It’s not over

As soon as U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan announced plans to “conclude” Operation Metro Surge, local immigrants’ rights groups and legal advocacy organizations became skeptical and encouraged caution among their communities in the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. Homan claimed in his Feb. 12, 2026 announcement that the conclusion of Metro Surge was due primarily to success in the mission’s aims and improved cooperation from local law enforcement. That allusion to greater cooperation was enough to raise significant concern.

“Is our community safer now that Metro Surge is ending, or is it that there are agreements in place that just are not as visible and actions are taking place that are not visible?” asked Wendy Zuñiga, the Communications Director of COPAL (Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina), a Lake Street area non-profit focused on statewide immigrant rights, advocacy, quality of life services, and education, particularly in the Latine community.

In a recent interview, Zuñiga described concerns that “the end of Metro Surge didn’t come simply because Minnesotans put up such a good fight for democracy and human rights, but because there were negotiations and there were agreements made behind closed doors.”

Responding to such concerns from COPAL and other local advocacy organizations, the City of Minneapolis promptly posted on its Instagram: “The City of Minneapolis did not make any deals or concessions with the federal government or ICE to end Operation Metro Surge… MPD and the city do not participate in federal civil immigration enforcement or help ICE with civil immigration enforcement investigations.”

Such reassurances fell flat for immigrant advocates and neighborhood observers who claimed to see ICE actions continuing to occur. During a press conference hosted by COPAL, on Feb. 13, Edwin Torres DeSantiago of the Immigrant Defense Network (IDN) stated, “It’s naive to say that it’s ending because, just this morning, there were operations in Shakopee.”

Ultimately, immigrant community advocates have expressed concern about multiple apparent mixed messages from federal and local government: whether ICE and CBP operations are genuinely concluding or only changing shape; whether or not local agencies or counties have cooperated more, or plan to cooperate more, with ICE; and ultimately, whether families living in hiding should feel safe to move about freely once again.

Regardless of how the next few weeks and months play out, many families are “not going to feel safe to send their kids back to school, to seek the medical help that they have the right to seek regardless of their immigration status,” Zuñiga said. “It’s going to take a while to rebuild that trust.”

Torres DeSantiago noted the most recent origins of that distrust: over two months of systematic human rights violations. “This was not a targeted enforcement. It was saturation,” he said. “Military-style deployments in residential neighborhoods, workplace raids in the middle of the day, parents detained in front of their children, children coming home from school to an empty house.” He listed many other documented offenses, the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “and let’s not forget the 38 people that have died inside detention centers.”

Contrasting atrocities with mutual aid and constitutional observer efforts, Torres DeSantiago described “the largest civilian-led documentations that this country has seen” referring to efforts by citizens and advocacy groups to compile evidence of detainments of citizens and asylum seekers, beatings, shootings, and other breaches of due process during Metro Surge.

IDN is a statewide coalition of more than 100 organizations. In coming weeks and months, IDN, COPAL, and other advocacy groups hope to analyze, compile, and distribute data regarding detainments and community impacts.

Federal officials have stated that over 4,000 arrests were made in Minnesota during Metro Surge. During a news conference in early February, Homan quantified a total of 268 as violent criminals, known sex offenders, or gang members. Zuñiga noted a lack of transparency regarding the approximately 3,700 other arrests. In the absence of government-released details, analyzing the circumstances of those thousands of “other arrests” and their specific impacts on the surrounding community, may fall by default to the local non-profit and citizen-led initiatives.

Meanwhile, local communities are living with the emotional and economic ramifications. Zuñiga said that COPAL’s Navigator Line, an immigrant resource referral service, has received an average of 400 calls per day, including calls from other immigrant populations outside the Latine community.

Initial negative economic impact for the City of Minneapolis has been estimated at $203 million. Jason Chavez, who represents Ward 9 on the Minneapolis City Council, estimated the impact to Lake Street alone as $46 million and growing. At the COPAL press conference, Chavez commented on rebuilding efforts, including $1 million the city has released to the Hennepin County rental assistance program, a proposal to allocate $5 million to a small business relief fund, and a lengthening of eviction notices from 14 days to 30 days.

The reality is, city- and county-based relief and policies take time to implement. Meanwhile, urgently needed immediate assistance seems to depend on hyper-local charitable efforts, such as fundraisers to help neighbors pay rent and smaller non-profits that distribute direct aid. COPAL’s Executive Director Francisco Segovia encouraged the greater community to continue and sustain such neighbor-to-neighbor advocacy and care.

Segovia noted that ICE efforts actually began to intensify back in October of last year. He described families who have not had consistent income for five months, due to sheltering in place or because a primary breadwinner was detained. “Savings are gone. They need to figure out how to pay their bills,” he said. “Those things are not easy to fix right away.” He encouraged community members to help with rebuilding by making purchases at immigrant-owned restaurants and stores, and to simply “tell your neighbor, ‘Hey we love that you are here… Let me know if you need anything.’”

Segovia went on to thank civilian advocates and asked for continued attention on root cause issues. “Thank you everyone who has stood up against this occupation… let’s keep working together to rebuild,” he said. “Once ICE is out, the issues are not gone. We need an immigration reform… We need to fix this broken system that generates what we have seen.”