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Audit: Minneapolis police did not violate sanctuary policy during federal raid in June • Minnesota Reformer [1]

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Date: 2025-08-05

Minneapolis police did not violate the city’s policy barring officers from assisting in immigration enforcement during a federal raid at a Mexican restaurant in June, according to a report by the city’s independent auditor released on Tuesday.

Minneapolis police officers’ presence outside Las Cuatro Milpas on June 3 while federal agents executed a search warrant related to a narcotics and human trafficking investigation has ignited a fierce debate at City Hall over whether the city’s police force should ever assist ICE as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations.

Dozens of federal officers from ICE, FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies arriving at the intersection of Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue with armored vehicles, assault weapons and zip-ties quickly drew hundreds protesting their presence in the largely immigrant neighborhood.

Minneapolis police officers including Chief Brian O’Hara responded to the scene to prevent civil unrest along a stretch of Lake Street that was looted and vandalized in 2020 during the protests of the police killing of George Floyd.

City Council members and immigrant advocates questioned whether the department was abiding by the city’s “separation ordinance,” which bars officers from undertaking any action for the purpose of detecting the presence of undocumented people or arresting people for violating federal civil immigration laws.

The ordinance does not bar officers from assisting federal authorities in other criminal operations, and federal authorities later said the operation was part of a series of raids at eight locations across the Twin Cities metro area following the discovery of 900 pounds of methamphetamine in a Burnsville storage locker. An ICE spokesperson said the “groundbreaking” operation was Minnesota’s first under President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Task Force, which he established via executive order on the first day of his second term.

No one was arrested in Minneapolis as part of the raid, but Las Cuatro Milpas owner Francisco Estrada-Deltaro was later taken into custody and charged with re-entering the U.S. after being deported, the Star Tribune reported.

In his report, City Auditor Robert Timmerman said the Minneapolis Police Department did not know about the raid until just before 10 a.m. when dispatch aired an alert that Lake and Bloomington would be closed. O’Hara was notified minutes later of the presence of federal law enforcement while he was attending a roll call at the police training facility in north Minneapolis.

With scarce official communication about the raid, members of the city council and the mayor’s administration quickly began to accuse one another of spreading misinformation.

Council Member Jason Chavez, who was on the scene, was informed by MPD at 11:39 a.m. that the federal action was not immigration related. Minutes later, Chavez posted to social media saying “they” lied and ICE agents were present, according to a timeline prepared by the city auditor.

Those two facts aren’t necessarily contradictory, and the city auditor found both the mayor and the city council were truthful in their official communications.

City council members blasted the police department and mayor’s office for not officially notifying them until 1:50 p.m., nearly four hours after O’Hara learned of the action. That left council members in a “void” of information, according to the auditor, who recommended the city improve its communication practices.

The auditor’s report did little to quell the debate over the police’s cooperation with federal law enforcement.

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents the area where the raid occurred, said ICE poses a “dangerous threat to our community” no matter the reason for their presence.

“They may be going for drug trafficking, sex trafficking, but at the end of the day, if they see our undocumented community members right there as bystanders, they have shown that they will take them as collateral damage,” Chavez said during a council meeting on Tuesday before a crowd of supporters holding signs reading “No Crowd Control” and “Real Sanctuary Now.”

Chavez along with the rest of the progressive wing of the council said the city should revise its ordinance to further restrict police coordination with ICE.

“Our community in south Minneapolis on Lake and Bloomington experienced trauma, experienced pain and an escalation by the federal government,” he added.

The ordinance is now a major issue in the race for mayor, with all candidates save Mayor Jacob Frey saying they would discipline O’Hara for his presence on the scene.

“No serious mayor would commit to disciplining Chief O’Hara for something that never happened,” Frey said at the time. “The facts are clear — it wasn’t an immigration raid, and the MPD was not involved in its execution. No chief will work for a mayor who misrepresents their conduct for political gain.”

DFL-endorsed challenger Sen. Omar Fateh said the Minneapolis police should never cooperate with ICE.

“No matter the circumstance, especially when MPD is short staffed, even helping Trump’s Federal agents do ‘crowd control’ is unconscionable. MPD should be responding to urgent calls and clearing its backlog of unsolved crimes, not doing Trump’s bidding,” Fateh said on social media the day after the raid.

Fateh said if elected he would support strengthening the separation ordinance and fire officers who violate the policy against cooperating with ICE.

Gov. Tim Walz called the enforcement action “chaotic,” though said he supports law enforcement stopping criminal activity. Attorney General Keith Ellison said it seemed the point of the heavy militarized presence “was to inflict terror and fear into the community.”

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[1] Url: https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/08/05/audit-minneapolis-police-did-not-violate-sanctuary-policy-during-federal-raid-in-june/

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