Pam Bondi Attaches Strings to Restoration of Rule of Law in Minnesota
Hours after ICE agents gunned down—in execution style– a peaceful Minnesota resident, 37-year old Alex Pretti, in a graphic scene, witnessed, through the recording capacity of smart phones, by tens of millions of people across the world and one carved forever into human consciousness, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Governor Tim Walz, in which she wrote that “the rule of law can be restored,” if you do the following things. In the letter, Bondi refers to the Trump Administration’s aggressive deployment of immigration agents to Minneapolis— “Operation Metro Surge” — and asks Walz to surrender detailed information about the state’s voters, including their dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.
The staid, conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal declared that Bondi’s letter “conditions” the rule of law. Minnesota officials agree: Bondi is trying to leverage immigration enforcement to obtain the state’s voter lists. But they have rightly rejected the bullying tactics to coerce surrender of sensitive voter data that the Department of Justice is not entitled to have. While Congress has statutorily vested the federal government with sweeping authority to enforce immigration laws, it has retained for itself, in conjunction with Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, primary authority over voting laws and policies. The GOP-controlled Congress, which has acquiesced in President Trump’s aggrandizement of legislative powers, has yet to cede control over the fundamental right to vote, thus reaffirming the wisdom of the framers of the Constitution, who wisely fenced off the executive because of its self-interest in the outcome of elections.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Menedez is alive to this coercive connection. In a hearing involving Minnesota’s lawsuit against the Trump Administration that centers on the surge and violent tactics of ICE agents, Judge Menendez asked a justice department attorney whether Bondi, in her letter, was trying to “achieve a goal through force, which it can’t achieve through the courts.” The government’s attorney denied the connection, but the judge’s question seems rhetorical.
The nature of the surge has raised a host of issues surrounding the First, Second, Fourth and Tenth Amendments. Minnesota contends that the enforcement activities of immigration agents have trampled its 10th Amendment rights and state sovereignty, including its police power authority.
Meanwhile, private litigation is underway against ICE for violating protestors’ First Amendment rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and the right to observe and record the practice of ICE. Fourth Amendment litigation is spot on, as well, as ICE agents have barged into the homes of Minneapolis residents in violation of the protection against illegal search and seizure. ICE officials have entered homes without a judicial warrant.
The Second Amendment has been brought center stage because Mr. Pretti was carrying a firearm in his waistband, in conjunction with Minnesota law and Supreme Court rulings. Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, minutes after the shooting death of Mr. Pretti, falsely accused him of being a “domestic terrorist” and “brandishing” a firearm that put the lives of ICE agents in jeopardy. Numerous videos confirm that it was an ICE agent who removed the gun from Mr. Pretti’s waistband. ICE agents were never threatened. A dozen republican members of Congress have called for a “fair and impartial investigation” of the shooting, predicated on the fact that Mr. Pretti was lawfully exercising his Second Amendment right.
The threat to voting rights, reflected in the Trump Administration’s months-long demand for the state’s voting rolls, and Bondi’s letter, is that once these lists are obtained, it will be relatively simply for those in possession of them to intimidate voters. The DOJ has sued about two dozen states for their voter rolls, but judges have yet to rule to in most of these cases. However, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit against California, declaring that the DOJ is not entitled to that information.
Under the Constitution, states are responsible for running elections, although Congress is given supervisory authority. Congress, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, ruled, has not given the administration the authority “to centralize the private information of all Americans within the Executive Branch.” Judge Carter recognized that possession of the list in the hands of the DOJ “would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose.”