Ilhan Omar: Five steps to take in response to Operation Metro Surge

What Minnesota endured under President Donald Trump’s so-called Operation Metro Surge was not law enforcement. It was a militarized campaign of fear that treated immigrants as criminals and weaponized the federal government against our own residents.

The occupation was an unjustifiable abuse of federal force crafted to unleash fear in our streets and make immigrant communities feel like they don’t belong. It exposed just how far Immigration and Customs Enforcement is willing to go to intimidate Black, brown and immigrant communities. When white citizens attempted to document authoritarian abuses of power as they happened, they were met with lethal force. 

Nothing about what we witnessed was normal. Thousands of Minnesotans exercising their First Amendment rights were tear-gassed, shot with so-called “non-lethal” weapons, and harassed by masked agents from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Small businesses have been left reeling from catastrophic revenue losses and workers irrevocably harmed by lost wages. Families are shattered. Children will carry the trauma of federal agents descending on their neighborhoods for the rest of their lives.

But this moment demands more than acknowledging the harm. Our communities deserve true accountability and justice. We’re left with the important question of: Where do we go from here?

First, we need complete and credible independent investigations. The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the tear-gassing of peaceful protesters, the harassment of citizens without judicial warrants and the devastation inflicted on our economy must be evaluated by the agencies involved and in coordination with local partners. The Trump administration cannot investigate itself. We need a truly independent prosecutor with full subpoena power to determine who authorized these actions and whether federal civil-rights laws were violated. State and local officials must be included at every step. The American public deserves the guarantee of a professional, unbiased and thorough investigation.

Second, accountability measures must be put in place. Congress must withhold or condition funding for agencies that engage in unconstitutional and unlawful conduct. Taxpayer dollars should not bankroll civil rights abuses. Every single official involved must testify publicly about who planned this operation, what intelligence it relied upon and why constitutional protections were disregarded. If laws were broken, prosecutions must follow. Oversight cannot be symbolic; it must carry consequences.

Third, we must confront the systemic root of this crisis: the unchecked power of ICE. This rogue agency is beyond reform. It has repeatedly demonstrated that it operates with impunity and a mandate that prioritizes terror over safety. It is time to move toward abolishing ICE as it currently exists and replacing it with a humane, accountable immigration system grounded in due process and civil rights.

Fourth, Minnesota’s families and businesses deserve restitution. The city of Minneapolis estimated an economic impact greater than $200 million for one single month of the ICE surge. Statewide, it’s estimated at an additional $20 million per week. And that’s before we factor in the cost to the taxpayer of ICE’s staff time, overtime, charter flights, for-profit detention contracts and more. The economic damage cannot simply be absorbed by local communities while the federal government walks away. Federal relief must compensate small businesses, workers and cities that bore the brunt of this operation. Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize their own trauma.

Lastly, Congress must act. We must codify protections to ensure this never happens again. That means strengthening limits on the domestic deployment of federal forces, ending arrest quotas, mandating visible identification for agents, banning the use of masked, unidentifiable officers in crowd control, and passing legislation that allows citizens to sue federal officials for violations of their constitutional rights.

And, yes, accountability includes leadership. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or be impeached. The cruelty under her watch is unconscionable.

Love of country is not blind allegiance to power. It is fidelity to the Constitution and to one another. If federal authority can be deployed to terrorize one community today, it can be deployed against another tomorrow. Accountability is not revenge. It is a crucial step to safeguarding democracy.

Our community is grieving. Minnesotans are outraged. But we are also resolute. We will not move on. We will move forward with justice.