Occupied Minnesota: Inside the Resistance to Operation Metro Surge

How ordinary Minnesotans are protecting their neighbors from federal force

ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy

When the federal government flooded Minnesota with thousands of ICE and DHS agents in December 2025, local and state officials largely failed the people they were elected to protect. So communities protected each other — building an infrastructure of resistance that drew on lessons learned in Chicago, Los Angeles, and on the streets of Minneapolis in 2020.

---

The state of Minnesota is no stranger to state-sanctioned violence at the hands of state and federal forces. For over a century the Dakota and Ojibwe people have been at the receiving end of violent U.S. occupation, from the Louisiana Purchase (1803), to the The U.S.-Dakota war of 1862, and more recently the violations of the Fort Laramie treaties with the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, which cuts through sacred indigenous land in both North Dakota and Minnesota, leading to mass protests of the Standing Rock Sioux tribes and violent federal intervention.  

Other recent manifestations of state-sanctioned violence in Minnesota have made the state a recurring flashpoint in national conversations about race and policing. Philando Castile, Daunte Wright, Amir Locke, George Floyd — all Black men, all killed by Minnesota law enforcement. Floyd's murder in 2020 ignited the largest protest movement in U.S. history, with Minneapolis once again at the center of national discourse, met swiftly by the full force of federal intervention. 

Operation Metro Surge is the latest chapter in this continuum — once again drawing the world's attention to the brutal domestic face of the American empire. To justify the massive deployment of federal officials in Minneapolis, the Trump administration pointed to allegations of fraud and public safety concerns in Minnesota, particularly targeting immigrant communities. These claims served as the stated rationale for the operation's scope and intensity.

Minnesota Under Siege

Operation Metro Surge launched in early December 2025, following similar operations in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. While ICE and DHS activity has been concentrated in the Twin Cities, the entire state has been subjected to raids and violence perpetrated by federal actors. Masked and unmasked agents have rounded up people on the streets in both targeted and arbitrary fashion, using and refining artificial intelligence and surveillance technology. Viral social media videos depict rogue agents swarming people of color, asking them where they are from, whether or not they were born in the U.S., and what their accent is. Nowhere and no one has been spared, including elementary schools, daycares, and construction workers in rural sites. 

In an interview with The Parlor Magazine, Liz, who works in immigration law at a Minnesota practice, detailed exactly how the Trump administration has executed its agenda of mass deportation and criminalization of immigrants. “[The administration] can do the damage, and they’ll face legal challenges later on, but the litigation takes years, and the damage is already done.” Liz explained her arena of work as “a constant firehose of changes. When I first started the job, I was doing asylum applications left and right. [Trump] really has closed the border, and there are no more asylum applications…They’re making people illegal very often by changing the laws and policies, sometimes without even touching the law.” The Trump administration recently ended Temporary Protect Status for Somali refugees, effective March 17, 2026. 

Liz discussed the nuances of immigration law not widely known by the general public. “Immigration court itself is a shadow court. Some hearings are open to the public, some are closed, and the judges operate on their own terms…there is no public defense in immigration law.” The administration has also implemented measures such as changing the appeals process so that the deadline to submit an appeal is ten days after a ruling, which previously allowed for a 30 day deadline, Liz explained. Various fees have hiked up, exacerbating the unaffordability of the U.S. immigration process.

Simultaneously, private prisons have been cashing in, with a rise in detention bringing about greater profit margins for for-profit detention centers, returning us to the capitalist motives of U.S. immigration approach and policy. Two major prison companies, CoreCivic and The GEO Group, contracted by ICE for immigration detention centers have reported $2 billion increases in revenue in 2025.

All the while, local government in Minnesota has used its proximity to the populace to quell dissent and stifle mass uprising with empty promises, disingenuous anger, and repression. Following Renee Good’s murder, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey’s “ICE, get the f*** out” slowly transformed into “we’re not asking ICE to not do ICE things.” Governor Tim Walz’s deployment of the national guard not to stop ICE agents, but instead to deter anti-ICE protestors, solidified the state’s commitment to the protection of property and the status quo over its citizens, which was also made explicit during the 2020 uprisings. Politicians have exploited the moment to advance their own political ambitions. Democratic representatives Angie Craig and Amy Klobuchar, who have aided and abetted ICE by means of appreciation letters and increases in funding, recently have attempted to distance themselves in gentle statements and performative public appearances, denouncing the murders of white Minnesotans, but not the axis of ICE terror itself. Ordinary people, however, began and continue to take matters into their own hands, in big cities and small towns alike.

Whistles and Watchers

Grassroots resistance to ICE raids did not begin in Minnesota. It traveled from city to city, refined by each community that faced federal enforcement before Minneapolis did. The whistle — simple, cheap, and easy to carry— became the unlikely symbol of that resistance. In Los Angeles, residents began using them to alert neighbors of ICE presence during the earliest surges. The tactic was then scaled in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood during Operation Midway Blitz, which began in September 2025. Organizer Alonso Zaragoza helped spread the practice through a series of "Whistlemania" events across Chicago's northwest and west sides — expecting 30 or 40 people at the first one, only to be met by nearly 400. Within two months, roughly 250,000 whistles had circulated through coordinated neighborhood efforts, distributed through local businesses and community organizations. The system was simple: short bursts signaled that agents were in the area; one sustained note announced an imminent arrest — warning those at risk while simultaneously drawing in citizen observers.

By the time Operation Metro Surge descended on Minneapolis, communities had a blueprint. Defend the 612 emerged as a central organizing force, overseeing a network of Signal chats dedicated to monitoring and disrupting ICE activity across the Twin Cities. The infrastructure grew to include more than 150 neighborhood and task-based groups, rapid-response chats tracking ICE vehicles and license plates in real time, a database of over 4,800 confirmed or suspected ICE plates, and a running log of nearly 70 hotels where agents had been known to stay. Participants called themselves commuters — ordinary residents who organized to monitor federal operations across Minneapolis, St. Paul, and the surrounding suburbs. Tactics included tailing ICE vehicles, filming arrests, blowing whistles, and physically positioning themselves between agents and community members.

The federal government took note and adapted. ICE began using drones, traveling in smaller groups in plain clothes, going door-to-door posing as environmental canvassers, and staking out bus stops. As Adriana Estill, professor at Carleton College and dispatcher for Northfield Supporting Neighbors observed firsthand, ICE also began mimicking the markings of observer vehicles — adopting the same stickers NSN members used to identify themselves, effectively attempting to blend into the very community infrastructure built to resist them. As NSN patrollers documented ICE vehicles and license plates, ICE started to adjust their mode of transportation from pick-up trucks to average looking cars. “[ICE] has adopted our methods, and [they] basically try to look like community members,” Estill said. 

Observers reported being called by name by agents, surveilled, audited, and followed home. A U.S. District Court judge ultimately ordered federal agents to stop arresting, retaliating against, and pepper-spraying people engaged in peaceful protest. However, the intimidation did not stop the organizing. If anything, it confirmed what communities already understood: that the watchers had become a genuine threat to the operation's impunity.

Adriana Estill became a dispatcher in 2018 for Northfield Supporting Neighbors (NSN), a community run organization with over 100 trained members that responds to immigration raids in Northfield, Minnesota, a town of 20,000, 45 minutes south of the Twin Cities. In an interview with The Parlor Magazine, Estill described how in January, demand for the organization increased, as they suddenly began receiving several calls. ICE agents appeared in Northfield, circling immigrant neighborhoods in unmarked vehicles. Ever since, NSN’s members have undertaken roles as observers, verifiers, dispatchers, and patrollers, trying to safeguard their community from ICE. Estill described the work as emotionally challenging, but necessary. “You get people calling us who are anxious and scared, who are often speaking very quickly. One dispatcher was on the phone with someone as she was having a panic attack. We started organizing food deliveries, which we hadn’t anticipated at all. And rides—rides for schoolchildren to get to school, so parents don’t have to wait at bus stops.”

A librarian also part of NSN who verifies ICE activity in Northfield, discussed the toll ICE raids have taken on her community. As a verifier, her role consists of traveling to parts of town where ICE is spotted, or showing up when an ICE raid is occurring to document and convey as much information as possible. As a city employee, she explained how her job as a librarian overlapped with her advocacy as part of NSN, in connecting people to resources, notarizing documents, and obtaining passports and documentation. Also as a city employee, she discussed her frustrations with public counterparts, such as police and the local mayor, but went on to describe how she never looked to them for support or solutions in this moment to begin with. She looked around her community for mobilization efforts, as opposed to looking up — “I have seen less of city government doing the work, but that is the nature of the beast…I am not going to turn to the mayor to do something about it. I am going to turn to the community.” While Northfield, a college town with a relatively privileged population, has been steadfast in its organized resistance efforts against ICE, other small towns have not seen the same level of community response. “Northfield is a privileged population. Faribault [a neighboring town], doesn’t have the infrastructure, despite more ICE presence, despite more immigrants. People have less disposable income, there are less ex-professors…we’re the exception, not the rule.”

Organizing efforts have also taken the form of mutual aid, with funds being established for community members to support those affected by the lost wages as a result of being in hiding, detained, or deported. Others have hand delivered groceries to neighbors, some have supported people with rent — ICE raids in Minnesota have caused a housing crisis, with many facing evictions and unable to make rent payments. Where the state failed to enact an eviction moratorium, community members stepped up to assist one another with rent payments.

Liz attributed the success of grassroots organizing efforts to mobilizing that occurred in 2020. “We learned a lot in 2020. The reason Minnesota is having this response [from the federal government] is because there was an infrastructure of connections.” Liz went on to explain how in 2020, communities were strengthened, people read more theory, and it prepared people to respond to a moment like the current one. “Whatever we’re doing now prepares us for what comes next.”

Detention on Sacred Ground

Indigenous peoples have also been on the frontlines of protests against ICE during federal crackdowns. In an act of protest, Indigenous activists established tipis near the Whipple Federal building, a primary ICE detention facility in Minneapolis. 

The camp, known as Mni Owe Sni — Coldwater Springs in Dakota — was established in early February as an act of prayer and solidarity, its sacred fire kept burning around the clock in the direction of the Whipple building, sending prayers to those detained inside. It stood on Bdóte, the sacred site at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers — a place of creation and deep spiritual significance for the Dakota people, and the same ground where the U.S. government imprisoned more than 1,600 Dakota people in the mid-1800s. That the federal government was once again detaining people on this land — including, in several documented cases, Indigenous people themselves — was not lost on those who erected the tipis.   

Wasu Datu, a Dakota community member said to the local publication Sahan Journal, “I identify [ICE] agents as…basically committing acts of war on my people as well, and also harming other people from multiple races.” 

Its closure, however, was not straightforward. A Notice to Vacate was issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior, but the camp also faced pressure from within Indigenous communities. Lakota spiritual leader Arvol Looking Horse raised concerns that the encampment had broken spiritual law by situating itself at a location understood and documented as a Dakota burial site. Nine tribal nations, including four from Minnesota, sent letters to the National Park Service urging action, with a joint statement describing the camp as an unlawful encampment by an informal group of individuals. Youth camp leaders pushed back, expressing disappointment in their elders, noting that the same site was used daily by neighborhood residents without scrutiny. The tension laid bare a deeper complexity — a community fractured not in its opposition to ICE, but in how to hold sacred ground while fighting for it.

The camp came down in mid-March, the fire extinguished, the tipis dismantled. The Whipple building remained.

Despite claims of a federal drawdown, ICE raids in Minnesota continue. “It’s bullsh**”, Estill said in response to if ICE presence has decreased. “We had four or five cars doing loops [the day before].” While the mainstream news has largely turned its attention away from the state, mass detaining has continued, as has resistance. 

Those Lost to ICE

The killing of Renee Good on January 7, 2026 — shot by an ICE agent as she observed a raid in her Minneapolis neighborhood — sparked national outrage and became a defining moment of Operation Metro Surge. Ten days later, Alex Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was fatally shot while filming an ICE raid. Both were 37 years old.

Their deaths, however, did not occur in a vacuum. Prior to Good's killing, at least 25 people had already died at the hands of ICE or in ICE detention during Trump's second administration, among them Jamie Garcia, Marie Ange Blaise, Isidro Perez, Johnny Noviello, Abelardo Avelleneda-Delgado, Nhan Ngoc Nguyen, Brayan Rayo-Garzon, Juan Alexis Tieno-Martinez, Maksym Chernyak, Ramesh Amechand, Pankaj Karan Singh Kataria, Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro, Bredny Yohana Bamaca-Zacarias, Jhon Javier Benavides-Quintana, Genry Donaldo Ruiz-Guillen, Tien Xuan Phan, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdes, Lorenzo "Lenchito" Antonio Batrez Vargas, Silverio Villegas Gonzales, Randall Alberto Gamboa Esquivel, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, Chaofeng Ge, Jean Wilson Butrus, Imam Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, and Keith Porter. Since Good's murder, Emmanuel Damas and Nurul Amin Shah Alam have also died in ICE custody. Their names belong in the record.