In early December 2025 the Trump administration launched “Operation Metro Surge” (OMS), a major immigration-enforcement initiative that deployed approximately 3,000 federal agents from ICE, CBP, and DHS to apprehend illegal aliens in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area of Minnesota. Among OMS’s high-value targets were members of the local Somali immigrant community, which recently had made bold headlines because of their participation in a multibillion-dollar fraud campaign that siphoned rivers of taxpayer cash into the coffers of Somali scammers. In response to OMS, hordes of leftwing agitators took to the streets in protest – in many cases impeding the actions of the federal agents or violently assaulting them, and sometimes provoking a necessarily forceful physical response.
On December 17, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented a group of 6 Minnesota-based plaintiffs in filing a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alleging that its agents were conducting a “campaign of constitutional violations” that: (a) infringed on the Minneapolis protesters’ First Amendment right to free speech; (b) violated their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizures; and (c) “violently subdued” them by means of gratuitously brutal tactics. Presiding over the case was Judge Katherine Menendez of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, a Biden appointee to the federal bench.
Meanwhile, the ongoing street chaos in Minneapolis continued to escalate until, as was inevitable, it claimed its first fatality on January 7, 2026 when an ICE agent fatally shot a 37-year-old local white woman named Renee Nicole Good. According to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Ms. Good had been “stalking and impeding” the work of ICE agents for some time by “blocking them in” with her Honda Pilot SUV and “shouting at them” while they were actively trying to carry out their mission. Just before Ms. Good was shot, an ICE agent approached her and demanded that she get out of her vehicle, which was blocking traffic. But instead of complying, the woman briefly shifted the SUV into reverse and then accelerated forward, physically striking a male agent in a collision that caused the latter to suffer internal bleeding in his torso. As these events unfolded in rapid succession, that same agent fired one shot through the windshield of Ms. Good’s SUV, and then two more shots through the open driver’s-side window as the vehicle sped past him before it crashed into a nearby parked car. The event was widely recorded and subsequently shared by onlookers with cell-phone cameras, and was aggressively exploited by the Left as a rallying point for the further escalation of anti-ICE aggression. Thousands of protesters held vigils and memorial gatherings in Minneapolis, while a host of demonstrations spread quickly across the state of Minnesota.
After Ms. Good’s death, the six plaintiffs who had sued DHS in December sent a letter to Judge Menendez, seeking immediate emergency action in their case. “Peaceful observers and protesters turned out again today, they will turn out again tomorrow, and they will continue turning out every day until Operation Metro Surge is over,” they wrote. “These Minnesotans who are peacefully exercising their core constitutional rights to speak and gather continue to be met with unconstitutional and terrifying violence … And things appear to be getting worse, not better.”
On January 7, 2026, former Vice President Kamala Harris posted the following statement on the social media site X:
“Today in Minneapolis, ICE agents shot and killed a woman in a shocking incident. Governor Walz has announced the state will ensure a fair investigation, and I am grateful for his swift action. Many of us have seen the horrifying and painful video, which makes it clear that the Trump administration’s explanation of this shooting is pure gaslighting. A full and fair investigation at the state level is absolutely necessary.”
On January 12, 2026, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who described President Trump’s immigration operation in Minnesota as an “invasion,” issued a press release announcing that he was: (a) joining the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in filing “a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and related agencies and officials,” and (b) “asking the court to end the unprecedented surge of DHS agents into the state and declare it unconstitutional and unlawful.” This suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, with Judge Menendez again presiding. Ellison and his fellow plaintiffs — citing “the immediate harm the state and cities are facing” — further asked Menendez to issue a Temporary Restraining Order shutting down OMS.
While raucous and violent protests against ICE and the Trump administration continued on a daily basis, on January 14 in North Minneapolis a DHS officer shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a 24-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela whom the Biden administration had released into the United States interior in 2022. The incident began with the officer attempting to make a targeted traffic stop of Sosa-Celis’ car. But the suspect tried to flee the scene in his vehicle before crashing into a parked car and then violently assaulting the officer when the latter attempted to arrest him. Two other male illegal aliens soon emerged from a nearby apartment and began striking the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle, prompting him to fire a defensive gunshot that struck Sosa-Celis in the leg and resulted in a non-life-threatening injury. This shooting again sparked immediate unrest by leftists in the community, with more than 100 protesters gathering in the streets and targeting law-enforcement authorities with various projectiles and fireworks.
In light of the tense circumstances in Minneapolis, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 statute that allows for the U.S. President to deploy military troops in order to suppress a rebellion or enforce federal laws.
On January 15, the ACLU of Minnesota filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging racial profiling and Fourth Amendment violations.
On January 16, Judge Menendez – in regard to the December 17, 2025 lawsuit filed by the ACLU and six plaintiffs — issued an 83-page order that barred all OMS agents from: (a) “using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity”; (b) placing such “peaceful protesters” under arrest; and (c) stopping or detaining local drivers or passengers for whom there was “no reasonable articulable suspicion” that they were obstructing law-enforcement operations, even if their vehicles were seen in the vicinity of an active protest. Additionally, the judge prohibited all federal agents from employing any physical measures against any driver who intentionally followed an agent’s vehicle on the roads — so long as the follower maintained “an appropriate distance” from the agent’s car. “There may be ample suspicion to stop cars, and even arrest drivers engaged in dangerous conduct while following immigration enforcement officers, but that does not justify stops of cars not breaking the law,” Menendez wrote.
On the morning of January 24, 2026, federal immigration agents who, according to DHS, were carrying out a “targeted operation” in pursuit of a particular illegal alien who was wanted on criminal charges, shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis man named Alex Jeffrey Pretti, who engaged the agents in an armed struggle while carrying a handgun as well as two fully loaded magazines. (A week earlier, he had sustained a broken rib in another physical confrontation with ICE agents.) The shooting of January 24 prompted hundreds of protesters to flood the streets anew and clash with law enforcement.
In a news conference shortly after the incident, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said:
“I just saw a video of more than six masked agents pummeling one of our constituents and shooting him to death. How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end? How many more lives need to be lost before this administration realizes that a political and partisan narrative is not as important as American values? How many times must local and national leaders plead with you, Donald Trump, to end this operation and recognize that this is not creating safety in our city? We have seen these kinds of operations in other places, in other countries, but not here in America, not in a way where a great American city is being invaded by its own federal government.
“I’m done being told that our community members are responsible for the vitriol in our streets. I’m done being told that our local elected officials are solely responsible for turning down the temperature. Just yesterday, we saw 15,000 people peacefully protesting in the streets, speaking out, standing up for their neighbors. Not a single broken window, not a single injury. Those peaceful protests embody the very principles that both Minneapolis and America was founded upon, conversely, the masked, militarized force and unidentified agents who are occupying our streets, that is what weakens our country. That is what erodes trust in both law enforcement and in democracy itself. […]
“This [Trump] administration and everyone involved in this operation should be reflecting. They should be reflecting right now and asking themselves, what exactly are you accomplishing? If the goal was to achieve peace and safety, this is doing exactly the opposite. If the goal was to achieve calm and prosperity, this is doing exactly the opposite. Are you standing up for American families right now, or are we tearing them apart? The invasion of these heavily armed, masked agents roaming around on our streets of Minneapolis, emboldened with a sense of impunity, it has to end. This is not how it has to be.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued a statement as well, via the social media platform X: “I just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning. Minnesota has had it. This is sickening. The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.” Walz further characterized the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown as an “absolute abomination.”
On January 25, 2026, former President Barack Obama issued a written statement titled “A Wakeup Call for Every American,” which read as follows:
“The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.
“Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety. That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.
“For weeks now, people across the country have been rightly outraged by the spectacle of masked ICE recruits and other federal agents acting with impunity and engaging in tactics that seem designed to intimidate, harass, provoke and endanger the residents of a major American city. These unprecedented tactics — which even the former top lawyer of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration has characterized as embarrassing, lawless and cruel — have now resulted in the fatal shootings of two U.S citizens. And yet rather than trying to impose some semblance of discipline and accountability over the agents they’ve deployed, the President and current administration officials seem eager to escalate the situation, while offering public explanations for the shootings of Mr. Pretti and Renee Good that aren’t informed by any serious investigation — and that appear to be directly contradicted by video evidence.
“This has to stop. I would hope that after this most recent tragedy, administration officials will reconsider their approach, and start finding ways to work constructively with Governor Walz and Mayor Frey as well as state and local police to avert more chaos and achieve legitimate law enforcement goals.
“In the meantime, every American should support and draw inspiration from the wave of peaceful protests in Minneapolis and other parts of the country. They are a timely reminder that ultimately it’s up to each of us as citizens to speak out against injustice, protect our basic freedoms, and hold our government accountable.”
On January 25 as well, former President Bill Clinton issued a statement that said:
“In recent weeks, we’ve watched horrible scenes play out in Minneapolis and other communities that I never thought would take place in America. People, including children, have been seized from their homes, workplaces, and the street by masked federal agents. Peaceful protesters and citizens exercising their constitutional right to observe and document law enforcement have been arrested, beaten, teargassed, and most searingly, in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot and killed.
“All of this is unacceptable and should have been avoided. To make matters even worse, at every turn, the people in charge have lied to us, told us not to believe what we’ve seen with our own eyes, and pushed increasingly aggressive and antagonistic tactics, including impeding investigations by local authorities.”
Profiles That Contain This Text:
Ilhan Omar
Jacob Frey
Tim Walz
Keith Ellison
Katherine Menendez