The New Dark Age

On January 1, 2026, the Trump administration launched “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota. The operation began with the deployment of 2,000 federal agents tasked with carrying out a campaign of mass deportation. On January 12th, the administration announced it would send an additional 1,000 agents. On January 18th, Trump announced that he was also readying the U.S. Army’s 11th Airborne Division based in Alaska to send to Minneapolis and St. Paul (the Twin Cities). Altogether, Metro Surge constitutes the largest federal law-enforcement deployment in United States history.^[1]

Administration statements suggest Minnesota was targeted for several reasons, chief among them the state’s Somali population—the largest in the country. Trump has repeatedly expressed hostility toward Somali people, at one point calling them “garbage”.^[2] By framing Operation Metro Surge in these terms, the administration has made explicit that its immigration enforcement strategy is rooted in racial targeting: a campaign aimed at removing racial and ethnic communities deemed incompatible with its vision of “making America great again.”

Since the operation began, communities across the Twin Cities have reported a constant presence of federal agents detaining and assaulting both citizens and non-citizens based on skin color, perceived ethnicity, and accents. Observers describe the campaign as the most extensive episode of concentrated racial profiling since the Jim Crow era. Dark-skinned residents, ironically including Native Americans, have been shown to be vulnerable to detention while walking in public.^[3]

Minnesotans, however, have not remained passive. In a broad display of multiracial and working-class solidarity, residents have organized a mass resistance effort aimed at protecting vulnerable community members. Rapid-response networks now alert neighbors to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, document encounters, and confront agents attempting to detain people at homes, workplaces, and in public spaces. Mutual aid groups have expanded food distribution and rent assistance for families sheltering at home. These efforts have been accompanied by daily demonstrations across the Twin Cities, particularly in targeted neighborhoods and outside the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where detainees are held.

The campaign reached a breaking point on January 7th with the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathon Ross. Good, an unarmed mother of three, was shot as she attempted to drive away after filming ICE agents who were blocking the street. Her killing once again placed Minnesota at the center of a national struggle against racialized policing, nearly six years after the murder of George Floyd sparked the largest protest movement in U.S. history.^[4]

Good’s death and the broader assault on immigrant communities did not occur in a vacuum. The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that immigrants are responsible for declining living standards and falling real wages in the United States. Somali communities, in particular, have been cast as scapegoats for structural economic decline tied to the unraveling of U.S. global dominance. This narrative omits the role of U.S. foreign policy in destabilizing the very countries from which many immigrants flee.

From Venezuela to Somalia, Afghanistan to Mexico, the United States has intervened economically and militarily to advance corporate and geopolitical interests, often with devastating consequences for local populations. Many of the refugees arriving in the United States are fleeing conditions created or worsened by these interventions—refugees of American imperial policy and decades of destabilization, exploitation, and extraction.^[5]

The present moment underscores this contradiction. While immigrants and people of color were being detained across Minnesota, the Trump administration was simultaneously involved in the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, widely viewed as an attempt to seize control of the country’s oil industry. Millions of Venezuelans displaced by U.S. sanctions now find themselves entangled in the same immigration enforcement apparatus.^[6]

Complicating the administration’s goals is the fact that many of the communities it seeks to remove are legally present in the United States. Of Minnesota’s approximately 80,000 Somali residents, only about 8,000 lack citizenship or permanent resident status. Of those 8,000, many are protected under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), first granted to Somali refugees in 1991 amid civil war and ongoing instability. Nevertheless, Trump has announced the termination of TPS protections for Somalis beginning in March.^[7]

Beyond overtly racist rhetoric, the administration has attempted to justify its targeting of Minnesota by citing alleged fraud. These claims stem from a combination of documented misuse of COVID relief funds and exaggerated allegations promoted by right-wing influencer Nick Shirley. Shirley has claimed that Somali-owned daycare centers defrauded the state of billions of dollars, assertions unsupported by evidence. While a limited fraud case involving Somali Americans did occur, it bears no resemblance to the sweeping criminality alleged. Somali Americans are no more likely to commit crimes than any other demographic group.^[8]

These xenophobic portrayals serve as deflection. The largest concentration of waste and fraud in the United States is not found among immigrant communities but within the Pentagon’s nearly trillion-dollar budget—marked by chronic failures of accountability, unaudited spending, and military interventions that drain public resources while destabilizing the world.^[9]

Operation Metro Surge and the resistance to ICE in Minnesota are reaching a critical turning point. In response to the massive deployment of federal immigration agents under Operation Metro Surge and the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer earlier this month, community organizers, labor unions, faith leaders, and local officials have called for a statewide day of nonviolent action — urging people not to work, go to school, or shop as a form of protest and economic demonstration.^[10]

On January 23, with rallies and marches planned across the Twin Cities and beyond, tens of thousands of Minnesotans are expected to take to the streets to show the federal government the depth of opposition to the current immigration enforcement actions and to demand the immediate withdrawal of ICE from the state and justice for Good’s murder. In this massive showing of solidarity, Minnesotans will have a chance to show the world what people-power looks like in practice. 

Sam Froiland is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Illinois. He specializes in the environmental and social history of Minnesota. Sam is a lifelong Minnesotan and currently lives in Minneapolis where he organizes with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

Endnotes

^[1] Hamed Aleaziz and Madeleine Ngo, “Trump Officials Are Sending 1,000 More Immigration Officers to Minnesota,” U.S., The New York Times, January 12, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/us/politics/border-patrol-minnesota-surge.html; Jeff Wald, “President Trump Preparing 1,500 Troops for Mobilization to Minnesota amid Anti-ICE Protests,” FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, January 18, 2026, https://www.fox9.com/news/minnesota-national-guard-placed-standby-amid-anti-ice-protests.

^[2] “Trump Says He Doesn’t Want Somalis in US as ICE Plans Operation,” BBC, December 3, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c208x9v68w3o.

^[3] Mariana Alfaro, “Native Americans Are Being Swept up by ICE in Minneapolis, Tribes Say,” The Washington Post, January 15, 2026, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/15/native-americans-ice-minneapolis/.

^[4] “‘Terror & Chaos’: Minneapolis Reels After ICE Agent Kills Renee Good,” Democracy Now!, January 8, 2026, https://www.democracynow.org/2026/1/8/minneapolis_ice_shooting_renee_nicole_good.

^[5] Javier Mendoza, “Imperialism, Sanctions and Neoliberalism: The Forces Shaping US-Mexico Migration,” Liberation News, February 19, 2024, https://liberationnews.org/imperialism-sanctions-and-neoliberalism-the-forces-shaping-us-mexico-migration/; Suyapa Portillo Villeda and Miguel Tinker Salas, “The Root Cause of Central American Migration Is US Imperialism,” accessed June 8, 2021, https://jacobin.com/2021/06/kamala-harris-central-america-guatemala-visit-us-imperialism.

^[6] Al Jazeera, “US Seizes Sixth Tanker as Venezuela’s Interim Leader Vows Oil Sector Reform,” Al Jazeera, January 16, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/16/us-seizes-sixth-tanker-as-venezuelas-interim-leader-vows-oil-sector-reform.

^[7] Allysa Chen, “Most Somali People in America and Minnesota Are Citizens • Minnesota Reformer,” Minnesota Reformer, December 5, 2025, https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/most-somali-people-in-america-and-minnesota-are-citizens/.

^[8] Jason Wilson, “Behind the Somali Daycare Panic Is a Mother-and-Son Duo Angling to Be Top Maga Influencers,” Technology, The Guardian, January 10, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/10/nick-brooke-shirley-maga-influencer.

^[9] Kayla Gaskins, “Pentagon Faces Scrutiny over Billions in Confirmed Fraud, 7 Consecutive Failed Audits,” WBMA, June 4, 2025, https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/pentagon-scrutiny-billions-confirmed-fraud-7-consecutive-failed-audits-pete-hegseth-house-hearing-trump-admin.

^[10] “‘ICE Out of Minnesota’ Day Is This Friday. Here’s What You Need to Know. • Minnesota Reformer,” Minnesota Reformer, January 20, 2026, https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/ice-out-of-minnesota-day-is-this-friday-heres-what-you-need-to-know/.