MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately restore detainees’ access to lawyers in Minnesota and to halt rapid out-of-state transfers that sever legal contacts, finding the agency’s recent practices “all but extinguish a detainee’s access to counsel.”
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel, appointed by President Donald Trump, issued a 14-day temporary restraining order in a class-action lawsuit filed Jan. 27 on behalf of noncitizen detainees. The order requires the government to allow attorney-client visits and private phone calls, and to stop quickly moving people out of Minnesota while the case proceeds.
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The lawsuit challenges ICE’s conduct during a recent enforcement push known as Operation Metro Surge. In her ruling, Brasel said policies carried out during the surge—including depriving detainees of phone access and swiftly relocating them without notice—effectively cut off thousands of people from their lawyers, contradicting the agency’s own claims.
“Defendants allocated substantial resources to sending thousands of agents to Minnesota, detaining thousands of people and housing them in their facilities,” Brasel wrote. “Defendants cannot suddenly lack resources when it comes to protecting detainees’ constitutional rights.”
Advocacy group Democracy Forward brought the suit on behalf of detainees, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE were using short-term holding sites and transfers to frustrate legal representation and oversight. “The right to a lawyer is not optional in the U.S.,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said in a statement. “DHS has been detaining people in a building never meant for long-term custody, shackling them, secretly transferring them out of state and blocking access to counsel and oversight in a deliberate effort to evade accountability.”
ICE did not dispute that detainees have a constitutional right to counsel and told the court it has no policy of preventing meetings with attorneys. But Brasel found that in practice the agency’s procedures isolated people from their lawyers, and that plaintiffs submitted “substantial and specific” evidence rebutting ICE’s “threadbare” explanations and assertions of limited resources.
Most detainees swept up in the operation were initially held at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, according to the ruling. Many were then moved out of state with no prior notice, leaving attorneys with no way to locate or contact their clients. In some cases, detainees were transferred so quickly and so often that ICE itself lost track of their whereabouts, the court found.
The court’s temporary order bars the government from rapidly transferring detainees out of Minnesota and directs ICE to facilitate confidential attorney-client visits and phone calls while the case moves forward. The order remains in place for 14 days, with further proceedings expected as the class-action continues.
The case centers on whether ICE’s operational choices during heightened enforcement unlawfully impede basic due-process protections. For now, Brasel’s ruling restores a legal lifeline for the people detained, placing the burden on ICE and DHS to ensure immediate, reliable access to counsel inside and beyond Minnesota.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
