Officials in Minnesota and Illinois filed lawsuits just hours apart on Monday, aiming to limit the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement in their states.
The cases are separate and differ in key details, but both lean on the 10th Amendment to argue that the increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents amounts to federal overreach—one that undermines state authority. State leaders say the enforcement surge has also fueled protests nationwide and heightened fear and unrest in major cities.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office believes the federal buildup violates the 10th Amendment, which defines the balance of power between states and the federal government.
“The Constitution gives Minnesota the sovereign authority to protect (the) health and wellbeing of every single person who lives in our borders,” Ellison said Monday while announcing the lawsuit.
“We’re going to defend those rights because – as much as they like to believe it – DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is not above the law, and the people of Minnesota are certainly not beneath it.”
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker framed his state’s lawsuit in even sharper terms, saying Illinois would hold President Donald Trump and his administration “accountable for their unlawful tactics, unnecessary escalations, and flagrant abuses of power.”
The Trump administration, for its part, argues that the Constitution gives the federal government wide latitude to enforce national immigration laws as it sees fit.
In a statement posted on Truth Social Tuesday, Trump defended ICE tactics and wrote: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”
Legal scholars told CNN the lawsuits highlight a longstanding constitutional tension: a state’s ability to govern and protect residents versus the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration policy across the country.
They also raise the possibility of new legal interpretations of a core part of the Bill of Rights, experts said.
Where the State-Federal Boundary Is Being Tested
Constitutional law professor Michele Goodwin of Georgetown University said the significance of the lawsuits starts with the broader purpose of the Bill of Rights—and the special role the 10th Amendment plays within it.
“The Bill of Rights was intended to protect these new Americans, these people who have fled the worst of political oversteps in the United Kingdom,” she said. “(It) was intended to protect individuals against overreach, against abuses of power by government.”
The First Amendment, Goodwin explained, protects freedoms including speech, the press, religion, and peaceful assembly. It also protects the right to petition the government—formally asking for changes without fear of retaliation—and blocks Congress from passing laws that violate these rights.
Other amendments expand protections further. But the 10th Amendment is distinct, Goodwin said, because it directly lays out “federalism”: the division of power between states and the federal government.
To understand why that matters, Goodwin noted it helps to remember that when the Bill of Rights was written, states operated in many ways like separate countries that agreed to share power under one national system.
In effect, the 10th Amendment says that powers not assigned to the federal government by the Constitution—and not barred to states—remain with the states. That framework allowed states to manage major areas of public life, such as education systems, local policing, election rules, and zoning.
Now, more than 230 years after the amendment’s ratification, both Minnesota and Illinois argue the federal enforcement surge is interfering with local governance and making it harder for state and city officials to protect residents.
A New Strategy Built on an Old Amendment
Craig Futterman, a clinical law professor at the University of Chicago, said there’s no serious dispute that the federal government can enforce immigration laws. The open question is whether courts will accept the states’ argument that the way enforcement is being carried out crosses a constitutional line.
“What the state’s theories are, both in Minnesota and in Illinois, is that the federal government is using immigration laws as a ruse to target (Democratic-led) states and cities to retaliate against them and interfere with their local policies; to interfere with their sovereignty,” he said.
Minnesota’s lawsuit claims the administration’s “aggressive and militarized surge” disrupts state and local law enforcement’s ability to address crime and protect public health and safety.
Illinois makes a similar argument, alleging the DHS “incursion” into the state—and what it calls unlawful and violent tactics—has disrupted lives and harmed the liberties and property rights of residents, while also damaging Illinois’ and Chicago’s sovereign and proprietary interests.
Chicago, along with Minneapolis and Saint Paul, are also plaintiffs in the lawsuits against the administration.
Beyond sovereignty, the lawsuits contend the administration’s actions are punitive—intended to pressure state and local governments into adopting federal priorities. In practical terms, both states are asking courts to block ICE from enforcing certain immigration actions in their jurisdictions based on the 10th Amendment—an approach legal experts describe as unusual.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that what is being argued is something that will be recognized by a federal judge or the Supreme Court,” Goodwin said.
“Some of what we see taking shape is what one might call ‘cases of first impression,’” she added—meaning courts may be confronting arguments they haven’t previously had to rule on.
Historically, Futterman said, states have invoked the 10th Amendment in very different contexts. Before the Civil Rights Movement, for example, southern states cited it to argue they had the authority to maintain segregation.
But Goodwin noted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered the federal government to enforce equal protection under the law, overriding state claims of sovereignty on segregation.
Both Goodwin and Futterman said the Minnesota and Illinois lawsuits present a reversal of how 10th Amendment arguments are often used.
“It feels like the politics are being flipped,” Futterman said. “Traditionally state’s rights arguments have been launched often as a defense to federal attempts to enforce civil rights laws to ensure equal protection for all people under the law.”
“And here states are saying ‘Hey what’s going on is the opposite – it’s the federal government that’s actually targeting states for protecting vulnerable populations.’”
“These kinds of cases and lawsuits don’t emerge every day.”
