Three local law enforcement leaders expressed concern over federal immigration agents’ behavior over the last few weeks, including stopping off-duty officers of color.
“These types of civil rights violations have to stop,” said Mark Bruley, Chief of Brooklyn Park Police Department.
The law enforcement leaders also said federal agents don’t seem to be coordinating their work across the metro, and that a small group of federal agents are causing problems by stopping community members in traffic and in the street with no cause, and demanding that they produce paperwork proving they’re in the country legally.
They said it’s difficult getting any information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which sends them to an online complaint form that can’t be completed because it requires identifying the federal agent in question, and agents in Minnesota wear masks and don’t wear any public identifying information. Minnesota police officers’ last names are stitched onto their uniforms, and they wear badges with ID numbers that trace back to them.
They added that immigration authorities’ actions are eroding trust that local law enforcement have been trying to rebuild with the community since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020.
“The trust is fragile right now,” Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt told reporters. “Today, that trust is being damaged and broken by the questionable and unethical actions of some federal agents. When one person in law enforcement does something wrong, we all pay the cost.”
Bruley, Witt and St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry told reporters at a news conference Tuesday morning that their offices have been flooded in the past few weeks with complaints from residents alleging that ICE violated their civil rights. All three also said officers of color from their departments had been stopped by immigration agents as well.
Bruley spoke of an off-duty female officer who was recently pulled over by an immigration agent. He said the officer is a U.S. citizen who was profiled because of her skin color.
The incident occurred after the Brooklyn Park officer drove past an ICE vehicle. The immigration agents pulled her over and demanded her immigration paperwork, Bruley said, which she doesn’t have because she’s a citizen.
The Brooklyn Park officer took out her phone and started recording the conversation, only to have her phone knocked away by an immigration agent, Bruley said.
“The officers had their guns drawn during the situation,” he said. “After the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident down.”
The immigration officers then left the scene “without an apology,” Bruley said.
“If it’s happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day,” he said. “It has to stop.”
Bruley added that federal immigration agents aren’t allowed to conduct traffic stops unless they have reasonable suspicion that the driver is in the country illegally.
“They’re not allowed to do traffic stops and tell people that they’re stopping them for speeding,” he said. “Which is what we’re seeing.”
Witt and Henry told reporters that similar incidents were happening to their officers, though they didn’t provide specific examples.
Henry said that St. Paul police officers had experienced traffic stops “that were clearly outside the bounds of what federal agents are allowed to do.” He said that unlike the Brooklyn Park incident, the federal agents “thankfully” didn’t have their weapons drawn during the incidents.
St. Paul police spokesperson Alyssa Arcand said two St. Paul police officers had encounters with federal immigration agents over the past few weeks. The agents asked for immigration papers, and only ended the encounter after the off-duty officers identified themselves as police officers.
“Law enforcement has more authority than a general citizen,” Henry told reporters. “That means we have more responsibility in how we behave. We have to find common ground here.”
Axel added that civil rights protections must be the “cornerstone” guiding local police and federal agents.
Bruley later told reporters that more than two dozen local police officers have reached out to the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association’s attorneys with complaints about federal immigration agents’ conduct towards them or the public.
All three local law enforcement leaders said they support the federal government’s right to carry out immigration enforcement, and blamed the alleged infractions on a “small group” of immigration agents.
Hennepin County Sheriff DeWanna Witt speaks at a news conference at the State Capitol on Jan. 20, 2026, saying federal agents are eroding trust with the public. Credit: Chris Juhn for Sahan Journal
Witt and Bruley called on political leaders in Washington D.C. to address and fix the situation.
“I am seeing and hearing about people in Hennepin stopped, harassed and questioned solely because of the color of their skin,” Witt said. “That same discrimination is also spilling into the law enforcement community. When we have concrete examples of profiling, we have to do the right thing.”
Bruley added that he doesn’t think that the problematic conduct was “coming from the top.”
“I don’t think the leaders in Washington D.C. fully understand what some of the groups are doing here on the street, and how much damage that they’re causing,” Bruley said. “And that’s why we are here, to kind of bring this to light.”
The news conference comes a few weeks after the federal government ramped up Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, and a host of controversial federal action, including the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Macklin Good. The operation began in early December when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency sent 100 additional agents to Minnesota to conduct immigration work.
The federal government significantly expanded the operation earlier this month, sending between 2,000 and 3,000 more immigration agents to Minnesota. Federal authorities say they’ve arrested 3,000 immigrants as part of the operation, and have called it the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.
The operation has led to constant protests in the Twin Cities, which intensified after Good’s killing. Good, a U.S. citizen, was killed in south Minneapolis while monitoring immigration activity. A federal agent shot and wounded Julio Cesar Sosa Celis in north Minneapolis a week later during an attempted immigration arrest.
Several U.S. citizens have reported being racially profiled and detained by federal agents, and citizens observing immigration activity have also reported being arrested and held for hours at a time.
The operation has resulted in several lawsuits aimed at curbing ICE behavior, including from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.
