The Columbia Heights City Council unanimously approved a resolution Feb. 9 calling for an end to nationwide surges by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection and urges Congress to withhold additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security without what it describes as stronger oversight and enforcement limits.
Council Member Rachel James read the resolution aloud as written. It states that the administration of President Donald Trump is carrying out an “assault on communities in the name of immigration enforcement” that is “eroding our constitutional rights and endangering residents.”
The resolution states that immigration authorities are increasingly using tactics including “unprovoked violence,” excessive use of force — in some cases resulting in the killing of civilians — and the deployment of chemical weapons.
It further states that federal agents have violently arrested individuals, including U.S. citizens, and have deployed chemical weapons without warning in residential areas, harming schoolchildren and local law enforcement officers.
From September 2025 through January 2026, the resolution states, immigration agents shot at least nine people, including three who later died from their injuries. The victims named include Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who the resolution says were shot by federal law enforcement officers in Minneapolis in 2026.
The resolution also states that immigration agents detained two children while they were traveling to or from school and deployed chemical agents on school grounds against students and staff. It states that these actions led some children to be too afraid to attend school, which it describes as a right guaranteed to students in all 50 states.
The resolution states that federal legislation passed in 2025 increased funding for immigration enforcement, detention and deportation by $170 billion, directing resources to ICE and CBP that the council says came at the expense of community priorities such as housing and health care.
It also states that conditions in immigration detention facilities are rapidly deteriorating because of overcrowding and, according to detained individuals and advocates, medical neglect, substandard food, inadequate access to clean water and overuse of solitary confinement.
The resolution states that 90% of detained individuals are held in for-profit facilities, which it says “have a long record of cutting corners on essential services to reap profits.”
Since Trump took office, the resolution states, 37 people have died in ICE custody. It also states that immigration enforcement is a civil system rather than a criminal one and that detention is intended to be nonpunitive.
The resolution calls for an end to border patrol deployments and what it describes as lawless surges by ICE and CBP nationwide. It urges Congress not to approve additional DHS funding without “meaningful and significant guardrails.”
Those guardrails would include requiring warrants for arrests; ending the use of masked agents; prohibiting enforcement actions based on race, accent, place of employment or location at the time of apprehension; and barring enforcement at locations such as day cares, schools, houses of worship and hospitals.
The resolution also calls for an end to the use of private, for-profit detention facilities; a prohibition on funding facilities that threaten the health, safety or due process rights of detained individuals; and the restoration of access to bond hearings.
It further calls for preserving the authority of state and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute alleged crimes and excessive use-of-force incidents, including requirements that evidence be preserved and shared.
The resolution also calls for requiring the consent of state and local governments before conducting large-scale operations outside targeted immigration enforcement.
Finally, the council urged Congress to make “deep and meaningful” reductions to immigration enforcement funding authorized under the 2025 legislation and redirect those funds toward housing and health care. It also called on Congress to develop a plan to restructure DHS to increase accountability.
The city clerk was directed to send a copy of the resolution to each member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation.