To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions.
General Information:
Your full name,
Address (City, State, Zip Code),
Phone number,
And an alternate phone number (if any)
Obituary Specification:
Name of Deceased,
Obituary Text,
A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo.
Ad Run dates
There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply.
If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information.
Policies:
Verification of Death:
In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification.
Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours.
A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary.
Guestbook and Outside Websites:
We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter.
Obituary Process:
Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear.
Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines.
After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing.
Online:
Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions.
Payment Procedure:
Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents.
Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations
EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number.
Cash: Accepted at our FRONT COUNTER Monday – Friday from 8:00AM – 3:30PM
Rates:
The minimum charge is $162 for the first 10 lines.
Every line after the first 10 is $12.20.
If the ad is under 10 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162.
On a second run date, the lines are $8.20 per line, starting w/ the first line.
For example: if first run date was 20 lines the cost would be $164.
Each photo published is $125 per day.
For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500.
Deadlines:
Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested.
Hours
Deadline (no exceptions)
Ad
Photos
MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST
Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries.
Please call or email us for more memoriam information
Please call 651-228-5280 for more information.
HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS)
Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280.
By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some Democratic senators say they are deeply concerned that a Pentagon plan to allow military lawyers to work as temporary immigration judges will violate a ban on using service members for law enforcement and affect the military justice system.
The letter, sent to the military services and provided to The Associated Press, comes two weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges. It is part of the steps the Trump administration has taken to use the military in broader ways than previously seen, particularly in its immigration crackdown, including sending the National Guard into American cities and deploying active duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“These military officers would serve under the command and control of the Attorney General and would execute administrative determinations at the direction of the Attorney General,” according to the letter signed by 12 Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. It added that “these actions are inherently law enforcement actions that may not be performed by members of the armed forces.”
“We remain extremely disturbed about the impacts on readiness of using military personnel to perform what are traditionally Department of Justice functions,” the letter says.
The nation’s immigration courts — with a backlog of about 3.5 million cases — have become a key focus of President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. Since Trump returned to office, dozens of immigration judges have been fired, while others have resigned or taken early retirement.
The senators’ letter, sent to the offices of the top military lawyers for the four services on Monday, is asking the Pentagon to say where the roughly 600 lawyers will be coming from and for insight into what legal analysis the military has conducted into whether the move would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. That law prevents the military from conducting law enforcement outside of extreme emergencies.
A Pentagon memo that described the plan said the lawyers should not be detailed for longer than half a year. The memo also showed that Pentagon officials were cognizant of the possibility for conflict with that law and said the Justice Department would be responsible for ensuring that the military lawyers do not violate it.
The Democratic senators said they were “deeply concerned” that pulling those lawyers away would have an impact on service members who are going through the military’s judicial system.
“These reassignments come at a time only shortly after Congress completely overhauled how the military investigates and prosecutes serious ‘covered’ criminal offenses … by establishing the Offices of Special Trial Counsel (OSTCs) in each of the Services,” the letter read.
Those offices were set up by Congress in 2022 as part of an effort to reform the military justice system by moving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders.
The offices began taking cases at the end of last year.
The letter asks the Pentagon what it will do to “preserve the OSTC’s progress in building specialized trial capacity” and what the services will do to “ensure that diversion of OSTCs, trial counsels, and defense counsels does not create delays or diminish quality in court-martials.” The senators say that the plan is a demonstration of how “the Trump administration views skilled personnel as pawns to be traded between agencies, rather than as professionals essential to their core missions, in order to advance misguided immigration policies.”
Originally Published: September 16, 2025 at 12:38 PM CDT