Operation Metro Surge was an escalation of activities ICE had been pursuing all year long. It was a greatly intensified ICE presence, in a city with a large Somali immigrant population, located in a state that voted against Trump in 2024. The language was that of law and order, but the intent was transparently punishment and intimidation. ICE agents continued to round up suspected illegal immigrants – including several people who carried papers proving they were Native Americans – and disappear them into the black hole of their detention system.
ICE agents seemed emboldened, frequently overstepping their authority and breaking the laws they were supposedly there to uphold. Any dissent or resistance against them was stigmatised as terrorism, and even by previous standards, the agents of ICE seemed free from any threat of accountability. The killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent on January 6, 2026, marked a distinct escalation of tensions and rhetoric on both sides, with Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military.
