One year into President Trump’s second term, there is a breathtaking attack on fundamental civil liberties underway in Minnesota.

The public outcry over the killings of two protestors by immigration agents has forced a reckoning about the strategy and tactics being used in Trump’s mass deportation program. An organized grassroots protest movement has articulated a clear set of demands for what the Trump Administration must do. Democratic leaders and the White House continue negotiations on measures to rein in the Department of Homeland Security. The outcome of these events will either slow how Trump uses federal immigration enforcement agencies to consolidate his power, or it will be used by the Administration as a green light to escalate these tactics in more communities.

What is happening in Minnesota is not about immigration enforcement. The President and leaders in his administration are working ruthlessly to consolidate power, sideline opposition, intimidate protestors, and test tactics to weaken state and local elected officials through the investigative and coercive powers of the federal government. Federal immigration agents are the paramilitary forces the Trump administration is using to intimidate local residents and officials and assert control. They underestimated the strength and discipline of the grassroots movements in Minnesota, and that’s setting up the bigger fight in Congress, in the media, and in the Administration.

A multi-pronged assault on Minnesota, Civil Liberties, and Due Process

Federal authorities claim that they are focused on undocumented immigrants with criminal histories, but they are hiding the truth. Minnesota has a relatively small population of undocumented immigrants. Claims by federal immigration agencies about Minnesota are becoming more and more difficult to corroborate. Nationally, we know based on the federal data still being collected by the Department of Homeland Security that most immigrants being taken into custody have no criminal record at all. What appears to be driving apprehensions is a single-minded focus on reaching detention and deportation quotas irrespective of who is getting detained.

Three thousand federal agents were surged into Minneapolis in early January, pursuing immigrants (facilitated by alarmingly massive and inaccurate surveillance technologies fed by federal and state databases, consumer information, license plate readers, etc.), engaging in aggressive and warrantless searches into people’s homes, using traffic stops to question the immigration status of people of color, following people of color into businesses, work sites, and schools, and using race and ethnicity as a proxy for immigration status (detaining immigrants and citizens alike… referred to as collateral damage). These operations are largely focused in communities of color and/or diverse business and residential districts in urban communities. Police leaders in Minnesota have accused ICE agents of harassing off-duty officers for proof of U.S. citizenship. Many of these tactics – which raise significant concerns and should not be considered “normal or excusable” law enforcement behavior – were also used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection tactics used in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, Charlotte, Portland, New York City, and other urban centers across the country in 2025.

The original justification for the surge in federal agents centered on allegations of fraud against people of Somali heritage – refugees and citizens. The firestorm around suspected fraud was the result of a debunked viral video claiming that Somali immigrants were receiving child care subsidies and sending those funds to support Islamist militant groups in Africa. Conservative activists and Republican leaders then merged the accusation with ongoing investigations into fraud in COVID relief grant programs that took place years ago. 

This became the primary triggering event behind a series of actions the Trump Administration took this month. The surge was an act of collective punishment targeting a growing black immigrant community in Minnesota, and it’s spilling over into much more than that. The Trump Administration pounced on the media firestorm, surging federal agents into Minneapolis, announcing (prior to further investigations) cuts in USDA funding, nutrition assistance programs, child care and health care programs (most of which have since been walked back). But the surge has continued.

The Trump Administration is testing the boundaries of what they can get away with. 

Federal agents are using excessive force against suspected immigrants (breaking car windows, kicking down doors) and against peaceful protestors (arresting protesters, spraying protestors with chemical agents, and using lethal arms to intimidate and even kill protestors).

Two American citizens peacefully observing federal immigration agents to protect immigrants and protesters from excessive use of force were killed by federal agents: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Instead of investigating the killings, the Department of Homeland Security quickly labeled both victims domestic terrorists. Alarmingly, the Trump Administration used propaganda, insinuation, and right-wing media bubbles to shape public narratives about the protesters and Good and Pretti. The misinformation campaign collapsed – to some degree – under the weight of the actual videos documenting the killings that contradicted Administration claims. The Department of Homeland Security  and the Department of Justice also quickly moved to control investigations into the killings, prompting parallel investigations by state authorities, the resignations of experienced federal prosecutors, and an order from a federal judge demanding that federal authorities not tamper with evidence.

In the case of the surge of federal agents into Minnesota, one significant focus is on legal immigrants, naturalized citizens, and U.S. citizens of Somali heritage that the Trump Administration has accused of defrauding the federal government. DHS launched a program – Operation PARRIS, which stands for Post Admission Refugee Reverification and Integrity Strengthening, that would re-open the cases of 5,600 refugees living in Minnesota who have already gone through rigorous security screenings and were on their way to citizenship. 

During the Minnesota surge, whistle blowers also leaked internal memos attempting to create a new legal theory that would allow immigration agents to enter homes with administrative warrants rather than judicial warrants. This runs counter to established legal precedent and the 4th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Journalists have confirmed that there are at least two instances when immigration agents invaded homes under the proposed standard in Minnesota.

Furthermore, under the general pretense of combatting fraud, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget announced further audits into additional states led by Democratic Governors, signalling that these states could lose significant federal funding if they did not soon comply with federal immigration enforcement agencies. The announcements were met with confusion, concerns, and threats of litigation. But it could also be a more focused version of prior attacks on state sovereignty, building off the tactics deployed by federal agencies exploiting fraud allegations against Minnesota. But it is also putting more pressure on State governments who are in legislative sessions and considering how to manage fiscal uncertainty at a time when the economy is weakening and state tax revenues are declining.

And in a calculated statement that the President later walked back in January in response to massive protests, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely-used and archaic federal law allowing the President to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens to put down rebellions. While it remains unlikely that the President would take this action yet, it’s notable that he is socializing the concept yet again. What then might he do if there were an incident where a federal agent were to be physically harmed or killed by a protester? The tactics being deployed by federal immigration agents appear to be designed to provoke emotional and heated reactions – threatening to arrest bystanders, using excessive force on protesters, detaining children and even using children as bait to arrest their parents. 

The Resistance Movement Forced a Reckoning

Thousands of concerned residents and protestors are filling the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul (with thousands of solidarity actions across the country). Both assertive and disciplined, they are using whistles to alert their neighbors to the presence of ICE and Border Patrol agents. They are being trained and organized by an exhausted but resilient core of community-based organizations. They are self-organizing “constitutional monitoring” patrols (serving as observers to document abuses), 4th Amendment spaces (businesses, churches, and other establishments that will not allow warrantless searches on their properties), and mutual aid programs to provide basic needs to families sheltering in their homes out of fear that they may be harmed, arrested, and deported without any due process protections. On January 24 they organized a massive work stoppage and protest that saw tens of thousands demand accountability for the deaths of Good and Pretti.

They are demanding an immediate end to the ICE “surge” into MN and for ICE to leave the state, and they are demanding that the officers who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti be held legally accountable, including  a legitimate investigation with state involvement.

They are also calling on Members of Congress to oppose the federal appropriations bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, and they are call for actions to:

• Stop ICE and Border Patrol from receiving more funding
• Restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s ability to target people based on their race, language or accent, place of employment, or location at the time of the apprehension
• Stop ICE or Border Patrol enforcement at designated ‘sensitive locations’ such as houses of worship, day cares, and hospitals
• Stop ICE or Border Patrol from family detention or increasing private detentions
• End border patrol deployment to our cities and rejects its ever-expanding mandate in immigration enforcement

And they are making a set of demands of corporations:

• Publicly call for an immediate end to the ICE “surge” into MN and for ICE to leave the state;
• The officers who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti must be held legally accountable. Demand a legitimate investigation with state involvement.
• Exercise their 4th Amendment rights and publicly post signage denying entrance to on-duty immigration agents who do not have signed judicial warrants as required by law, as well train staff on how to respond when immigration agents arrive at stores and worksites.
• Publicly call for Congress to freeze funding for ICE.

While a couple of Republican Senators have called for the resignation of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Senate Republican leadership have so far refused to separate the DHS appropriations bill from a government funding package of six appropriations bills, daring the Democrats to shut down the federal government by voting against the larger package.

Democrats were faced with a series of choices:

• Will they hold together and force the Senate Republican leadership to separate the DHS bill from the larger package of bills?
• WIll they hold together and force concessions from the Trump Administration and DHS consistent with the demands coming out of Minnesota?
• WIll they accept formulaic and symbolic concessions (e.g., body-worn cameras for ICE agents) while allowing these surges to continue?

Senators voted 45-55 not to advance the legislation. Every Democrat voted no, along with eight Republicans.

Trump is sending mixed signals over what kind of damage control his Administration may be deploying. They are presenting some false concessions – reassigning some CBP agents, suggesting to local elected leaders that they may be reducing the size of the surge – and allowing a debate on whether DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be removed. These small moves appear focused on discouraging Democrats looking for an offramp from a confrontation over DHS funding. In the meantime, we can anticipate a propaganda push by DHS justifying an over-militarized and unaccountable ICE and CBP. ICE leaders have also suggested that the scale of the federal surge in Minnesota could be reduced, if local law enforcement agencies served as proxies for federal immigration enforcement.

Why Minnesota? What Will Happen Next?

It’s no coincidence that the backdrop is the same neighborhood that became the epicenter of the global movement for black lives in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Those events shaped the 2020 presidential election, which President Trump lost. They also led to a conservative backlash that Trump rode to the White House in the 2024 presidential election. Trump and his allies have been gleefully painting Democrats in Minnesota as beholden to black constituencies and the “woke” agenda as red meat for their base. 

It’s no coincidence that the attack on black immigrants follows recent public rants by Trump calling people of Somali heritage “garbage”, whose former country he’s called a “sh*thole”. Trump’s rhetoric targeting the Somali community got harsher late last year following a November attack by an alleged Muslim Afghan national on two National Guard troops sent to occupy Washington DC over the objections of local elected officials. 

It’s no coincidence that the Trump Administration is targeting Minnesota, whose Governor Tim Walz ran as Kamala Harris Vice Presidential candidate in the 2024 election (ironically, federal over-reach in Minnesota may have cost Republicans a chance of retaining their majority in the state legislature in special elections held this month). But the full bore assault on Minnesota may have led directly to the Governor’s decision to not run for re-election.

What is happening in Minnesota could happen anywhere. Last fall, Congress passed a federal budget bill that pumped more than $170 billion into immigration enforcement operations, enabling a massive build up of federal immigration agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the expansion of detention center capacity.  Already, federal immigration agencies have flexed capacity to Maine – another State controlled by Democrats with a visible black immigrant population, though tensions over events in Minnesota and intervention by Maine’s Republican Senator may have led to the pausing of the surge in force underway in Maine.

This is one major reason the showdown shaping up over ICE and CBP in the DHS appropriations bill is so important. Additional funding for ICE will enable more surges – perhaps simultaneously in multiple places, targeting frontline communities and political opponents, all under the guise of protecting American citizens from immigrants. 

Immigration and Democracy 

This year the United States will celebrate its founding and the ratification of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. There will almost certainly be a debate over the character of the nation and our history of immigration. One telling of that story will come from the Trump Administration, and they will likely pontificate on American democracy at a time when they are claiming to protect Americans and democracy from immigrants and people of color.

They may succeed in revoking the legal status of millions of immigrants who have been living in the United States through major policy changes (for example, the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for migrants living in the United States because their home countries are too dangerous or unstable to return to – Venezuela, Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc.).  They may have succeeded in revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens over statements they may have made on social media being critical of the Administration or its allies. And they may have succeeded in apprehending and detaining hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants — the majority of whom have been living in the United States for more than a decade.

Once apprehended, immigrants tumble into a system with no meaningful checks and balances. For those people who are apprehended (perhaps violently), this will likely mean they will be unable to communicate with loved ones or retain legal counsel, they will be denied access to fair and impartial hearings, they will be quickly moved away from Minnesota (removed from legal counsel, family members, loved ones) into America’s burgeoning (and largely privately run) detention system – rife with overcrowding and notorious conditions (including reports of deaths and violence in custody), and (at least for now) without independent governmental oversight.

In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody.  In the first three weeks of 2026, ICE added another 8 deaths, including one that was recently ruled a homicide despite initial claims by ICE officials that the Cuban detainee committed suicide. Community groups tracking deaths at the hands of border patrol agents have tracked more than 360 deaths since 2010, including 26 deaths in 2025. These numbers don’t count the people who have survived encounters with out-of-control immigration agents, including one woman working to make public records of her shooting at the hands of a Border Patrol agent in Chicago last year.

Many individuals being arrested in Minnesota are being quickly moved to detention centers in Texas and other more conservative states. They could also be subject to expedited deportations, even to random countries they have no connection to. And their families, their children, their homes and property (most undocumented immigrants have been living in the United States for ten years or longer) will be left behind.

This summer, as Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of American democracy, they may very well wonder why the erosion of due process for immigrants might impact them. Current events in Minnesota are a sign of what they should be tracking. Immigration and immigrants are not a threat to democracy. The true threat is how fear of immigration, and attacks on immigrants, are used to consolidate executive power at the expense of checks and balances in government, and the life, liberty, and due process for immigrants and citizens alike.

Organizations to support in Minnesota.

These are intense times in Minnesota, as protests grow in scale and number, and political winds appear to be shifting, but federal immigration presence has not let up. Some staff of immigrant rights organizations are working out of safe houses due to threats against their safety made by individuals with ideological motives and by federal agents. In some cases their digital accounts have been hacked – by vigilantes, and possibly by federal agencies. The pressures on these organizations have been tremendous, but the movement they have helped to build has remained disciplined, organized, and focused despite the armed and lethal tactics used by the federal government.