ICE In Minnesota 2025-2026

Operation Metro Surge was announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a campaign starting on December 1, 2025. Thousands of violent, masked federal agents swarmed the urban districts of the Twin Cities and beat, threatened, detained and even fatally shot people. This has been met by a wide-ranging movement of organized resistance, mobilizing community members across political, class, and generational divides to use a myriad of tactics in response to the government’s violence.

Operating out of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, agents detained thousands of people. Many were quickly sent via flights from the MSP airport to squalid detention camps like Camp East Montana in Fort Bliss, Texas, and the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. In complete disregard of U.S. laws, federal agencies violated nearly 100 court orders in a matter of weeks.

On January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good while she was acting as a community observer monitoring agents’ activity. On January 14, federal agents shot Julio Sosa Celis in an altercation during an attempted arrest. And on January 24, Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in the street as he tried to protect a woman being assaulted by agents.

Protests, which were already underway before each of the violent incidents listed above, intensified in the days and weeks following. Good’s shocking killing acted as a flashpoint for communities who had been struggling against ICE activity in the area for weeks. Federal authorities have refused to share investigative data about these shootings with state officials.

Earlier in 2025, Operation Metro Surge was foreshadowed by the Bro-Tex raid in St. Paul on November 18, and a June 3 Lake Street Homeland Security Task Force raid. Several Minnesota counties link up operationally with ICE via the 287(g) program and garner revenue from detaining immigrants for ICE. On July 30, 2019, Jewish community members with a “Never Again” message blockaded the Whipple Building.