Minneapolis police chief reiterates policy prohibiting officers from enforcing immigration law
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With days to go before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office with mass deportation plans, the Minneapolis Police Department issued a statement this week reiterating its policy that forbids officers from asking people about their immigration status in most cases.
In the statement, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the policy has been updated to include revised language on acceptable forms of ID — including ID cards from foreign governments, and different types of visas such as the U Visa. These are issued to people with nonimmigrant status who are victims of certain crimes.
O’Hara said MPD policy only allows officers to question immigration status in the case of human trafficking or smuggling, where immigration status is an element of the crime.
“The police department can only be effective when community tells us what’s going on, when community is willing to tell us when they’ve been victimized, when they need help, and it would have a very chilling effect on our ability to provide public safety in the city if people were afraid to call the Minneapolis police because they think we’re going to call Immigration on them. … We have no interest in people’s immigration status,” O’Hara said in a recent interview. “That’s not our business"
O’Hara added that the MPD policy follows a city ordinance that prohibits “any law enforcement action for the purpose of detecting the presence of undocumented persons, or to verify immigration status.”
In 2017, then-President Trump signed an executive order stating that cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul with policies preventing police from reporting undocumented immigrants to federal authorities could risk losing federal funding. At the time, the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul announced they would not change those policies.
Later that year a federal judge blocked the order.
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