State AGs back Minnesota, facing ‘ransom’ demands by Bondi

MANHATTAN (CN) — A coalition of Democratic attorneys general on Thursday penned a scathing letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom they accused of trying to strong-arm Minnesota leaders amid rising tensions with federal immigration agents in “Operation Metro Surge.”

“The inescapable reality is that the federal government is engaging in a dangerous and ongoing assault on the state of Minnesota and its residents,” the coalition said in the letter, which was also addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “You and other federal officials demand that we ignore the unlawful acts that our eyes clearly see and accept pretextual justifications or outright fabrications instead.”

The fiery memo comes after Bondi demanded voter rolls, information on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program registration and an end to “sanctuary policies” in Minnesota from Democratic Governor Tim Walz. She outlined those demands in a letter to Walz over the weekend — on the same day federal immigration agents shot and killed U.S. citizen Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis in an incident that sparked bipartisan outrage.

“You and your office must restore the rule of law, support ICE officers and bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” Bondi wrote, pinning blame for the violence on Walz and other Democrats in the state. “Fortunately, there are common sense solutions to these problems that I hope we can accomplish together.”

Bondi’s demands, according to the coalition of attorneys general, don’t read as a good-faith coordination effort but rather as “an after-the-fact attempt to justify a highly concerning federal operation” amid national scrutiny.

“Your letter, penned on the very day federal agents took the life of a second civilian on Minnesota’s streets, makes plain the true purpose behind the administration’s violent and unlawful assault,” wrote the coalition of ICE’s deployment in Minneapolis. “It is not to uncover fraud or pursue criminal undocumented immigrants, but rather to terrify the people of Minnesota and coerce the state into abandoning policies and protections it has the sovereign authority to pursue.”

According to the state attorneys general, Bondi’s order for voter rolls is based on unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud by the Trump administration.

For years, President Donald Trump and his allies have repeated the baseless assertion that large sums of undocumented people are fraudulently casting ballots in U.S. elections, which he has used to help justify the increasingly violent immigration enforcement effort by the Department of Homeland Security.

His efforts to prove those assertions have fallen flat, leading the attorneys general to conclude the administration is “attempting through force what it cannot achieve through the courts.”

“To be clear, the administration has offered no actual evidence to back up such massive federal overreaches and intrusions on state sovereignty and individual privacy,” the coalition wrote.

The attorneys general lobbed the same accusation at Bondi’s demand that Minnesota repeal its so-called “sanctuary policies.”

“Having failed to compel these state and local policy changes in court, you now seek to do so through the threat of continuing this unprecedented deployment of federal agents in Minnesota,” they wrote.

And Bondi’s bid for Minnesotans’ SNAP information has been deemed illegal in numerous lawsuits against the government, many of them brought by the same state officials who signed off on Thursday’s letter, the coalition wrote.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the coalition, said in a statement that the federal government is asking them to “accept a belated justification for its unlawful actions in Minnesota.”

“We refuse to be intimidated by these threats, and we reject their unlawful demands that infringe on Minnesota’s fundamental sovereignty,” James said.

The state’s own officials have sharply rebuked Bondi’s letter. Walz quipped at a news conference that Bondi should focus on releasing the Epstein files. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon called the memo an “apparent ransom to pay for our state’s peace and security.”

Twenty-one other attorneys general co-signed Thursday’s letter with James, including those from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

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