MINNEAPOLIS, United States (AFP)-A US judge delivered a blow Saturday to Minnesota’s bid to force Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend its sweeping detention and deportation operation in the state.

Federal authorities under US President Donald Trump have swept through Minnesota communities seeking undocumented migrants, detaining thousands and shooting dead two US citizens in the process, sparking outrage.

Ruling on Minnesota’s bid to obtain a temporary restraining order, federal judge Katherine Menendez wrote in a ruling “ultimately, the Court finds that the balance of harms does not decisively favor an injunction.”

Minnesota argues that the month-long federal operation violated its sovereignty as a state.

Menendez said she was not making a final judgment on the state’s overall case in her decision not to issue a temporary restraining order, something that would follow arguments in court.

She also made no determination on whether the bitterly divisive immigration crackdown in the state had broken the law.

The ruling follows a massive protest by tens of thousands of Minnesotans on Friday against the operation, Metro Surge, which is also opposed by the state’s Democratic establishment.- ‘Disappointed’ –

The mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota’s largest city and the leading target of federal sweeps, said “of course, we’re disappointed.”

“This decision doesn’t change what people here have lived through — fear, disruption, and harm caused by a federal operation that never belonged in Minneapolis in the first place,” Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement.

The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by masked, heavily armed agents sparked a nationwide outcry after which Trump withdrew combative Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino and replaced him with his border point man Tom Homan who pledged to draw down the operation, with conditions.

Ahead of Saturday’s ruling, Hamline University politics and legal studies professor David Schultz said that Minnesota was arguing that the national government through the ICE enforcement and other actions was “trying to force or coerce the state into doing certain things.”

“Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to the state of Minnesota after Alex Pretti was killed, and said, ‘Well, if you want the ICE operations to stop, we want you to do this, this and this.’ It kind of read like a threat,” Schultz said.

Bondi described the judge’s ruling as a “huge” legal win for the Justice Department.

“Neither sanctuary policies nor meritless litigation will stop the Trump Administration from enforcing federal law in Minnesota,” she wrote in a post on X.