Six responses to the news that the Trump regime’s chaotic, deadly – and in many cases, unlawful – “immigration enforcement surge” in Minnesota is ending.
Today’s announcement that the ICE surge in Minnesota is coming to an end feels . . . complicated.
I’ve imagined this day for months, wondering what it would feel like. Relief? Happiness? Anger? Sadness?
The truth is – it’s all of it at once.
What has happened here in Minnesota – whether it was the “right” way or not – will be debated for a long time. But what I hope doesn't get lost in that debate are the people whose lives were upended along the way.
And that’s where my heart is today.
The members of our immigrant communities who have taken all the right steps to be here lawfully have carried themselves with extraordinary resilience and courage through so much fear and uncertainty. They’re our neighbors, our coworkers, our classmates, our friends, and our small‑business owners that poured everything into the American dream only to suffer through this moment. So many have built beautiful lives here – lives that matter deeply - and they stayed strong even when everything around them felt unsteady.
Please continue to support and honor their humanity, their courage and their strength.
As for me – if I’m honest . . . even with today’s news, I don’t know if I’m ready to stop carrying my passport yet. Do I feel safe? Not quite. That hyper‑vigilance doesn’t turn off overnight. It comes from months of watching people who look like me – my family, my community – being questioned, profiled, and targeted. These are habits born out of survival.
I hope that one day soon, I will feel safe again. I hope there comes a time when I don’t think twice about leaving my passport at home. I hope I can feel like a Minnesotan and an American again – fully, confidently, and without feeling like I’m “other.”
And I truly believe that day will come.
– Pauleen Le
via social media
February 12, 2026
A quick response to the script being read by Tom Homan, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, and all of the politicians on the so-called end of “Metro Surge.”
The blood on the street is scarcely dry when Walz and Homan made this grand announcement with the prescription that communities end their direct protection of our neighbors in the street. It is made days prior to the Democratic Party voting on DHS funding, most certainly so they can have a talking point to vote to fund ICE and DHS.
The meetings between the Minnesota Democratic Party (or DFL as its known here) were closed to all community members and essential workers. We have no idea what was agreed to, nor who was present in the meetings.
Every level of Minnesota government and policing has been cooperating with ICE actions and abductions. The Minneapolis Police Department arrested community members in our defense actions. The Hennepin County Sheriff has been protecting the federal detention center from protesters as has the Minnesota State Police. All of this while ICE has been collecting data on our community members for their, “Domestic Terrorist,” database.
Not a single Democratic politician is saying a word about the $70 billion budget of ICE and the purchasing of warehouses all over the country for mass detention.
As far as I can tell, some community members are hopeful of the announcement, which is a intention driven by the scale of violence and oppression we have all experienced. No one has forgotten or will ever forget the titanic levels of organizing, resistance and bravery shown by the people here in defending vulnerable communities.
Personally, I see no reason to believe anything is ending here except the last remaining and desperate threads of legitimacy of the politicians and their stooges. “It’s the pattern of an abuser,” a local RN said. “They beat you and then apologize before returning to the violence.”
– Cliff Willmeng
via social media
February 12, 2026
ICE agents finally getting out of Minnesota is only the beginning of restoring the rights and livelihoods of people harmed by this invasion. Far too many Minnesotans were unlawfully detained, assaulted, harassed or imprisoned by these masked, unaccountable agents.
In my district, two of us, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were killed. Minnesota is proud of them, and of other community members for standing up to Donald Trump’s police state by bearing witness to their crimes and protecting neighbors with time, donations and resources. The effect of ICE chaos in the streets, combined with missing and terrorized people, on schools, hospitals and small businesses has been devastating.
Next, we need real accountability for the perpetrators and the leaders that sent them here, and help for the Minnesotans they harmed. That means honest investigations into violent crimes committed by ICE agents, passing legislation to empower Minnesotans to sue the agents and agency that wronged them, and reinvesting in communities to stabilize small businesses, household budgets and neighborhoods traumatized by this lawless invasion.
–
Sen. Omar Fateh
via social media
February 12, 2026
ICE turned Minnesota’s suburbs into a militarized dragnet near schools and everyday errands, and now Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan is claiming the surge is “ending” after weeks of masked agents, unmarked vehicles, and families being driven into hiding.
This is the part that should scare the hell out of everyone, not just “immigration people” in the city: the crackdown did not stay in Minneapolis. It metastasized into the places where kids catch the bus, where people buy gas, where you grab Burger King, where school administrators are supposed to be thinking about lesson plans instead of tracking federal agents like it’s a war zone.
A superintendent in Fridley (from a north Minneapolis suburb) says she’s literally spending school days driving between buildings to monitor agent activity, and described how “masked men with huge weapons in unmarked vehicles” has become a normalized sight.
Then she drops the line that should end this conversation forever: “Five-year-olds should not be able to recognize ICE agents.”
It gets worse. After she spoke publicly and the district filed a lawsuit over activity in or near schools, she says agents followed her and members of the school board. That is intimidation, full stop.
And because this is happening in suburbs with mixed politics, the response isn’t always a big public protest. People are being forced underground. An immigrant-led org in an outer suburb has locked its doors, removed its contact info, switched to third-party donations, and its co-founder has been in hiding while keeping their child away for safety.
Read that again. In America, in 2026, community groups are operating like they’re in an occupied state.
Meanwhile, the human fallout is exactly what you’d expect from a fear-based policing campaign: soaring absenteeism at schools, church attendance collapsing, families too terrified to leave home, and mutual aid networks delivering food and even rent help because people are afraid that one trip outside could end with a loved one disappearing into detention.
So when officials say “the surge is ending,” here’s the question: ending into what? Because the damage is already done. Trust has been shattered, communities terrorized. And a new baseline established where federal agents can hover around schools and neighborhoods and call it “enforcement.”
If you want something concrete to do: get trained with local rapid response groups, donate to immigrant mutual aid, and share basic “know your rights” materials (like ILRC’s Red Cards and NILC guidance) so families have tools, not just fear.
He never said it exactly, but way back when it was dawning on Americans that pouring blood and treasure into Vietnam – to blunt “yellow peril” – wasn’t looking like a quick and easy win, Vermont Sen. George Aiken gave a speech. He suggested the way for the White House and country to save face over the burgeoning disaster was actually pretty simple: Just declare victory and leave.
So it is this morning with Tom “The Bag Man” Homan telling reporters that Operation Metro Terror has been an enormous success and that he’s going to move on. According to Homan, it’s been successful, we assume, because the worst of the worst have been taken off the streets and local police are finally being so cooperative. (There’s no proof of either.)
With that said, (but not done), Trump 2.0 can proudly pack up its thousands of ill-trained mall cops and all their testosterone-boosting GI Joe gear and move on to terrorize someplace else.
Obviously, since this is coming from a Trump administration tool, not to mention a guy so dim he took – on camera – $50,000 in a bag from undercover FBI agents to grease the skids for federal contracts with the soon-to-be-reelected Trump kleptocracy, there’s no reason to believe a word of it. At least not until every last masked, camo-clad goon has scuttled off under a new rock.
Homan, very likely reading from a script from Stephen Miller edited by Russ Vought, can say whatever he pleases with impunity. But out here in the reality-based world where servitude to a demented reality TV host isn’t Job #1, we can already assess the spectacular failure of Trump’s attack on Minneapolis (and elsewhere in Minnesota).
ICE has succeeded in terrorizing thousands of people guilty – at most – of misdemeanor-level civil infractions. It accomplished this while murdering two people lawfully protesting its campaign of morbidly telegenic lawlessness. But ... but ... they have failed to defeat, much less dispirit, a city/state smart enough and brave enough to spontaneously rise up, organize and fight back.
So much for victory.
The tipping point for ICE’s failure here was the murder of Renee Good and the instantaneous international reaction to it, followed by cratering polls for the Vought/Miller/Trump strategy of militarized thuggery. Prior to Good's murder Team Trump clearly believed they had achieved a level of imperial control allowing them to get away with anything. They felt they had the court system, enough media and a craven Congress deep enough in their pockets to get away with a brutish spectacle of authoritarian rampage.
Minnesota, Minneapolis in particular, has proven them wrong.
Thousands of utterly ordinary, uh “unpaid”, citizens turned out, day after day, in a mid-winter deep freeze to protest and vilify the thugs and support the victimized.
Those citizens showed their faces.
They turned out despite White House assertions of “absolute immunity” for ICE to kill whoever they pleased for whatever reason they pleased, including being "disrespectful". They were otherwise average citizens confronting and hurling righteous vulgarities on masked goons breaking more laws in a day than a short order fry cook could in lifetime. In the process, they risked their own assault by Donald Trump’s out-of-control, demonstrably homicidal insta-cops.
Simultaneously, away from the Tik Tok front line confrontations, there’s been the truly stunning, overnight, pop-up creation of an enormous infrastructure for acquiring and distributing food and home supplies for ICE’s victims. A process that sometimes requires volunteer drivers to destroy the address in case ICE might pull them over and stick a nozzle of pepper spray up their nose for, you know, aiding and abetting serial killing rapists.
Add to that collections for rent money for housekeepers, construction workers, nursing home staff and on and on, too terrified to leave their homes for work. All of this springing up and coordinating on a scale no one could have imagined two months ago.
So yeah, out here in the reality bubble, everything about the Minnesota response to this historic siege is a profound failure . . . for Homan, ICE, “weird Stephen,” and The Mad Orange Crypto King.
This episode will not be forgotten. Certainly not by whatever community suffers next.
Not that any Trump lickspittle will ever concede the failure they’ve inflicted on themselves.
With that in mind, we should be prepared for a couple things, knowing what we know about how Trump 2.0 operates.
One, Homan is lying in quantity. ICE goons killing American citizens in front of 50 cellphone cameras, vandalizing private property and flying five year-olds to Texas is too high profile to completely disguise. But let’s not be naive. The White House’s Stasi-like intimidation will not/can not diminish entirely.
In Trump’s mind, he only wins. Roy Cohn taught him well. Even when losing spectacularly, like bankrupting casinos, he’ll declare every imbecilic disaster a stunning success, a view immediately echoed by his media supplicants. Fewer strutting ICE thugs doesn’t mean fewer screws turning on local blue state bureaucrats and their agencies. In fact with a meme that Trump has “lost” in Minnesota those screws will get twisted even harder.
Two, armed with $75 billion, the “siege of Minneapolis” will be re-directed and inflicted on someone else. That kind of money has to go somewhere, and it sure as hell won’t be into Obamacare subsidies. Public disapproval of what ICE has done here be damned. And never mind fear-struck Republican incumbents pleading with Miller to tone things down at least until after the November elections.
Like the U.S. in Vietnam, Team Trump is in this until the last chopper off the roof.
– Brian Lambert
via social media
February 12, 2026
Tom Homan confirmed that Operation Metro Surge has ended and most activities by U.S. Gestapo in Minnesota are being withdrawn.
To everyone who stood tall, protested, organized, and refused to be intimidated – your courage mattered.
We also honor the lives of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Their names must not be forgotten.
Justice requires memory. And Minnesota did not stay silent.
– Tony Pentimalli
via social media
February 12, 2026
“Border Czar” Tom Homan Says Immigration Operation in Minnesota Will End Soon – Katelyn Vue (Sahan Journal, February 12, 2026).
“Not an Anomaly . . . A Blueprint”: Homan Says Minnesota ICE Surge Ending – But Mass Deportations Aren’t – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, February 12, 2026).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts on the resistance to the Trump regime’s fascist occupation of Minnesota:
• Omar Fateh: Quote of the Day – December 4, 2025
• Photo of the Day – December 5, 2025
• Susie Hayward on What’s Happening in Minneapolis
• Doing What We Can to Stop Unjust Arrests of Immigrants
• Great Event, Great Sign, Great Nails
• Christmas Eve Musings
• May We Do Likewise
• “This Is What Fascism Looks Like” – January 7, 2026
• “It Was Murder”: 12 Powerful Responses to the Death of Renée Nicole Good
• Omar Fateh: “Folks Are Waking Up”
• A Good Faith Appeal and a Grim Response
• Why Minnesota?
• Chris Hedges on ICE: “I Have Seen These Masked Goons Before”
• Steven Donziger: “Let’s Get Real . . . ICE Is a Domestic Terrorist Organization”
• Historian Kyle Dekker: “It’s Not Nazi Ideology We Are Fighting. It’s American”
• Knowing Our Rights
• Mike Figueredo on Why Trump Might Be Pushing the U.S. to the Brink of Collapse
• A “Red Alert Moment for American Democracy”
• Dispatches from Occupied Minnesota
• Marianne Williamson on How to Psychologically Endure This Moment
• What Moral Clarity Looks Like in Minnesota This MLK Day
• Nemik’s Eulogy for Renée Nicole Good
• “It Was Never About Keeping America Safe”
• “ICE Out!”: The Minnesota General Strike – 1/23/26
• “This Was a Flat Out Execution”
• “Organized Sustained Systemic Resistance and Self-Defense Are Our Only Options”
• Honoring Alex Pretti
• George Conway: The Trump Administration Is a “Criminal Organization”
• In the Face of Fascist Lies, MN Governor Tim Walz Sets the Record Straight
• Adam Serwer on How “Every Social Theory Undergirding Trumpism Has Been Broken on the Steel of Minnesotan Resolve”
• “Trump Is Scared Shitless”
• “They Were Alive. Then They Were Not”
• Bruce Springsteen and the Streets of Minneapolis in the Winter of ’26
• Craig Mokhiber on the “Imperial Boomerang”: How U.S. War Tactics Abroad Are Now Used at Home
• January Vignettes (2026)
• Honoring Renée Good and the “Astonishing Surge of Courage” of Minneapolis
• A Luminous Celebration of Light, Love and Community
• Memes of the Times – February 2026
Image 1: Federal immigration agents walk down the street after deploying tear gas on civilians around Nicollet Avenue and W. 26th Street in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026. (Photo: Aaron Nesheim / Sahan Journal)
Image 2: A citizen stands along a chain-link fence holding a sign reading “No ICE, Resist Fascism” outside the Whipple Federal Building on February 7 in Minneapolis. (Photo: Kerem Yücel / MPR News)
Image 4: Concerned citizens gather at the gate of the Whipple Federal building where ICE agents are stationed in Minneapolis on January 15, 2026. (Photo: Dymanh Chhoun / Sahan Journal)
Image 3: Photographer unknown.
Image 5: The Indigenous prayer camp set up near both Fort Snelling and the Whipple Federal building in Minneapolis – February 11, 2026. Writes Derek James of CBS News Minnesota:
Fort Snelling and the Whipple Federal Building were built on Bdóte, a sacred site for the Dakota and other tribes at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. It is also the site where the United States government killed hundreds of Dakota people and imprisoned more than 1,600 in the mid-1800s.
Now, a camp with tipis and a prayer fire stands across from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in the Whipple building, with a focus on families and neighbors impacted by immigration enforcement.
“I’m praying for my people to wake up, I’m praying for my people to speak up, to cast aside the things that have held us back and clean up our families,” said Allen Michael Owen. “I’m praying for our people to be good relatives, to remember who we are, and I’m praying that our people can help people all across the world remember who they are.”
Owen, a Dakota descendent, says the fear and family separation happening now hits close to home.
“It’s horrible, not only on a conscious level for my neighbors, but on a personal level, and what it does to my family and their perception of my safety,” he said.
Owen says what’s happening today echoes generations of trauma for Indigenous people, but he believes prayer is action.
“We’re not going to tolerate our homes being invaded as Dakota people. We’re not going to tolerate this occupation any longer, or silently,” Owen said. “And so I think the humanity has come from not tolerating violence to our neighbors anymore, and that’s what we’re all here for.”
And this group says they’ll remain to raise awareness of the government brutality happening again on this land.
“As an akicita, I’m going to stay here as long as my people need me here,” Owen said.
Organizers say the prayer camp is open to the public and operates on traditional Indigenous customs, with decisions made by consensus.
They say supporters have been dropping off firewood and other supplies daily.
Image 6: Michael J. Bayly – Minneapolis, January 27, 2026.
