# Operation Metro Surge *Federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota, December 2025 – February 2026* Operation Metro Surge was a federal immigration enforcement operation in [[Minnesota]]. It was carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during Donald Trump's second presidential term. The [[Department of Homeland Security]] (DHS) announced it on December 4, 2025. It started in [[Minneapolis]] and Saint Paul and was later widened to the whole state.[^1][^2] DHS called it "the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out". Its stated purpose was to find and deport undocumented immigrants.[^1] The documented outputs can be set beside that description. ICE and DHS reported 3,000 arrests by January 19, 2026. Data released under a FOIA request in March 2026 counted at least 3,789 arrests. Fewer than one in four of those arrested had a criminal record, and about 35% of cases were "collateral" arrests from street sweeps rather than targeted actions.[^1] On January 28, 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge [[Patrick Schiltz]] found that ICE had violated at least 96 court orders in Minnesota since January 1.[^1] Federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, during the operation. One person held by ICE died in custody.[^1][^3] Minnesota, Illinois, Minneapolis and Saint Paul filed federal lawsuits against DHS on January 12, 2026. A federal judge denied Minnesota's request for a preliminary injunction on January 31.[^4][^1] CBS News reported that on January 20 the [[United States Department of Justice]] issued grand jury subpoenas to Attorney General [[Keith Ellison]], Governor [[Tim Walz]] and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of obstructing federal law enforcement.[^5] The operation was wound down in February 2026. About 650 immigration officers were still in the state in early March.[^1] ## Who **Federal.** The operation was run by ICE and CBP under DHS, then headed by Secretary Kristi Noem. Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino appears in the record of the operation's first week.[^1] On January 24, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Governor Walz asking the State to repeal its sanctuary policies.[^1] President Trump announced an effort to deport people of Somali descent in Minnesota who he said were involved in fraud, and he called them "garbage". CNN reported that the operation was planned to focus mainly on undocumented Somali immigrants.[^1] **State and local.** Attorney General Ellison called the deployment "in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities and Minnesota, and it must stop". On January 15, Governor Walz told the administration to "stop this campaign of retribution". On January 16, Mayor Frey said the operation was "not normal immigration enforcement".[^1][^4] After Good was killed, Walz placed the Minnesota National Guard on standby. After Pretti was killed on January 24, he deployed it at the request of the [[Hennepin County Sheriff]]'s Office and the Minneapolis city government.[^1] **Courts.** Federal judges in Minnesota issued the rulings described below: Schiltz, [[Jerry W. Blackwell]], [[Katherine M. Menendez]] and Jeffrey Bryan.[^1] ## What **Stated description and documented record.** On December 13, 2025, DHS reported 400 arrests of undocumented immigrants. DHS said the people arrested included pedophiles, rapists, kidnappers and drug traffickers.[^1] In January 2026, ICE's own figures showed that 103 of 2,000 arrestees, about 5 percent, had records of violent crime. A review of an arrest list published by ICE found people who had been transferred from state custody to DHS before December 1, 2025, including one transferred in 2003.[^1] On February 3, 2026, Judge Blackwell said that the "overwhelming majority" of ICE cases brought before him involved people lawfully present in the United States.[^1] The surge also included Homeland Security Investigations officers assigned to the 2020s Minnesota fraud scandals, alongside a multiagency fraud effort announced by the White House.[^1] **Entries and warrants.** An internal ICE memo from May 2025 asserts that officers may force their way into the homes of people under removal orders using an administrative warrant rather than one signed by a judge.[^1] On January 11, 2026, agents used a battering ram to enter a Liberian immigrant's home under an administrative warrant. On January 15, Judge Bryan held that the entry was a warrantless search that violated the Fourth Amendment, and he ordered the man released. ICE detained him again the next day at a routine check-in.[^1] [[The Minnesota Star Tribune]] reviewed 33 wrongful-detention suits filed in the federal court in Minnesota on January 16 and 17. It found no evidence of a warrant in most of them.[^1] **The State's lawsuit.** Minnesota's suit invokes the Tenth Amendment. It argues that using federal agents for general policing commandeers state resources and intrudes on the State's police powers. Minneapolis's suit relies on the Administrative Procedure Act. It argues that designating schools and hospitals as enforcement zones was an "arbitrary and capricious" change made without notice and comment.[^1] The Attorney General's office announced the suit on January 12 and described the surge as an "unprecedented attack on state sovereignty".[^4] The Justice Department filed its opposition to a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on January 19. Oral arguments began January 26, and at least 20 state attorneys general filed amicus briefs supporting Minnesota.[^1] On January 31, Judge Menendez denied the preliminary injunction, writing that "the relative merits of each side's competing positions are unclear". The sources cited here do not give the case's docket number or its later disposition.[^1] **Federal actions against State officials and the State.** According to CBS News, the grand jury subpoenas issued on January 20, 2026 accuse Ellison, Walz and Frey of obstructing federal law enforcement during the surge. The sources cited here do not show any charge or the current status of that matter.[^5] In a separate matter, not part of the surge, the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs issued release No. 26-21 on January 14, 2026. It was titled *United States Department of Justice Files Lawsuit Against Minnesota's 'Affirmative Action' Regime*, and in it Attorney General Pamela Bondi certified the case as a matter of general public importance.[^6] The United States' term in that title for the State's apparatus is "Minnesota's 'Affirmative Action' Regime". The project's catalogue of U.S.-government "regime" usages finds no other U.S. state so described. That is the project's catalogue finding, not an independently established fact.[^6] ## When - **December 1–5, 2025:** ICE made at least 12 arrests, and DHS announced the operation on December 4.[^1][^2] The project's Sherburne at-issue brief dates the start of the deployment to December 1.[^7] - **December 6:** About a dozen agents entered a home in [[Burnsville]] and arrested four people, including the parents of a seven-year-old boy. The four were taken to detention facilities outside Minnesota.[^1] - **December 13:** DHS reported 400 arrests.[^1] - **January 6, 2026:** DHS announced an expansion that sent 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.[^1] - **January 7:** ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Good, 37, in south Minneapolis. Protests followed in Minneapolis and other cities.[^3][^1] - **January 12:** The State and the cities sued, and Ellison held a press conference.[^4][^1] - **January 15:** Judge Bryan issued his Fourth Amendment ruling. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, then said the next day there was no "reason right now" to do so.[^1] - **January 19:** Noem posted that ICE had arrested 3,000 people in Minneapolis in the previous six weeks. The Justice Department filed its opposition to the injunction request.[^1] - **January 20:** The grand jury subpoenas were issued, as reported by CBS News.[^5] - **January 24:** Pretti was killed. Walz deployed the Guard, and Bondi sent her letter.[^1] - **January 28:** Schiltz issued his finding on violations of court orders.[^1] - **January 31:** Menendez denied the preliminary injunction.[^1] - **February 3:** Blackwell made his statement about lawfully present people.[^1] - **February 2026:** The end of the operation was announced. On February 20, Representatives [[Ilhan Omar]] and [[Angie Craig]] found the Whipple Federal Building empty.[^1] - **March 2026:** FOIA arrest data was released. Noem testified before the Senate. Trump then announced that she would leave DHS and nominated Markwayne Mullin to replace her.[^1] ## Where The operation began in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and was later extended across Minnesota.[^1] People arrested were held at the Whipple Federal Building in the [[Fort Snelling]] unorganized territory. A U.S. citizen detained on December 9 while observing an arrest in north Minneapolis was held there for about four to five hours and then released without charges.[^1] After the end of the operation was announced, ICE continued to operate in suburbs including [[Coon Rapids]], Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Fridley, Columbia Heights and [[Apple Valley]].[^1] The Sherburne brief records the Sherburne County jail as one of four jails where people arrested in the operation were taken.[^7] ## How many - **Agents:** DHS sent 2,000 agents in the January 6 expansion. A Justice Department attorney testified that, as of January 26, at least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 CBP officers were taking part.[^1] The Sherburne brief gives a figure of as many as 3,000 federal agents from December 1, 2025. The brief describes this as roughly five times the sworn strength of the [[Minneapolis Police Department]], against a usual Border Patrol presence in the state of about 150.[^7] - **Agents remaining:** On February 20, the field office director told the visiting representatives that fewer than 500 ICE agents remained. By early March, the residual force numbered 650 immigration officers.[^1] - **Arrests:** Reported totals were at least 12 (December 1–5), 400 (DHS, December 13) and 3,000 (DHS and ICE, January 19).[^1] This article uses the March 2026 FOIA count of at least 3,789 as the latest figure. Noem's January 19 claim of more than 10,000 arrests of "criminal illegal aliens" in Minneapolis covers a longer period than the operation.[^1] Arrests peaked in early January, shortly after Good's killing.[^1] - **Who was arrested:** Most arrestees were from Ecuador and Mexico. Fewer than one in four had a criminal record, about 13% had pending criminal charges, and about 35% were collateral arrests.[^1] ICE detainee flights from Minneapolis more than doubled from December to January.[^1] - **Court record:** ICE violated at least 96 court orders, according to Schiltz's January 28 finding. The *Star Tribune* reviewed 33 wrongful-detention suits.[^1] - **Deaths:** Federal agents killed two U.S. citizens, and one detainee died in ICE custody.[^1][^3] ## In the at-issue record The project's Sherburne at-issue brief (row AI-Sherburne-027, dated December 1, 2025) pairs two facts. The first is the size of the deployment: as many as 3,000 federal agents, and a DHS count of 3,000 arrests by January 19, 2026. The second is the detention capacity that received the people arrested, with Sherburne County as one of four receiving jails. The brief anchors the row to a May 2026 White House release on the administration's fraud effort. Its other listed sources are CBS News, DHS and the *Minnesota Reformer*.[^7] ## In the Minnesota record ### When - December 4, 2025: Operation Metro Surge began with large-scale ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities.[^2] - January 7, 2026: An ICE agent killed Renée Good during the operation in south Minneapolis.[^3] - January 12, 2026: Ellison sued to halt the operation.[^4] - January 20, 2026: The grand jury subpoenas were issued to Ellison, Walz and Frey.[^5] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia, *Operation Metro Surge* (revid 1379055759, retrieved Oct. 27, 2026; CC BY-SA 4.0) — secondary summary of the operation's dates, agent and arrest counts, court rulings, litigation and official responses, as reported in that article's sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Metro_Surge [^2]: Al Jazeera, report on the start of Operation Metro Surge (Dec. 5, 2025) — start of large-scale ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities (Time Table row TL-0941). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/5/minneapolis-operation-metro-surge-ice [^3]: Wikipedia, *Killing of Renée Good* — fatal shooting of Renée Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026 (Time Table row TL-0946). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good [^4]: Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, press release on the State's lawsuit to halt Operation Metro Surge (Jan. 12, 2026) — the State's suit and the Attorney General's description of the operation (Time Table row TL-0947). https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2026/01/12_ICE.asp [^5]: CBS News, report on grand jury subpoenas to Tim Walz, Keith Ellison and Jacob Frey (Jan. 2026) — DOJ grand jury subpoenas alleging obstruction of federal law enforcement (Time Table row TL-0951). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/subpoena-tim-walz-keith-ellison-jacob-frey-immigration-obstruction/ [^6]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, *United States Department of Justice Files Lawsuit Against Minnesota's 'Affirmative Action' Regime*, release No. 26-21 (Jan. 14, 2026) — the release's title and Attorney General Bondi's certification of the case as a matter of general public importance. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-department-justice-files-lawsuit-against-minnesotas-affirmative-action-regime [^7]: The White House, release on the administration's fraud effort (May 2026) — anchor of the project's Sherburne at-issue row (AI-Sherburne-027) on agent numbers, the DHS arrest count and the four receiving jails. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/05/trump-administrations-full-scale-war-on-fraud/