundations of the mass deportation campaign are more fragile than the administration would like anyone to believe.”
Defying judicial orders
In some cases, the Trump administration has been undeterred by judicial orders to stop certain practices. In a March ruling unsealed Thursday, a federal judge found that Border Patrol agents had continued making illegal arrests in California’s Central Valley without reasonable suspicion.
The government’s explanations for the arrests, wrote Judge Jennifer Thurston in Fresno, “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations about the relationship between a person’s apparent status as a day laborer and their immigration status.”
White House ballroom
Trump had kicked the week off March 29 by touting his 90,000-square-foot ballroom project, showing designs to reporters on Air Force One.
“I think it’ll be the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said. Two days later, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered a temporary halt to construction.
Leon stated that the president is the “steward” of the White House, not its “owner,” and ruled that he cannot proceed with such a massive structural change without express authorization from Congress.
In response, Trump raged on Truth Social: “In the Ballroom case, the Judge said we have to get Congressional approval. He is WRONG! Congressional approval has never been given on anything, in these circumstances, big or small, having to do with construction at the White House.”
His administration filed a motion Friday to block the judge’s ruling.
Jan 6. liability
On the same day, a judge ruled that Trump remains personally liable in a civil lawsuit tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, allowing those claims to move forward.
It is among the most consequential legal threats he faces.
Trump entered the presidency on the heels of a major Supreme Court win that found former presidents have criminal and civil immunity for official acts during their term.
But Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta deemed Trump’s Jan. 6 speech — in which he directed supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” — was a political act, not a presidential one, and therefore not shielded by immunity.
“President Trump has not shown that the speech reasonably can be understood as falling within the outer perimeter of his Presidential duties. The content of the ellipse speech confirms that it is not covered by official-acts immunity,” Mehta wrote.
The week ended with yet another setback for Trump when a federal judge on Friday blocked the administration from forcing universities to submit extensive data on applicants and students to prove they don’t illegally consider race in admissions.
Reading the losses
For Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA who has tracked the administration’s legal battles closely, the losing streak had a clear through line.
“It was an awful week for Donald Trump,” he said. “It’s not that the courts are anti-Trump. In fact, he wins a lot. It’s really that he takes such an aggressive approach to policy making that he runs afoul of existing precedents.”
Taken together, last week’s rulings signaled that the courts are insisting that the president is as accountable for his actions as anyone, and that states have constitutional powers he alone cannot override.
“The Trump administration’s recent court losses illustrate that there is still much that the other branches of government can do — in connection with civil society — to uphold the rule of law and mitigate the harms of the administration’s destructive agenda,” said Monika Langarica, deputy legal director at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
“They are one more reminder,” she added, “that the administration will not always have the last word with respect to its unlawful and unconstitutional actions.”
Minnesota public universities can continue to offer in-state tuition and scholarships to some immigrants in the country without legal status, a federal judge ruled Friday, dismissing a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department last summer that attempted to halt the programs.
The decision follows a series of clashes between the federal government and Minnesota officials over immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez said in her decision that the federal government failed to prove that programs offering in-state tuition for immigrants without legal status discriminated against U.S. citizens.
The federal lawsuit named Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Democratic state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison as defendants, along with the state’s Office of Higher Education. It said Minnesota law discriminates against U.S. citizens because it provides in-state tuition and scholarships to students living in the U.S. illegally if they attended a Minnesota high school for three years, and U.S. citizens who attended schools outside of the state cannot receive the same benefits. States generally set higher tuition rates for out-of-state students.
The federal government said those state statutes “flagrantly” violate a federal law that prevents states from providing preferential benefits to immigrants in the U.S. illegally regardless of whether or not they meet residency requirements.
“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed last year.
Menendez said the Justice Department misinterpreted the law, enacted during the Clinton administration, because anyone who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years are granted the same public benefits, regardless of their U.S. residency or immigration status.
She also said the federal government didn’t have standing to sue the state attorney general or governor since neither has the power to change the state laws that determine tuition eligibility.
Ellison celebrated the decision in a statement Friday.
“Today, we defeated another one of Donald Trump’s efforts to misconstrue federal law to force Minnesota to abandon duly passed state laws and become a colder, less caring state,” he wrote.
The funding for immigrants without legal status represents an “investment for our state to do everything we can to encourage a more educated workforce,” Ellison wrote.
The U.S. Justice Department didn’t respond to an email request for comment Friday.
The department has filed similar lawsuits this month against policies in Kentucky and Texas. Last week, a federal judge in Texas blocked that state’s law giving a tuition break to students living in the U.S. illegally after the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, said he supported the legal challenge.
In discussing the Texas case last year, Bondi suggested more lawsuits might be coming.
Florida ended in-state tuition eligibility for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. At least 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies granting the in-state benefit, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Those states include Democratic-led California and New York, but also Republican states including Kansas and Nebraska.
According to the center, at least 13 states in addition to Minnesota allow immigrant students without legal status to receive financial aid and scholarships on top of in-state tuition.
WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance on Friday held the inaugural meeting of a new anti-fraud task force he’s leading as the Trump administration seeks to show it’s cracking down on potential misuse of social programs.
Vance, speaking Friday before the task force held a closed-door meeting, said that the federal government for decades had not taken the issue of fraud seriously and that it needed to be tackled with “a whole-government approach.”
“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” Vance said. “It is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on.”
President Trump, a Republican, has made a crackdown on fraud part of his chief domestic focus as voters have said they’re concerned about affordability ahead of November’s midterm elections. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day-care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.
Vance cited some of the Minnesota allegations on Friday. Last month, he held a news conference to announce a temporary halt of some Medicaid funding until the state took actions that federal officials said would address their concerns.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who faced Vance as a vice presidential candidate in 2024, has called it a “campaign of retribution” and said the Trump administration was “weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota.”
The task force is also the most visible assignment to date that Trump has given to Vance, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
Vance and the task force, which includes about half the president’s Cabinet, the leader of a new Justice Department division focused on prosecuting fraud and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, are set to meet regularly to look at rooting out potential fraud and waste in federal benefit programs.
Ferguson, who is vice chair of the task force, cast the issue of fraud as a dire crisis facing the country and said it “shreds the social trust on which these programs and our entire nation depend.”
“This fraud crisis is thus existential,” he said. “If we fail to address it, the fabric of our nation will swiftly unravel.”
Joining the task force was Colin McDonald, a top aide to the Justice Department’s second in command. He was recently confirmed as the assistant attorney general overseeing the new division at the department focused on prosecuting fraud.
The Justice Department has long prosecuted fraud nationally through its Criminal Division, but the Trump administration says the new division is needed to crack down on rampant fraud.
WASHINGTON — Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for access to evidence they say they need to independently investigate three shootings by federal officers, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The lawsuit claims that the federal government reneged on its promise to cooperate with state investigations after the surge of federal law enforcement in Minneapolis, and are seeking a court order demanding that the Trump administration comply.
“We are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability that the federal government is desperate to avoid,” Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty told reporters.
The lawsuit marks an escalation in the clash between Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration over the investigations into the high-profile shootings by federal officers that sparked public outcry and protests. The Trump administration has suggested that Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction to investigate, but state officials insist they need to conduct their own probes because they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself.
“There has to be an investigation any time a federal agent or a state agent takes the life of a person in our community,” Moriarty said.
The administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area for the immigration crackdown as part of President Trump’s national deportation campaign. The Department of Homeland Security considered its largest immigration enforcement operation ever a success but was staunchly criticized by Minnesota’s leaders who raised questions over officers’ conduct.
There continues to be fallout from Operation Metro Surge in the form of a Homeland Security shutdown, as Democrats in Congress hold up funding in an effort to secure restraints on Trump’s immigration agenda.
Minnesota’s lawsuit said the federal government is not permitted to “withhold investigative evidence for the purpose of shielding law enforcement officers from scrutiny where a State is investigating serious potential violations of its criminal laws, targeting its citizens, within its borders.”
Moriarty said Tuesday that the federal government “has adopted a policy of categorically withholding evidence,” calling the practice unprecedented and alarming. She said the lawsuit followed formal demands for evidence after the federal government blocked Minnesota investigators from accessing evidence related to the shootings.
In addition to the Pretti and Good cases, the lawsuit demands access to evidence in the case of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot and wounded in his right thigh by a federal agent in January.
Federal officials initially accused Sosa-Celis and another man of beating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel. But federal prosecutors later dropped all charges against the men and authorities opened a criminal investigation into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about the shooting.
Emails seeking comment were sent to DHS and the Justice Department.
The Justice Department in January said it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing but has said a similar federal probe was not warranted in the killing of Good. The decision in Good’s case marked a sharp departure from past administrations, which moved quickly to investigate shootings of civilians by law enforcement officials for potential civil rights offenses.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has said that the department’s Civil Rights Division does not investigate every law enforcement shooting and that there have to be circumstances and facts that “warrant an investigation.”
Moriarty has said a lack of confidence in the federal government’s review of these incidents makes the state’s independent investigations into the shootings, as well as officers’ actions during the immigration enforcement operation altogether, especially important. The county office received over 1,000 tips from the public on the shootings of Good and Pretti via an online portal they opened to collect evidence. Earlier this month, Moriarty initiated a second portal and said her office was investigating a number of incidents of potentially unlawful action by officers over the course of the immigration enforcement operation.
Fingerhut and Richer write for the Associated Press. Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
SANTA FE, N.M. — Democratic-led states alarmed by the prospect of federal immigration officers patrolling the polls during this year’s midterm elections are taking steps to counter what they see as a potential tactic to intimidate voters.
New Mexico this week became the first state to bar armed agents from polling locations in response to President Trump’s immigration crackdown, a step being considered in at least half a dozen other Democratic-led states.
The moves highlight a deep distrust toward the Trump administration from blue states, which have been the target of his aggressive immigration tactics while threatened with military deployments and deep cuts in federal funding. Their concerns were heightened after the president suggested he wants to nationalize U.S. elections, even though the Constitution says it’s the states that run elections.
The Trump administration said it has no plans to deploy immigration agents to polling locations. Last month, the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol told a congressional committee “No, sir” when asked if they had any plans to guard polling places. The Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, Heather Honey, recently told secretaries of state it “is simply not true” that immigration agents will be at the polls this year.
But a group of eight secretaries of state wants that in writing from the nominee to succeed Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In a letter Monday to Trump’s new pick to lead the agency, Markwayne Mullin, the group pressed for assurances “that ICE will not have a presence at polling locations during the 2026 election cycle.”
Federal law already prohibits the deployment of armed federal forces to election locations unless “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States,” but Democratic lawmakers, election officials and governors remain concerned.
“The fear is that the Trump administration will attempt to evoke a national emergency or execute some other deployment of federal agents or military troops in order to interfere with elections and intimidate voters,” said Connecticut Democratic state Rep. Matt Blumenthal, co-author of a state bill to establish a 250-foot buffer from federal agents at local polls and other restrictions on federal intervention. “And we’re not going to let that happen.”
A potential clash between states and the federal government
Other bills seeking to ban immigration agents at the polls are pending in Democratic-led states, large and small, from California to Rhode Island.
In Virginia, lawmakers are weighing legislation that could prevent federal civil immigration officials from making arrests within 40 feet of any polling place or courthouse. But the provision on polling sites remains under negotiation, and it’s unclear whether it will be in the final bill.
The newly signed law in New Mexico prohibits orders that put any armed person in the “civil, military or naval service of the United States” at local polling locations and related parking areas, or within 50 feet of a monitored ballot box, from the start of early voting.
Under New Mexico’s new law, which takes effect in May and will be in place for the state’s June 2 primary, people who experience intimidation or obstruction at the polls from federal agents or military personnel can file a civil lawsuit seeking relief in state courts. State prosecutors and local and state election officials also can sue, and the courts can apply fines of up to $50,000 per violation.
It also prohibits changes to voting qualifications and election rules and procedures that conflict with New Mexico law, as Trump prods the U.S. Senate to approve a bill to impose strict new proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections nationwide.
Any state measures intended to counter federal election law will face legal hurdles because of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution, which says federal law supersedes state law.
“It could set up a direct clash between state governments and the federal government. We don’t know exactly how that’s going to go,” said Richard Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law. “Given the supremacy clause, there’s only so much states can do.”
‘We will hold free and fair elections’
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said her own distrust of the Trump administration in election oversight stems from ongoing Department of Justice efforts to get detailed state voter data without explaining why and Trump’s continuing false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
“Do I believe the federal government and people in the White House? No,” said Lujan Grisham, who terms out of office at the end of 2026.
“We are sending a message to everyone: We will hold free and fair elections, and New Mexicans will be safe in every ballot location and that’s our responsibility,” the Democrat said Tuesday during a news conference. “The Constitution says the states run their elections, and that bill makes that painfully re-clear to the federal government.”
Federal seizure of ballots and election records is a growing concern
New Mexico Republicans, who are in the minority in the legislature, voted in unison against the bill.
“I would question strongly why we have to do this other than just to have to poke the president in the eye,” state GOP Sen. Bill Sharer of Farmington said during floor debate.
State Sen. Katy Duhigg, an Albuquerque Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the legislation, said it’s “better safe than sorry with democracy.” She said she wanted to “make sure that there was some sort of tool that our local law enforcement would have at their disposal if something does happen, if the federal government does in some manner try to interfere with our elections.”
Connecticut’s bill, scheduled for a hearing later this week, also takes aim at federal attempts to seize ballots or other election material. It would require that state officials receive notification of such a move.
Blumenthal said state lawmakers can’t prevent seizures such as the January search by the FBI on an election center in Fulton County, Ga., a Democratic stronghold that includes Atlanta. But he said, “there might be an opportunity for our state attorney general’s office or the secretary of the state’s office to challenge that.”
Lee and Haigh write for the Associated Press. Haigh reported from Hartford, Conn. AP writer Oliva Diaz in Richmond, Va., and David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo., contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Attorneys for a Sacramento DACA recipient who was deported to Mexico last month have filed a lawsuit against the federal government seeking her immediate return to the U.S.
Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, 42, was detained Feb. 18 during a scheduled interview for her green card application. She was deported to Mexico the next day, despite having active deportation protection through the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
According to the lawsuit, Estrada Juarez, who worked as a regional manager for Motel 6, was deported without being provided notice of a lawful removal order and without the opportunity to fight her case before an immigration judge.
“Maria’s deportation was unlawful and violated basic principles of due process,” said her attorney Stacy Tolchin. “She had a valid DACA status, she appeared for her immigration appointment as instructed, and she should never have been removed from the country.”
Estrada Juarez’s case garnered public attention and outrage from members of Congress, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), after being published in the Sacramento Bee.
According to her lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday,it’s unclear whether an order for her removal was ever issued. And even if one was issued, the complaint says, “Petitioner could not legally be removed from the United States while in DACA status.”
The complaint states that the one document Estrada Juarez received was a verification of her physical removal from the U.S. — not a removal order. The document states that she is barred from returning to the U.S. for 10 years because she had been ordered removed by an immigration judge.
The lawsuit calls that contention untrue — Estrada Juarez has never been in removal proceedings and has never seen an immigration judge. Her arrest at her immigration interview was the first time she learned she had been ordered removed in 1998.
The Department of Homeland Security told The Times that a judge had ordered Estrada Juarez’s deportation in 1998 “and she was removed from the United States shortly after.”
“She illegally re-entered the U.S. — a felony,” Homeland Security said. “She was arrested and her final order re-instated. ICE removed her from the U.S. on February 19, 2026.”
In 2014, Estrada Juarez went to Mexico using a travel permission for DACA recipients known as advance parole. She reentered the U.S. legally on Dec. 28, 2014.
According to the lawsuit, “reinstatement of removal requires an illegal reentry, and Petitioner’s last entry was on advance parole so would not fall under that ground.”
The lawsuit includes an emergency request for the federal government to facilitate Estrada Juarez’s return while the case is pending.
Estrada Juarez applied for legal permanent residency, or a green card, through her daughter, Damaris Bello, 22, a U.S. citizen. Her DACA status is valid until April 23, according to the lawsuit, and she has a pending renewal application.
Estrada Juarez said the U.S., where she lived for 27 years since her arrival at age 15, is the only home she has ever known.
“I followed the rules and showed up to my immigration appointment believing I was taking the next step toward stability,” she said. “Instead, I was taken away from my daughter and forced out of the country overnight.”
