In yet another big legal win for the Trump Administration, the three-judge panel 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and put a stay on a lower court ruling that prevented officers from arresting, detaining, pepper-spraying or retaliating against protesters in Minneapolis.
For reference, until Tim Walz bent the knee to President Trump and sent in the Minnesota police to start clearing rioters and protesters, ICE personnel and other federal agents were having to deal with the anti-ICE agitators themselves, including when the protests turned into riots and the radical leftists started attacking ICE personnel.
Infuriatingly, a rogue and woke lower court then determined that ICE agents could not use effective crowd control tactics such as pepper-spraying rioters, and that it was forbidden from detaining or arresting them under most circumstances. The combined weight of those absurd restrictions would have been, as the rogue lower court no doubt intended, to fully block ICE from defending itself or carrying out its mission in the face of unceasing agitation that attempted to block it from carrying out effective immigration law enforcement operations.
Fortunately, the 8th Circuit shot that down and put a stay on the rogue lower court’s absurd ruling. In its ruling on the matter, the three-judge panel noted, “We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did.” It continued, “What they show is observers and protesters engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways.”
Putting a stay on the order until the final outcome of the federal government’s appeal happens, the court said, “The district court entered a preliminary injunction with respect to federal immigration-enforcement operations in Minnesota. The injunction is unlikely to survive the government’s interlocutory appeal, see 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), so we stay it pending a final decision in this case.”
Emphasizing that determination again at the end of the ruling, the appellate panel then noted, “We accordingly grant the government’s emergency motion for a stay pending appeal, deny the plaintiffs’ emergency motion to lift the administrative stay as moot, and grant their request for expedited merits briefing.”
Also in the ruling, the court noted the sort of situation ICE agents and others are facing makes it near impossible to justifiably place any blanket prohibitions on their use of crowd-control tactics, saying, “Even the provision that singles out the use of “pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools” requires federal agents to predict what the district court would consider “peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” The videos underscore how difficult it would be for them to decide who has crossed the line: they show a fast-changing mix of peaceful and obstructive conduct, with many protestors getting in officers’ faces and blocking their vehicles as they conduct their activities, only for some of them to then rejoin the crowd and intermix with others who were merely recording and observing the scene.”
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AG Pam Bondi, celebrating the ruling, said, in a post on X, “Liberal judges tried to handcuff our federal law enforcement officers, restrict their actions, and put their safety at risk when responding to violent agitators.” She added, “The DOJ went to court. We got a temporary stay. NOW, the 8th Circuit has fully agreed that this reckless attempt to undermine law enforcement cannot stand.”
Watch Tom Homan threaten a zero-tolerance policy against anti-ICE agitation here: