The state of Montana is investigating its capital city.
Over the past three weeks, the state Department of Justice has threatened to sue the city of Helena. Appearing with the governor by his side Feb. 11, Attorney General Austin Knudsen accused the state capital of violating a state law that bans cities from giving refuge to undocumented immigrants.
“The city of Helena does not make state law,” Knudsen said during the press conference, which focused
on the Helena city commissioners’ January resolution stating that the city will not assist federal immigration agents.
“This is clearly the city council of Helena thumbing its nose at the Montana Legislature,” he said. “If the city of Helena does not like state law, I encourage it to retain counsel, get a lobbyist, come up here to the Capitol during the ’27 legislative session and take its best shot at changing the law.”
Forced into an uncomfortable spotlight, city officials are facing mounting public pressure from residents to stand against the state. A special meeting to discuss possible changes to the resolution is set for Thursday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the Helena Civic Center. On Monday, Helena Mayor Emily Dean said she has invited the attorney general to discuss the resolution with the city. Last week, City Attorney Rebecca Dockter upset some activists and supporters of the resolution when she told commissioners that Helena must “consider its options, including the option of rescinding the resolution itself.”
Only about 2% of Montana’s residents are foreign-born, which is lower than just about any other state. As President Donald Trump has pushed for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ramp up arrests of undocumented immigrants, Montana has been among the states with the fewestarrests.
Activists, officials and lawyers told Montana Free Press that the fight has become about much more than the undocumented immigrants in Helena whose lives might be directly affected if local police agree to cooperate with ICE. Ultimately, the conflict is about local law enforcement’s ability to set its own priorities and a city’s ability to govern in a way that aligns with its residents’ values, they say.
“If the city commission is even considering voting to repeal the entire resolution when only sections have been stated as an issue by the attorney general, it means that they are not accountable to their voter base,” said Lily Clarke, who co-leads the Helena chapter of Montana for Palestine, a political group focused on advocating for Palestinians, Indigenous populations and immigrants, among others.
Marc Racicot, the former Republican Montana attorney general and governor, said the conflict mirrors a nationwide pattern of jurisdictional disputes among federal, state and local governments over who gets to call the shots on immigration enforcement. He called the public announcement of the investigation “political theater” and suggested that the dispute is about more than just immigration enforcement.
“It’s about how to secure control and power and to chisel it into the side of the Capitol building where it will last forever,” Racicot said.
As the conflict develops, leaders from municipalities across the state are watching. On at least one point, critics and advocates of Helena’s resolution are aligned: How the city responds on Thursday, and beyond, could have a ripple effect.
“I think it’s a clear message to try to intimidate other cities, to stop them from doing something similar,” Bozeman Mayor Joey Morrison told MTFP.
For then-Rep. Barry Usher, R-Roundup, who supported the 2021 Montana law prohibiting cities from giving refuge to illegal immigrants, which the attorney general has invoked, that message was always the point.
“This bill is not about racism, it’s not about racial profiling,” he said in February 2021 during a House floor session. “This bill is about sanctuary cities and whether or not we want to allow local municipalities to pass a bill or not. We as a state are saying we do not.”
Knudsen and Gianforte both declined to offer comment on the dispute, citing the ongoing investigation and directing MTFP to their previous public statements. Helena’s city attorney, mayor, police chief and several commissioners also declined to comment, citing a potential legal battle with the state.
Lily Clarke, co-leader of Montana for Palestine’s Helena chapter, didn’t think much of it when a friend called one Tuesday in July. She assumed her friend just wanted to catch up. Instead, she told Clarke she’d seen a brown man in Helena being taken away “by unmarked people in an unmarked vehicle.” That man was Christopher Martinez Marvan, a 31-year-old Mexican citizen who had lived in Helena on and off with his family since 2008. The unmarked vehicle belonged to federal immigration authorities.
The arrest occurred as the Trump administration was deploying federal immigration agents in multiple American cities to enact mass deportation policies, sometimes without clear processes. On that particular day, Helena police officers and federal immigration enforcement officers had been separately searching for two Venezuelan men with outstanding warrants for violent crimes when Helena police pulled over Martinez Marvan for driving with expired license plates.
As Helena officers were writing a traffic citation, the federal authorities arrived on the scene. Body camera footage recorded a Helena police officer telling a colleague, “Yeah, he’s like, he’s being kidnapped right now” as Martinez Marvan was questioned by federal agents, who then took him into custody for being in the country illegally, according to court documents.
Clarke called another local organizer with Waking Giant, an advocacy group focused on mutual aid, housing and democracy. The two drove to Montana Avenue, one of Helena’s busiest streets, where the arrest occurred.
When they got there, Martinez Marvan’s red pickup was parked on the side of the road. Martinez Marvan’s wife, Maria Pacheco, was standing nearby holding one of the couple’s young children on her hip.
“That’s when I thought, we absolutely have to be working on this as a community here in Helena,” Clarke told MTFP in a recent phone interview.
She and organizers from other advocacy groups spent the rest of the day trying to understand what had happened and how they could help. One group of concerned residents and organizers gathered outside the county courthouse. Another went to the county jail where Martinez Marvan had been taken. Another went to the Helena Police Department to talk to officers.
Former Mayor Wilmot Collins wasn’t surprised when Helena community members began consistently showing up at city and county meetings in July, calling for transparency and opposing local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement officers. Helenans, Collins said, “will stand up when things are not right.”
While Missoula is better known as the state’s hub for progressive politics, Montana’s capital was, in many ways, primed for a public conflict over immigration enforcement. Because Helena is home to the state’s only U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, local organizers say they are familiar with immigration processes and the barriers people encounter when seeking citizenship. And while voters in surrounding Lewis and Clark County supported President Trump every year he was on the ballot, urban voters in Helena typically lean Democrat. In a Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll conducted in late December and early January, 100% of Montana Democrats expressed disapproval of Trump’s deportation- and arrest-focused approach to immigration enforcement, while 94% of Montana Republicans expressed support.
Months after organizers first brought the issue to the city commission, immigration enforcement was discussed for the first time at a November meeting. By mid-November, the city commission had tentatively agreed to support codifying immigration advocates’ demands into a city resolution. And in December, the commission discussed a proposed resolution — drafted by City Attorney Rebecca Dockter in conjunction with the Helena Police Department — stating that city police would not aid federal enforcement efforts and that the city would not enter a formal partnership agreement with ICE.
It was around that time that Montana for Palestine boosted its organizing push, “where we were really focused on talking to as many people as we could,” said member Julia Cotter.
Cotter, Clarke and other local organizers met with attorneys, school board leaders and other community stakeholders, encouraging them to express support for the resolution to the city commission. Clarke focused her arguments on taxpayers.
“I said, ’This is a city issue because this is your taxpayer dollars being put to federal immigration enforcement when they could be put to schools, streets and social services. This is about what do you want to see in your city,” she told MTFP.
The big concern for city commissioners at the time, Collins said, was legality.
“Whatever we do, we have to do it cautiously,” he said. “Whatever we do, we must look at what will happen. What’s next? If we’re saying the police must not interact with federal officials, is that legal? … When we make decisions, the decisions should be law-abiding.”
In January, events began to push the issue into the forefront. On Jan. 7, U.S. citizen and mother Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, sparking national outrage and spurring multiple vigils across Montana and the country. Two weeks later, on Jan. 21, Helena Police Chief Brett Petty announced at a city meeting that he had decided to withdraw from a regional drug task force after the task force decided to collaborate with U.S. Border Patrol agents who were being deployed in Helena and Bozeman.
“ I decided to, for Helena PD, to temporarily withdraw from (Missouri River Drug Task Force) because I want to make sure and keep our focus here for Helena PD (on) the policing and the drug activity,” Petty said during a city meeting Jan. 21.
That announcement led many public commenters to thank Petty for his decision during the resolution vote meeting.
Three days after Petty’s announcement, federal immigration officers killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Minneapolis. Two days after that, on Jan. 26, hundreds of people crammed into Helena’s City-County Building to show support for the resolution before the commission’s vote on its adoption. The timing of the vote, Clarke said, gave Helenans a chance to “tangibly engage with what was happening in Minneapolis and say, ‘Not in my city.’”
After nearly three hours of public comment and deliberation, the commission passed the resolution on a 4-1 vote.
The resolution explicitly directs the Helena Police Department not to enter into partnerships with ICE. It states that the city of Helena will not disclose a person’s place of birth, immigration status or national origin, except when required by law or upon a valid court order. It affirms the department’s existing policy that it will not stop, investigate, detain or arrest anyone based on immigration status or suspicion of violating immigration law. And it calls on Helena police to “request” that federal immigration officers remove their masks and identify themselves when they determine that such requests won’t interfere with federal prerogatives.
Clarke said she was both relieved that the resolution passed and disappointed that it didn’t go further. The resolution, she said, serves as “a restatement of policies and a renewed commitment to values.”
Montana has a relatively small immigrant population. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that in 2023, the latest year for which estimates are available, Montana was home to about 6,000 unauthorized residents, representing the lowest per capita population of undocumented immigrants of any state. Supporters of Helena’s resolution say that, numbers aside, the conflict between the city and state matters deeply to the people affected by it.
Maria Pacheco, Martinez Marvan’s wife, told commissioners her husband’s arrest and detainment hurt their family.
“I have two (daughters) that can’t sleep without him, and my girls are just crying and whining and asking for their dad daily, and it’s been affecting us in many ways,” she said. “I’m trying to do the best I can to make my family safe and happy.”
At another meeting, Ilgaz Casey, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Turkey, said immigrants should be treated with respect.
“Let me remind you of something,” she told the commissioners. “No one leaves their homeland just to see what is on the other side of the world, if they can make it or not. People leave out of hopelessness. They leave because their families matter. They leave because there’s no other way. Undocumented immigrants are also human beings, and they deserve to be treated as such.”
After the resolution passed in January, community organizers and city officials said they heard from people across the state who were interested in implementing similar policies in their communities.
“Helena is not known as the most progressive city in the state,” Clarke said. “For Helena to be leading this way was a big deal, for other cities to say, ‘If Helena can do this, then we likely can as well.’”
In February, community members urged officials in Great Falls to take action on federal immigration enforcement. Missoula City Council member Kristen Jordan told MTFP that month that she was drafting a similar resolution.
On Feb. 11, 16 days after the Helena City Commission approved the resolution, Knudsen announced in the joint press conference with Gianforte that the state Department of Justice had opened an investigation into the city for what they described as illegal contradictions between the city resolution and state law. Knudsen and Gianforte alleged the resolution violates a 2021 Montana law prohibiting cities from giving refuge to illegal immigrants.
That law specifically prohibits state agencies and local governments from “enacting or enforcing certain policies concerning citizenship and immigration.” It requires the attorney general to monitor compliance with the law and investigate complaints of noncompliance. The law also carries a $10,000 penalty against cities for every five days of noncompliance, and it says local governments can be denied state funds for noncompliance. If the attorney general’s investigation reveals noncompliance, the law states, “the attorney general shall bring a civil action against the state agency or local government.”
Supporters of the law in 2021 argued that sanctuary cities lead to an increase in criminal activity, and that a bill preventing them would keep Montanans safe.
“We need to protect the people of Montana, and I think we can do that with the sanctuary city bill,” bill sponsor and then- Rep. Kenneth Holmlund, R-Miles City, said in a Feb. 2021 House floor session.
Though Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock had vetoed a similar version of the bill in 2019, saying it was “a solution searching for a problem,” Gianforte in 2021 signed the bill, which had passed the Legislature largely on party lines.
Critics of the 2021 law say it does not define “sanctuary city” and that there are no such cities in Montana. In August, the U.S. Department of Justice published a list of sanctuary jurisdictions in the country, and no cities in Montana appeared on the list.
Kelly Lynch, executive director of the Montana League of Cities and Towns, said the group opposed the law when it was proposed, arguing that it took authority away from local governments.
“(Local governments) are the ones that do all the day-to-day work of communities in Montana,” she told MTFP. “The Legislature meets once every two years. We meet every week. And you can run into the mayor at the grocery store if that’s not working, so it’s just far more responsive for us to handle issues as they come up.”
Helena leaders said the city was not notified of Knudsen’s issues with the resolution prior to the Feb. 11 press conference. The city also maintained that its resolution “was drafted with careful consideration of applicable local, state and federal law.”
On March 10, Knudsen issued a cease-and-desist order, saying the city must change its resolution or demonstrate its compliance with state law — or face a lawsuit from the state. He gave the city a deadline of 15 days, which has since been extended, to describe how the resolution complies with state law and provide copies of emails and other correspondence related to it.
“Montana law enforcement must act — including cooperating with lawful requests by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — to keep our communities safe,” he wrote in the cease-and-desist demand.
He also wrote that his Department of Justice in 2024 convicted “an illegal alien who stabbed another man to death.” He also referenced the presence of Mexican cartels on Indian reservations in Montana.
Though Knudsen’s comments were met with outrage in some quarters of Helena, they echo those of his elected Republican peers. Montana’s all-Republican federal delegation has in recent years made undocumented immigration a priority issue. Sen. Steve Daines has made several trips to the U.S.-Mexico border, saying in 2021 that the southern border was “out of control” and a “humanitarian crisis” due to uncontrolled immigration. Members of Montana’s federal delegation often connect illegal immigration to the trafficking of drugs and humans in the state, tying the southern border to public safety in Montana communities.
Experts say disputes over state vs. local government law-making are relatively common in Montana and across the country. In 2019, the Montana Supreme Court settled a dispute over whether a Missoula ordinance requiring people purchasing a firearm to pass a national background check violated state law. And in 2024, the state Supreme Court weighed in on a dispute regarding a local government’s authority to regulate plastic bags and straws.
But the current conflict between the attorney general and Helena stands apart in two ways, legal experts and political veterans say.
Constance Van Kley, an assistant professor at the University of Montana’s Alexander Blewett III School of Law, said the fines and penalties associated with violating the 2021 sanctuary city law may disincentivize a city from challenging the law’s legality, which would otherwise be an available course of action.
“(The penalties) may prevent courts from resolving whether or not a conflict does in fact exist or otherwise addressing the legality of the enforcement action because the potential penalty is significant,” she said. “So, it would not be irrational for a local government to determine that the risk is not worth seeking clarification about the legality of the city policy.”
If a judge were to count Day One of the resolution as the first day of noncompliance, then as of Thursday — the day of the city’s next meeting about the issue — Helena would owe the state about $120,000.
Second, according to Racicot, the public manner in which Knudsen and Gianforte announced the investigation into Helena without notifying the city ahead of time was “completely atypical of the kind of relationship that exists between the governor’s office and the elected officials in other places.”
Usually, Racicot said, a state official would contact local leaders and say, “We need to sit down and talk about this.” He said there is “no question” the unannounced publicizing of the investigation “will strain those relationships” between state and local governments.
Bozeman Mayor Morrison echoed that assessment.
“It’s been frustrating, as another mayor of a city that is often in the sights of our state administration, to see just patently political bluster on all this,” he told MTFP.
Former Helena Mayor Collins, like Racicot, called Knudsen and Gianforte’s public announcement “political theater” and said he thinks Montanans will see it as such.
“If we have done something wrong, come talk to us about it,” Collins told MTFP. “But to go on TV and talk about it — that was a message meant to go around the state.”
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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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This version corrects spelling of “capital” in headline.
