Micah in Minneapolis

After a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent shot and killed another U.S. citizen in an incident caught on video in Minneapolis on Saturday, Assembly Member Micah Lasher bought a plane ticket. The lawmaker landed in the Twin Cities on Sunday morning to underscore his opposition to the Trump administration’s deportation agenda while he runs for Congress in New York’s 12th Congressional District. 

The temperature was in the single digits as Lasher attended a protest and a vigil for slain nurse Alex Pretti. City & State spoke with the Democrat as he was en route to a neighborhood patrol in suburban Saint Paul that he would join with a local state senator.

Lasher said he has several goals for the trip: “To bear witness to what is happening, to show solidarity with the people of Minneapolis, to encourage other elected officials and community leaders from around the country who may have the wherewithal to come here to do so, to learn from the experience of what has happened here in Minneapolis, and to be able to report those lessons back to my friends and neighbors and colleagues in New York.” He did not mention getting elected to Congress, but opposition to federal immigration enforcement has emerged as a somewhat contentious issue in the race. 

One of his opponents, Upper East Side Assembly Member Alex Bores, last week needled Lasher for not calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier than he did. Bores, meanwhile, has been criticized for his past work for the controversial tech company Palantir, which counts ICE among its clients. An AI industry super PAC is already running ads alleging “ICE is powered by Bores’s tech.” Bores and Lasher both attended anti-ICE protests in New York on Friday and Saturday.

“I'll exercise the grace that perhaps (Bores) hasn't been able to find and say that I know that both he and I are very concerned about what is happening in this country at the hands of the ICE thugocracy,” Lasher said. “And I think if there's any difference, it's simply that I've taken legislative action that is making meaningful progress as part of the budget process this year.”

Lasher is sponsoring two bills Gov. Kathy Hochul has already opted to include in her budget proposal pertaining to ICE: the first would prohibit ICE from entering certain sensitive locations including schools, churches and hospitals without a judicial warrant. The second would allow individual New Yorkers to file civil suits against individual federal agents in state court if their constitutional rights are violated.

“I commend Micah for going to Minneapolis and uplifting local voices,” Bores said in response. “We need ICE out of Minnesota, abolished, and prosecuted.”

By the time he spoke with City & State Sunday afternoon, Lasher said he had not yet actually seen federal agents on the ground in Minneapolis, but he had spoken with several people impacted by the agency’s aggressive enforcement actions. He also said on X that he saw a deportation plane at the airport. Lasher was accompanied by one campaign staffer, and he said he is acquainted with Minnesota lawmakers through efforts over the past year and a half to coordinate state legislators across the country to push back on Trump administration policies. Weather permitting, Lasher planned to return to New York Tuesday.