In
a later CNN interview, Carlson’s voice shook as she described feeling
utterly abandoned: “nobody’s here for us… nobody’s going to help us… so
it broke down to: then it’s us. We only have each other.” Yet she still
insisted she believed Minnesota officials “want to protect us” and were
trying to help, even if their hands were tied by the Trump
administration.
Those
are the people Democrats now celebrate as “brave protesters” who, in
Sen. Klobuchar’s words, “stood up” and “stared down” ICE. The problem is
that the version of reality being told about them is no longer
compatible with what is still happening on the ground.
The day the surge “ended”
On
February 12, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan stepped to a podium in
Minneapolis and announced that Operation Metro Surge was ending. In the
same breath, he warned that “forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing,
impeding, intimidating or interfering with a federal law enforcement
officer is a crime,” and said the administration would not tolerate
“agitators who are just causing havoc.”
Democratic
leaders immediately accepted his premise. Senator Amy Klobuchar
declared that “ICE is getting out of Minnesota,” crediting “Minnesotans
who stood strong and stared them down.” Attorney General Keith Ellison
issued an official statement: “Make no mistake: the people of Minnesota
ended Operation Metro Surge… this is a win for Minnesota,” praising
“voices, dedication to peaceful protest, documenting abuses, and
commitment to providing for each other” as the decisive force. Governor
Tim Walz, who days earlier had warned of a potential “Fort Sumter
moment” and called the surge an “armed force” attacking his
constituents, shifted into talk of “drawdown in days” and “healing”
without demanding publicly verifiable proof that thousands of agents had
actually left.
In
theory this is the moment when an opposition insists on receipts: How
many agents are still here? Which hotels have emptied out? How many
flights have departed and where? Instead, both the administration and
the state’s top Democrats agreed to treat “ending” as a story beat, not a
claim to be tested.
What small outlets kept seeing
If
you want to know whether ICE actually left, you have to leave the
headline outlets and follow the people who never stopped watching.
Bring
Me The News, a small Minnesota site, ran a February 16 live blog whose
headline and lede kept the surge in the present tense: “we’re following
Monday’s developments from the Trump administration’s immigration
enforcement operation in Minnesota.” It explicitly promised to “continue
to provide daily updates until the change is confirmed on the ground,”
and then logged fresh raids and arrests in Burnsville, Chaska,
Rochester, and Columbia Heights after Homan’s announcement. ICEOut and
allied volunteers kept posting maps and alerts: people grabbed at bus
stops, construction sites, and workplaces, a climate of fear local
farmers described as ongoing rather than resolved.
Protesters’
own language matched that reality. Minnesota AFL‑CIO and Indivisible’s
“Day Out for Democracy” march on February 16 did not sound like a
victory lap; their call was for “ICE out of Minnesota immediately” and
“an end to ICE’s occupation.” ICE OUT and MIRAC organizers were blunt:
“Operation Metro Surge is NOT over!! We continue to stand…,” “ICE OUT
NOW,” “no compromise.” In one reel from that day, Marcia Howard faces a
crowd and says, “DAY OUT FOR DEMOCRACY / ICE OUT NOW… You ever hear of a
Minnesota goodbye?… It might be a long while… We demand ICE
OUT NOW with NO COMPROMISE. We call on our leaders from City Hall to the
Governor’s Office to stand with the people.”
None
of this is the language of people who believe the surge has ended. It
is the language of people who believe they are living under an ongoing
occupation that their own side refuses to acknowledge.
Sahan
Journal, a nonprofit focused on immigrant communities, put the
contradiction into a headline: “Operation Metro Surge hasn’t ended. It’s
expanded to the suburbs.” Its February 19 report describes what
happened after the cameras left downtown. Observers in Columbia Heights
and Fridley say convoys and “abductions” continued “those first couple
days” after the announcement; what changed was that agents shifted into
“really old, beat up garbage cars,” unmarked minivans, plain clothes,
and smaller teams. In Eden Prairie, one volunteer says, “they’re there
every single day”—unmarked vehicles angle themselves around children’s
bus stops for hours, stage outside apartments, parks, and small
businesses. Union hotel workers and community monitors report ICE still
lodged in multiple hotels around the metro, with 20 or more ICE vehicles
routinely parked in suburban hotel lots.
State
lawmakers from those districts describe the same thing: drones and
helicopters, unmarked cars tailing them and local observers, residents
still too afraid to leave their homes. Representative Alex Falconer
recounts an unmarked vehicle flashing lights and following him toward
the Capitol; Senator Erin Maye Quade calls the damage “generational” and
says “Operation Metro Surge has morphed into something else,” not
ended.
None of this appears in the politicians’ victory posts. None of it has forced them to revise their story.
Elsewhere: the same operation, different zip codes
Minnesota
is not unique. In Los Angeles, LAist reports that immigration raids and
mass arrests have continued for months, with DHS itself boasting that
more than 10,000 people have been detained in the region since June. A
Koreatown church that used to serve 500–600 people in a weekly food
distribution now sees maybe 350; some weeks they cut the line early
“because the ICE agents were around here,” as families stay home rather
than risk groceries or school.
On
Long Island, the East End Beacon describes federal agents in camouflage
labeled “Police,” “HSI,” and “ERO” detaining a man in the parking lot
of a family courthouse in Riverhead, while one agent stands with pepper
spray out and residents film in fear. Locals describe people “abducted”
off streets and coffee shops, and a woman in Patchogue arrested simply
for filming a raid and released only because local police recognized
her. An immigrant‑rights group, OLA (Organización Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island), begs the town board for a basic
resolution requiring masked agents to identify themselves and to
coordinate with local police; the board sits through three hours of
other business and says nothing.
In
Chatham County, Georgia, The Current GA documents roving patrols on a
one‑mile stretch of road near a K‑8 school, beginning months before a
teacher’s death. Unmarked SUVs with grille lights box in drivers “who
appear to be Latino,” masked agents surround the car, demand ID without
identifying themselves, issue no citations, and leave. A U.S. citizen
and two Central American legal residents recount being stopped this way
multiple times—“driving while Hispanic”—long before February 16, when
ICE tried to stop an undocumented man with a prior deportation order, he
fled, and his truck struck and killed special‑education teacher Linda
Davis on her way to school. National outlets cover Davis as a discrete
tragedy—a “man fleeing ICE” killed a beloved educator—without
integrating the months of local reporting on roving patrols and racial
profiling that made such an outcome likely.
The
pattern is the same: small, often precarious outlets document an
ongoing interior operation and its abuses; large platforms treat what
they see as isolated accidents, backstory for polls, or remnants of a
crisis that is already over.
Local journalists and observers under fire
None
of this is without cost. LA Public Press’s editor would later describe covering
immigration enforcement in her city under Trump as work where “your
local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent.”
Freelancers were hit by rubber bullets; one was struck in the face. A
reporter’s immigrant mother was followed from her hospital job and
stopped by immigration agents near her home. The International Women’s
Media Foundation and Committee to Protect Journalists report that in
2025 at least 32 journalist detentions and arrests in the United States
occurred while covering immigration actions or protests, most ending
without charges but not without damage: assaults, kettling, weapons
drawn, cameras broken.
When
local reporters in Denver and San Jose did what local reporters are
supposed to do—follow unmarked vehicles and report on raids—Homan and
other officials went on Fox News to blame “media leaks” for low arrest
numbers and threatened to restrict access. The new FCC chair opened an
investigation into a California radio station that described undercover
ICE operations on air, raising the prospect that “reporting in the
public interest” could itself be treated as a regulatory violation. As
one war correspondent put it, this is “an agency trying to silence
unembedded reporting.”
So
the information we do have exists because local journalists,
volunteers, and faith leaders have accepted real personal risk to
collect it. The hard part—evidence gathering—is not what’s missing.
The blink—and what it reveals
In
theory, this is exactly what opposition parties, the “fourth estate,”
and adversarial outlets are for: to take those fragments of dangerous,
high‑value local reporting and stitch them into a binding national
reality. In practice, the opposite has happened.
Within
days of warning about “Fort Sumter” and describing Metro Surge as an
occupation, Walz was talking about drawdown and “healing.” Klobuchar
rushed to proclaim that “ICE is getting out of Minnesota,” invited
people to refill hotel rooms, and appeared on national shows in pure
victory and autopsy mode. Frey praised “brave protesters” and talked
about recovery, while admitting he had no data on flights, hotel
departures, or agent counts. Protesters kept chanting “ICE OUT NOW” and
insisting “Operation Metro Surge is not over,” but their own leaders
chose to narrate a win instead.
Litigation continues. The ACLU and ACLU of Minnesota filed Tincher v. Noem
in January to challenge suspicionless stops, racial profiling, and
retaliation against observers, amended their complaint in mid‑February
to add journalists and more than 80 new incidents, and have brought
cases elsewhere against NSPM‑7 and related tactics. Yet when Judge
Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, ruled on Minnesota’s bid to rein
in Metro Surge, she described “racial profiling, excessive use of force,
and other harmful actions,” called the harms “profound and even
heartbreaking,” and still declined to halt the operation invoking
deference to federal authority and the likelihood of appellate reversal.
The ACLU’s own February statements on Homan’s
announcement warn of “hollow words” and vow to monitor, but also adopt
“ending” as the operative frame, focusing on rebuilding and
accountability rather than insisting on public, real‑time verification
of drawdown.
Adversarial
media have followed a similar arc. In January, outlets like The
Intercept and WIRED did genuine work: exposing a secret “domestic
terrorist” list that sweeps in antifascist and climate activists,
mapping more than 150 new ICE offices and $38.3 billion in detention
warehouses and “mega‑facilities,” documenting Track‑2 build‑out and
database tie‑ins. By mid‑February, those same brands had turned back to
structural essays, polls, and election coverage. With a few exceptions,
they are not integrating the new Sahan, LAist, East End Beacon, Current
GA, ICEOut, or Bring Me The News evidence into a live national narrative
about ongoing enforcement.
Even
NPR’s February 18 story on Minneapolis observers—detailing how ICE now
pulls guns on people like “Jess,” smashes car windows, and detains
observers for eight hours for following at a distance—quietly
contradicts the “protesters won / surge ended” story it previously took
for granted, but never pulls those threads together. It shows that
abuses in Minnesota are “increasing,” not fading, and that the people
credited with “ending the surge” are now being told their mere presence
is a crime. The narrative does not adjust. At that point the United
States looks less like a democracy “under threat” and more like a
competitive authoritarian, personalist regime where elections continue
but meaningful opposition and truthful narration have largely been
absorbed.
At
the same time, Trump’s second term has moved rapidly toward open
personalism. His name and face now hang over the Department of Justice,
the U.S. Institute of Peace, national park passes, and even proposed
coins and stadiums; scholars like Steven Levitsky and Barbara Walter now
openly describe the United States as a competitive authoritarian or
electoral autocracy rather than a full democracy. Bondi’s January 24
letter to Walz explicitly tied any “ending” of Metro Surge to turning
over Minnesota’s voter rolls and welfare data, scrapping sanctuary
policies, and opening local jails to ICE—a fusion of immigration
enforcement, election control, and retributive justice that DOJ then
sealed with a literal Trump banner on its headquarters.
Against
that backdrop, what happened in Minnesota this month is not just a
local failure. When a regime can kill citizens on camera, call them
“terrorists” without evidence, refuse to share the evidence it does
have, expand the agencies involved, and then offer an “ending” story
that both parties and much of the press gratefully adopt while the
operations continue elsewhere, it is hard to see how “still a democracy
under threat” remains the right description.
That
is why I find myself writing this not as an advocate but as a witness.
In principle, institutions could still change course, but my considered
judgment—as a social theorist and as a person trying to tell the truth in real
time—is that the opposition we have has already buckled and chosen the
“protesters won” story over the people it claims to represent. The
information exists. Local journalists, volunteers, and ordinary people
like Stella Carlson have done their part, at real personal cost. What is
missing is any institutional opposition with sufficient reach and will
to treat that information as binding reality once it conflicts with a
comforting story. I hope I am wrong about how far gone the system
already is. But given the record, silence feels less like caution and
more like complicity.
***
Postscript:
In the week since Tom Homan first declared the surge “over,” the
official numbers have only gotten more surreal. On February 19, he told CNN there are “probably…2,000” agents still in Minnesota but insisted
the “immigration surge” is over and that the state will be back to a
“regular footprint” of 150 within a week. The anchor did not ask how
2,000 counts as anything but surge‑level presence, or how this squares
with his own claim five days earlier that “well over a thousand” of
3,000 had already left and “hundreds more” were leaving in the next few
days. On February 18—between those two sets of numbers—NPR reported that
intimidation and detention of legal observers in Minneapolis are increasing,
not fading, with windows smashed, guns drawn, and observers held for
eight hours at the Whipple building. On February 20, Representatives
Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig, forced by a Noem‑imposed seven‑day rule to
book their oversight visit more than a week in advance, were shown an
emptied and freshly scrubbed Whipple facility and told there are now
“fewer than 500” agents in Minnesota, that only about 20 people a day
are being picked up, and that no observers have been held there in
recent days. They called the emptiness “convenient,” but publicly
accepted the 500‑agent figure and did not press the obvious questions
about who had been moved out hours before, or how any of this fits with
the continuing reports of harassment and suburban raids. Taken together,
those three days capture the new normal: incompatible numbers and
narratives offered in rapid succession, and a political and media
class—including Democrats—willing to accept each in turn without forcing
them to add up, while the largest interior ICE deployment in the
country quietly continues in Minnesota and other cities slip under the
same gun out of frame.
Selected sources (with links)
-
Bring Me The News live blog, Feb. 16, 2026:
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/list-of-ice-raids-major-updates-in-minnesota-on-monday-feb-16
-
ICEOut Minnesota (raid alerts / maps):
https://iceout.org (Note: Do not click on a EULA if prompted, as gov't monitors traffic on this site)
-
Sahan Journal, “Operation Metro Surge hasn’t ended. It’s expanded to the suburbs,” Feb. 19, 2026:
https://sahanjournal.com/immigration/ice-minnesota-suburbs-operation-metro-surge/
-
LAist, “As ICE raids continue, volunteers say grocery deliveries are still critically needed,” Feb. 17, 2026:
https://laist.com/news/politics/ice-raids-volunteers-say-grocery-deliveries-are-still-critically-needed
-
The Current GA, “Aggressive ICE stops in Chatham County raise fears among residents https://thecurrentga.org/2026/02/19/aggressive-ice-stops-in-chatham-county-raise-fears-among-residents/
East End Beacon/Riverhead News Review:As ICE raids grow in Riverhead, OLA presses for public safety: https://riverheadnewsreview.timesreview.com/2026/02/132020/as-ice-raids-grow-in-riverhead-ola-presses-for-public-safety/
-
NPR, Meg Anderson, “Watching ICE isn’t a crime, but officers tell people it is https://www.npr.org/2026/02/18/nx-s1-5699708/ice-observers-impeding-obstructing-interfering
-
CBS News, “Bondi seeks Minnesota voter rolls, welfare data to ‘help …’,” Jan. 24, 2026:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bondi-minnesota-voter-rolls-welfare-data-walz-immigration-shootings/
