AG Bondi demanded Minnesota turn over voter rolls, Medicaid/SNAP data, end sanctuary policies amid deadly ICE crackdown

On January 24, 2026, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi sent Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz a letter demanding the state comply with a list of federal requests as a condition for what she called restoring "the rule of law," hours after a Border Patrol officer fatally shot U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Bondi's letter demanded that Minnesota share its Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipient data with federal officials, repeal its "sanctuary" policies and have state correctional facilities cooperate with ICE detainers, and allow the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to access the state's voter rolls, invoking the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The letter extended a monthslong Justice Department campaign, waged through lawsuits against dozens of other states, to compel state voter-registration and benefit-program data that federal courts have repeatedly found the department lacks clear authority to demand.

Minnesota had for months resisted the underlying data demands. Secretary of State Steve Simon called Bondi's letter "an outrageous attempt to coerce Minnesota into giving the federal government private data on millions of U.S. Citizens in violation of state and federal law," noting his office had already offered the DOJ the state's already-public voter data without result. Governor Walz's office said the letter's voter-roll request was unrelated to any legitimate concern and urged the administration to instead end its "occupation" of Minnesota; Walz told Bondi to focus instead on releasing the Epstein files. Congressional Democrats, including Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Chris Murphy, characterized the letter as an attempt to trade withdrawal of the deadly federal immigration surge for control of the state's election and benefit data.

Updates

2026-06-26 — DOJ sued Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania over SNAP data refusal [7]

The Justice Department sued the four states for refusing to provide five years of SNAP applicant data to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which it said it needed to verify proper benefit administration and detect fraud. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said the states had repeatedly refused USDA's requests, most recently in May 2026.

2026-08-17 — Federal judge dismissed DOJ's earlier lawsuit seeking Minnesota's voter rolls [8]

A U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota judge dismissed a separate DOJ lawsuit, filed in September 2025 and predating Bondi's letter, that had sought Minnesota's unredacted statewide voter registration list. The court ruled the federal government lacked authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 or the Help America Vote Act and called the demand an improper "fishing expedition," since DOJ made no allegation Minnesota had failed to maintain its rolls. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called it the state's 23rd consecutive win against such suits nationwide; Secretary of State Steve Simon said "the private data entrusted to my office does not belong to the federal government."