How the federal killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, the largest domestic law-enforcement deployment in history, and a constitutional showdown over state sovereignty are redrawing the boundaries of power, protest and press freedom in America.
On January 7, 2026, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, on a street in Minneapolis. Seventeen days later, on January 24, Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse who served veterans at a local VA hospital. Both were American citizens. Both deaths were captured on video. Both videos, when viewed, appeared to substantially contradict the Trump administration’s official account of events. Together, they have set off a chain reaction that is now reshaping congressional politics, public opinion, federal-state relations, press freedom jurisprudence, and the very architecture of executive power in the United States – and the situation remains in flux.
“How do I decide when a law enforcement response crosses the line from a legitimate response to one that violates the 10th Amendment?”
— U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez, Jan. 27, 2026
2 U.S. Citizens Killed
3,000 Federal Agents Deployed
3,000 People Arrested
96 Court Orders Violated
Operation Metro Surge began in December 2025, when the Department of Homeland Security deployed thousands of immigration enforcement agents to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The DHS described it as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out in the United States. Its stated purpose was to apprehend undocumented immigrants linked to social-services fraud — a scheme in which billions of dollars in public funds were allegedly siphoned through fraudulent nonprofits. The operation was later expanded to encompass all of Minnesota.
From the outset, there was a significant disconnect between the operation’s stated focus and its actual conduct. Although the enforcement surge was ostensibly targeted at fraud linked to the Somali-American community, only 23 of those arrested were Somali nationals, and none had documented ties to the fraud schemes under investigation. The operation swept up approximately 3,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom had no criminal records. It also ensnared U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, and individuals with active asylum cases – including, in one widely reported incident, a man and his two-year-old daughter who were detained while returning from grocery shopping. Despite a federal court order requiring the toddler’s release, both were transferred to Texas.
December 2025
Operation Metro Surge begins with the deployment of federal agents to the Twin Cities, nominally targeting social-services fraud.
January 7, 2026
Renée Nicole Good is shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Video shows her vehicle moving away from Ross when he fired three shots. The Trump administration immediately labels her a “domestic terrorist.”
January 11
Federal agents use a battering ram to enter a Liberian immigrant’s home using only an administrative warrant – not a judicial warrant. A federal judge later rules this a Fourth Amendment violation.
January 15–16
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey publicly calls the operation “not normal immigration enforcement” and demands it halt. Protests grow across the Twin Cities.
January 18
Anti-ICE protesters enter Cities Church in St. Paul, where an ICE official serves as pastor. Journalist Don Lemon and others document the protest. The DOJ opens an investigation.
January 23
Minnesota’s first general strike in 80 years. Tens of thousands protest in subzero temperatures. Hundreds of businesses close in solidarity.
January 24, 2026
Alex Pretti is shot multiple times and killed by Border Patrol agents. Video evidence contradicts the administration’s initial characterization of him as a violent aggressor. He was unarmed and filming the agents.
January 26
Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Madel drops out of the Minnesota governor’s race, calling the operation “an unmitigated disaster” and saying he cannot remain in a party engaged in “retribution.”
January 28
Minnesota’s chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz finds that ICE violated at least 96 court orders in the state since January 1.
January 29-30
Senate Democrats block the DHS funding bill, triggering a partial government shutdown. Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are arrested. Nationwide protests erupt in dozens of cities.
January 31
A federal judge declines to halt Operation Metro Surge but acknowledges “profound and even heartbreaking consequences” and evidence of racial profiling and excessive force.
At its legal core, Operation Metro Surge has become one of the most consequential tests of the relationship between federal and state power since Reconstruction. The State of Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, filed suit against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials, arguing that the operation violates the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – the provision that reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people.
Minnesota’s argument is that Operation Metro Surge is not, in fact, a legitimate law-enforcement operation at all. It is, the state contends, a campaign of political coercion – designed to punish Minnesota for its sanctuary policies, to force the state to abandon its refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and to compel local authorities to reallocate resources toward federal priorities. The state pointed to evidence that Minnesota was singled out in a manner no other state has experienced, despite not having the largest population of undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
The federal government’s counter-argument rests on the supremacy of federal immigration law. The Trump administration argued that Operation Metro Surge was necessitated by the dangers posed by undocumented immigrants in the Twin Cities and that these dangers were exacerbated by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies” that prevented cooperation. The Department of Justice characterized Minnesota’s lawsuit as “legally frivolous” and accused the state of seeking “a veto over federal law enforcement.”
The Warrant Problem
An internal ICE memo from May 2025 – revealed through whistleblower disclosures – asserts that ICE officers have the authority to forcibly enter homes using an administrative warrant issued by an immigration officer, rather than a judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. This effectively allows search and seizure without independent judicial oversight. A federal judge ruled one such forced entry a Fourth Amendment violation, but the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently stayed that injunction. The legal question of whether immigration officers can bypass judicial warrants for home entry remains unresolved – and operationally active.
On January 31, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez denied Minnesota’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the operation. Her ruling was notable for its candor. She acknowledged that the operation has had “profound and even heartbreaking consequences” and that there is evidence federal agents “engaged in racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions.” She noted the negative impacts ranged from “the expenditure of vast resources in police overtime to a plummeting of students’ attendance in schools, from a delay in responding to emergency calls to extreme hardship for small businesses.” Yet she declined to issue the injunction, reasoning that the plaintiffs had not met the high legal burden required for an emergency order – and that the Eighth Circuit’s prior decision staying a narrower injunction on the use of force against protesters suggested a broader halt would go even further than what the appeals court had already rejected.
The case remains in its early stages. Attorney General Keith Ellison has vowed to continue the legal fight. But the immediate practical reality is that federal agents continue to operate in Minnesota under the protection of federal supremacy, and the courts have not yet provided a mechanism to stop them.
Immigration enforcement was one of the defining issues of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. His promise to seal the border and deport criminals carried significant electoral weight. But within weeks of Operation Metro Surge’s most violent escalations, multiple high-quality national polls began to show a sharp and sustained shift in public sentiment – not merely among Democrats, but among independents, and even within the Republican coalition itself.
Public Opinion on ICE & Minneapolis – Key Polling Data
Americans who say ICE enforcement efforts “go too far” (Reuters/Ipsos, Jan. 23-25)
58%
Americans with an unfavorable opinion of ICE (YouGov, Jan. 9-11)
52%
Americans who say Good’s shooting was NOT justified (Quinnipiac, Jan. 8-12)
53%
Americans who say Pretti’s shooting was NOT justified (YouGov, Jan. 25)
48%
Americans who say ICE actions are making cities LESS safe (CNN/SSRS)
51%
Americans who now support abolishing ICE entirely (YouGov, post-Pretti)
~50%
Independents who said Good’s shooting was NOT justified (Quinnipiac)
59%
Sources: YouGov (Jan. 9-11, Jan. 24–25); Quinnipiac University (Jan. 8-12); Reuters/Ipsos (Jan. 23-25); CNN/SSRS (Jan. 2026). Margins of error: ±2-4 points.
The pattern across polls is remarkably consistent. ICE is the only federal agency in YouGov’s survey that is viewed unfavorably by more Americans than view it favorably – and it is viewed favorably by the smallest share of Americans of any agency tested, including the FBI and CDC. Among those Americans who have actually seen video of either shooting, disapproval of ICE’s conduct rises sharply. A CNN poll found that 9 in 10 Americans who called the Good shooting “inappropriate” also said it reflected “bigger problems with the way ICE is operating” – not an isolated incident. This suggests the shootings did not merely generate sympathy for the victims; they activated and crystallized pre-existing public unease about the deportation program’s methods.
The partisan divide remains stark – Republicans overwhelmingly support ICE, Democrats overwhelmingly oppose it – but the critical electoral demographic is independents. Across three major polls, independents said the Good shooting was unjustified by margins of at least 2-to-1. CBS News/YouGov polling found that Trump’s approval on immigration handling had fallen to its lowest point of his second term. Support for the deportation program overall had dipped to its lowest mark since inauguration. The public, in other words, appears willing to distinguish between the goals of immigration enforcement – which remain broadly popular – and the way that enforcement is being carried out, which has become deeply unpopular.
The Minneapolis killings did not merely generate public outrage. They produced a direct and immediate rupture in congressional governance. Senate Democrats, including several who had previously crossed party lines to end an earlier government shutdown, declared they would not vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security without significant reforms to ICE and CBP. The $1.3 trillion government funding package – which needed 60 votes to clear the Senate – required at least seven or eight Democratic votes. Those votes evaporated after Pretti’s death.
The demands Democrats articulated were specific and structural: federal agents should be prohibited from wearing masks during enforcement operations; body cameras should be required; judicial warrants – not administrative ones – should be necessary for home entries; and a uniform code of conduct and use-of-force policy should be established. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed separating the DHS funding bill from the other five appropriations measures, allowing the government to remain funded while negotiations on ICE reform continued.
On January 29, the Senate voted on the full six-bill package. It failed 45-55. Eight Republicans joined all Democrats in blocking it – including, in a notable break, Senate Majority Leader John Thune himself, who entered a procedural motion to preserve flexibility. The partial government shutdown began at midnight on January 31. Even Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — a Democrat who had repeatedly criticized his own party for forcing an earlier shutdown – voted no, citing the Minneapolis shootings.
Even a full shutdown of DHS appropriations would not have stopped ICE operations. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed earlier in 2025, had already allocated approximately $75 billion in separate funding to ICE and Border Patrol. The shutdown threat was therefore as much a political instrument as a practical one – a mechanism for Democrats to extract legislative concessions on enforcement conduct, not a tool to actually cut off federal agents’ funding or authority on the ground.
Republican senators also began breaking ranks in public. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called the events “incredibly disturbing” and said “the credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska demanded a “comprehensive, independent investigation.” Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt told CNN the president was “getting bad advice” and questioned the operation’s endgame. These are not voices from the far margins of the Republican Party – they represent a growing unease among elected officials who support immigration enforcement in principle but find the specific conduct of Operation Metro Surge politically untenable.
Perhaps no single development in the Minneapolis crisis has drawn as much alarm from democratic institutions as the arrest and indictment of journalists. On January 30, federal agents arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon in Los Angeles – where he had been covering the Grammy Awards – and independent journalist Georgia Fort at her home in Minnesota, where she was surrounded by nearly two dozen agents at 6 a.m. while her three daughters watched.
Both were charged in connection with a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, where demonstrators had entered to protest the fact that one of the church’s pastors serves as an acting ICE field director. Lemon had attended as a journalist, filming and interviewing both protesters and churchgoers. He posted video showing himself introducing his coverage by saying he was not part of the activist group but was there to report on them.
Don Lemon
Former CNN Anchor · Independent Journalist
Charged with conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with First Amendment rights of worshippers. Faces up to 10 years in prison. A federal magistrate judge had previously declined to approve his arrest warrant, citing a lack of evidence. The chief federal judge in Minnesota rejected the prosecutor’s appeal, writing there was “no evidence” of criminal behavior.
Georgia Fort
Independent Journalist · VP, Minneapolis NABJ
Arrested at her home by nearly two dozen agents while her three daughters watched. Fort livestreamed the moments before her arrest. She stated: “I am a journalist who was arrested for doing my job, despite the constitutional protections afforded to the press.”
The DOJ’s prosecution of Lemon and Fort drew condemnation from press-freedom organizations worldwide. The Committee to Protect Journalists called the arrest something that “should alarm all Americans.” CNN stated that Lemon’s arrest “raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment.” The National Association of Black Journalists called it an effort to “criminalize and threaten press freedom under the guise of law enforcement.” Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute said the arrests were “intended to intimidate journalists documenting opposition to the president’s policies.”
Critics noted a stark asymmetry in the Justice Department’s priorities: the DOJ moved swiftly to investigate and prosecute the church protest, while it initially declined to open a civil-rights investigation into the killing of Renée Good. The DOJ announced a civil-rights investigation into Pretti’s death only after the second killing — and only on the same day it arrested Lemon. The contrast was not lost on observers. As the Center for Broadcast Journalism’s Harry Colbert Jr. stated at a press conference: journalism is under attack, the First Amendment is under attack, and “democracy is crumbling if we allow this to happen.”
The effects of Operation Metro Surge have extended far beyond the immediate confrontations between federal agents and individuals. The operation has produced a broad economic and social disruption across Minnesota that illustrates how enforcement operations of this scale, when conducted in interior communities, affect entire ecosystems of daily life.
School attendance plummeted across Minneapolis-area districts. Multiple school districts shifted to remote learning. Teachers reported that students – including U.S. citizens – were afraid to ride school buses or walk to school, fearing encounters with federal agents. In one widely reported case, a kindergartner named Liam Ramos was taken by ICE agents at a school, used, according to a Texas federal judge’s court filing, as “bait” to lure family members out of their home. The judge ordered the child’s release, writing that “the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds.”
Food bank visits dropped 50 to 80 percent in some areas, as immigrants became too afraid to seek assistance. Volunteers reported that ICE vans were staking out food banks and following people who visited them. Immigrant-owned businesses across the state closed or cut back hours. One restaurant in Minneapolis locked its doors and drew its blinds, stationing a volunteer inside to let customers in. Hotels near the federal building housing ICE detention closed or reported sharp drops in reservations. One-third of small businesses in one advocacy network’s membership were described as “on the verge of collapse.”
The Minneapolis police chief of the suburb of Brooklyn Park reported that residents were being stopped “with no cause” and forced to produce paperwork to prove citizenship. Notably, he said every person reported to him as having been subjected to such stops was “a person of colour” – including off-duty officers of Hispanic and Asian descent.
“When small business has a cough in Minnesota, the entire state catches a cold.”
— Small-business advocacy leader, Minneapolis
One of the most consequential political developments to emerge from Operation Metro Surge is not the Democratic opposition to it – that was predictable – but the growing fissure within the Republican Party itself. The case of Chris Madel illustrates this vividly. Madel was a Minneapolis attorney running as a Republican for Minnesota governor. He had initially supported Operation Metro Surge. He had even provided pro bono legal counsel to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renée Good. He was, by straw-poll indicators, among the top three Republican candidates for the nomination.
On January 26, two days after Pretti’s killing, Madel dropped out of the race entirely. In an 11-minute video, he called the operation “an unmitigated disaster.” He said he could not “support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.” He specifically called ICE raids using only administrative warrants “unconstitutional” and “wrong.” He noted that U.S. citizens were carrying papers to prove their citizenship and that law enforcement officers of color were being pulled over on “pretextual stops.”
Madel’s withdrawal is not an isolated event. It is a signal. Republican senators from Louisiana, Alaska, North Carolina, and Oklahoma publicly criticized the operation or called for independent investigations. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt questioned the administration’s “endgame.” These were not statements from anti-Trump Republicans on the party’s fringes. They came from elected officials who broadly supported the deportation agenda and who now found themselves politically unable to defend its specific execution.
The political calculus here is significant. Immigration was the issue that most animated Trump’s base in 2024. But there is a difference between supporting the deportation of violent criminals – which polling shows enjoys broad public support – and supporting the killing of unarmed American citizens, the detention of children, the violation of court orders, and the arrest of journalists. Operation Metro Surge has forced that distinction into the open, and for a growing number of Republicans in competitive states, the second set of behaviors is politically toxic.
Against the backdrop of federal escalation, Minneapolis and the broader Twin Cities have seen an extraordinary mobilization of civic life – not merely in the form of protest, but in the reconstruction of community infrastructure around the threat. Thousands of residents signed up to become “ICE watchers,” trained observers who monitor federal agents’ conduct in public. Mutual-aid networks proliferated at a scale not seen since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers delivered groceries, medicine, and diapers to families afraid to leave their homes. Churches became distribution hubs. Businesses closed in solidarity.
On January 23, Minnesota held its first general strike in 80 years. Tens of thousands of people gathered in subzero temperatures – some well below minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of businesses closed. Faith leaders, labor unions, and community organizations coordinated “no work, no school, no shopping” actions that spread beyond Minnesota to Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and dozens of other cities in a nationwide protest on January 30.
The speed and scale of this mobilization reflects something deeper than opposition to a single policy. It reflects a civic awakening – a sense, shared across communities, that the institutions meant to protect individual rights are failing, and that ordinary people must fill the gap. The “ICE watcher” phenomenon, in particular, represents a direct application of the principle that democratic accountability requires citizen observation of state power. It is, in many ways, a grassroots assertion of the very oversight function that Congress has largely abdicated.
Operation Metro Surge is not simply a story about immigration enforcement. It is a story about the boundaries of executive power, the independence of the judiciary, the relationship between federal and state governments, the freedom of the press, and the willingness of a democratic society to hold its own government accountable when it kills unarmed civilians.
The operation has revealed the extent to which immigration enforcement has become a vehicle for the expansion of executive authority. The internal ICE memo asserting the right to enter homes without judicial warrants, the systematic violation of court orders, and the deployment of thousands of agents to a single state in what critics describe as political retaliation – these actions test the constitutional boundaries of what a president can order done in the name of immigration law. The courts have so far declined to impose a firm limit. The Eighth Circuit stayed an injunction on the use of force against protesters. Judge Menendez declined to halt the operation entirely. The legal system has not yet provided a definitive answer to the question of how far federal immigration enforcement can reach into the interior of the country, into homes, schools, and churches, without judicial checks.
A Minnesota federal judge found ICE violated at least 96 court orders in the state since January 1. Yet the operation continued. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed lower-court injunctions. The DOJ refused to cooperate with local officials in investigating the Good shooting. When a federal magistrate judge declined to sign an arrest warrant for Don Lemon, the DOJ obtained an indictment through a grand jury instead – bypassing the judicial gatekeeping function entirely. The question of whether federal courts can meaningfully constrain executive action when the executive branch is willing to ignore or circumvent judicial orders is one of the most serious questions raised by these events.
The prosecution of Lemon and Fort under the FACE Act – a law originally designed to protect access to abortion clinics and places of worship – represents a novel and alarming use of federal criminal statutes against journalists. The chief federal judge in Minnesota found “no evidence” of criminal behavior in Lemon’s work. The DOJ pursued the case anyway, obtaining an indictment from a grand jury in a different jurisdiction. If this prosecution succeeds, it will establish a precedent that journalists can be criminally charged for being present at protests – a precedent with profound implications for the coverage of any future civil unrest, political demonstration, or government action.
Perhaps most fundamentally, Operation Metro Surge raises the question of democratic legitimacy – the extent to which a government’s actions retain public consent when they are carried out in ways the public finds abhorrent. Polling shows that a majority of Americans believe ICE’s enforcement efforts have gone too far. A majority believe the shootings were unjustified. More Americans now support abolishing ICE than oppose it. The deportation program’s approval is at its lowest point of Trump’s second term. Immigration enforcement was one of the issues that brought Trump to power. But the specific methods being employed – the killing of unarmed Americans, the detention of children, the violation of court orders, the arrest of journalists – are not methods the public endorsed. The gap between the mandate voters gave and the actions being taken in that mandate’s name is widening, and it is a gap that will define the politics of the next two years.
“The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.”
— Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), January 25, 2026
The situation in Minneapolis is not yet resolved. The lawsuit continues. The government shutdown negotiations continue. The criminal cases against Lemon and Fort are pending. The DOJ investigations into the shootings are open but their independence is questioned. Federal agents remain deployed in Minnesota. And the broader national conversation about what kind of country Americans are willing to live in – one in which the government can kill its own citizens in the streets while claiming self-defense, detain their children, violate court orders, and prosecute journalists for doing their jobs – has only just begun.
What is clear already is that Operation Metro Surge will not be the last test of these principles. The infrastructure built for it – the funding, the agents, the legal frameworks the administration is constructing – is designed to be portable. If Minneapolis is a preview, other cities will follow. The question is whether American institutions, from courts to Congress to the press, can reassert the boundaries that democratic governance requires — or whether the erosion that has already taken place will become the new normal.
By Gregg Bolder, Los Angeles