A lawsuit filed Thursday by the Department of Justice against the City of St. Paul seeks to block local ordinances barring federal agents from wearing masks and requiring them to visibly display their agency names on their uniforms.
The St. Paul City Council passed the ordinances in mid-February after White House border czar Tom Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents to the Twin Cities.
DOJ attorneys claimed in a news release that the laws "threaten the safety of federal officers who have faced an unprecedented wave of harassment, doxxing, and even violence."
“Under the Supremacy Clause of our Nation’s Constitution, states and localities cannot regulate the Federal Government and its law enforcement officers,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. “And they certainly cannot enact laws that place the safety of federal law enforcement at risk and undermine federal operations authorized by Congress. This Department of Justice will never tolerate the doxxing or harassment of federal officers, or any law like those in St. Paul and Portland that enables violent behavior against federal law enforcement officers and their families.”
Tactics used by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge and other operations nationwide come under heavy scrutiny, with growing, with rising calls for accountability following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
“These St. Paul and Portland local laws are a direct regulation of federal law enforcement operations and threaten severe consequences for officers and public safety alike,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The Federal Government, not state and local governments, gets to decide which equipment federal officers may or may not wear when performing their official duties.”
The DOJ has previously found success challenging such mask bans, including in California, where a similar law was struck down because it failed to apply to state or local officers.
