On Saturday, a federal judge refused Minnesota’s bid to halt the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement operation in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, leaving in place the deployment of thousands of ICE and Border Patrol agents.

Minnesota state officials had asked the court for an emergency injunction to stop “Operation Metro Surge,” a surge of roughly 3,000 federal immigration officers that they argued went beyond lawful federal authority and violated state sovereignty. 

They had accused the administration of using enforcement as political leverage against the predominantly Democratic state, alleging civil-rights violations and disproportionate targeting.

“Plaintiffs ask the Court to extend existing precedent to a new context where its application is less direct — namely, to an unprecedented deployment of armed federal immigration officers to aggressively enforce immigration statutes,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez wrote in the decision.

“None of the cases on which they rely have even come close,” the judge added.