The winter of 2026 will go down in state history as among our finest hours. 

What happened here will be studied by social scientists and historians as one of the great victories of nonviolent resistance in recent times. Minnesotans showed that brutality and sheer numbers could not overcome communities that were united in their opposition to the usurpers.

People are right to be skeptical about whether the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown here is ending, as announced Thursday by $50,000 man and border czar Tom Homan.

But I’m confident they are leaving for a simple reason: They’re losing.  

What happened and why it happened offer important lessons for our future and for democracy defenders across the country, so let’s focus for a minute before we dance on the grave of the authoritarian attempt: 

The resistance was communitarian. By now it’s almost cliche: Minnesotans — and especially Minneapolitans — were looking out for their neighbors, be they immigrants or the people protecting them. Neighborhoods came together again as they did after the police murder of George Floyd and the chaos that followed, all during a pandemic. The lesson here is to get to know your neighbors.

The sense that we’re all in it together motivates great acts of both charity and courage. 

The resistance was libertarian. When I talked to friends and family around the country, I put it in these terms: Imagine that 3,000 masked, heavily armed outsiders were roaming around your community, routinely racially profiling people, including off-duty police (!); detaining immigrants here legally  — including young children — and shipping them across state lines; smashing the car windows of observers and arresting them before releasing them without charges; and, of course, shooting and killing two American citizens and injuring an immigrant in a case of mistaken identity. When you put it in these terms, Americans around the country got it.  

The resistance was nonviolent. (Mostly.) When authoritarians are employing brutality, armed resistance feels justified. Second Amendment enthusiasts might even say constitutional. But it often leads to a spiraling cycle of violence and repression, e.g., the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Bullhorns, whistles, chants, shouts, songs, mockery and marches were more effective than violence could ever be.

This is not a new or untested strategy. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”

The feds’ support, meanwhile, collapsed when they engaged in indiscriminate violence.

The nonviolent resistance helped win the battle for public opinion, which was crucial. An NBC poll showed that two-thirds of Americans believe the Trump administration’s immigration tactics have “gone too far,” with similar numbers in Minnesota, according to another poll.

We too often think of authoritarians as omnipotent, acting with impunity in the face of all resistance. Nothing President Donald Trump says or does seems to matter. But this is not true, and that attitude of despair is precisely what the authoritarian needs. Authoritarians have frequently been defeated in the face of mass resistance, from the Eastern Bloc to Latin America. Once the authoritarian loses popular legitimacy, it’s only a matter of time before the regime collapses.

Our strong institutions were an important bulwark. Outsiders who kept bleating about “paid protesters” have clearly never stuffed themselves with hot dish and baked goods at a Minnesota PTA meeting, caucus, hockey game or church event on a subzero night.

Indeed, as Madison McVan reported this week, churches (and let’s add mosques and synagogues) were crucial to providing material and spiritual support to immigrants and those defending them.

Minnesota ranks highly — 2nd in the nation in one survey — in indices of social capital, i.e., family unity, social support and volunteerism. If you feel like we’ve taken a beating in recent years — the killing of Floyd and unrest and rioting that followed, the looting of our safety net programs, the assassination of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman — you’re right, but our strong institutions have helped us remain resilient.

Our big corporations were not part of that institutional infrastructure. They were silent, and then mealy-mouthed. The days of corporate noblesse oblige are over, especially when the authoritarian demands unquestioning fealty from them. 

The judiciary stood up to the authoritarian attempt. Attorneys for immigrants worked under impossible conditions to defend constitutional rights and due process. 

More than a dozen federal prosecutors quit in disgust.

And, federal judges refused to be cowed. In scorching orders — from appointees of just about every recent president, including a protege of conservative icon Antonin Scalia — many refused to countenance the legal chaos and unconstitutional usurpation the federal government unleashed here. They provided a near daily drumbeat of evidence of the Trump administration’s lawlessness. This severely undercut the administration’s message that Operation Metro Surge was a “law enforcement operation” when anyone could see it was a politically-motivated, performative show of aggression.

During one hearing, Judge Jerry Blackwell — who was the lead prosecutor of Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin — reminded the federal government’s lawyers of the seriousness of the executive branch’s insubordination in failing to release detainees, as he’d ordered: “The DOJ, the DHS, and ICE are not above the law. They do wield extraordinary power, and that power has to exist within constitutional limits.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara was a PR bonanza for the resistance, even though many Minneapolis activists loath MPD. I learned from O’Hara’s many local and national media appearances, for instance, that there’d been three homicides in Minneapolis as of late January, and two of them were committed by the feds. Considering the traditional blue wall of silence, you’d expect O’Hara to refrain from criticizing the feds, but he landed punches instead. (No permanent friends, and no permanent enemies: a political maxim worth considering.)

Although this moment was far bigger than party politics, there’s a few things worth mentioning:

Some Republicans provided important bipartisan messaging. I’m sure there are others, but Sens. Jim Abeler, Zach Duckworth, and Julia Coleman and Reps. Marion Rarick and Nolan West gave fellow Republicans and Republican-leaning independents a subtle signal that it was OK to question the constitutionality and effectiveness of Operation Metro Surge.

By contrast, Vichy Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, turned against fellow Minnesotans and gave aid and comfort to the authoritarian outsiders. Grudges aren’t healthy, but we shouldn’t forget. Now they’ll receive their just deserts because the Democrats will likely win in November.

Which means those Republicans will be just another in the long line of Trump’s marks.

A lot of Democrats paused their endless factional disputes, or as one militant leftist posted on X last month: “Liberals, leftists, moderates, socialists, communists, and f*cking all the rest have an opportunity here to come together and fight fascism. That means, for the moment, FOR THE F*CKING MOMENT, to not be a dumb*ss b*tch about factionalism and old beefs. Just for now. For a bit.”  (I’m sure this very column will bring the requisite calumny from said factions — see item #8 — but that’s all to the good, as it signals a return to normalcy.)

Finally, respect localism. When the feds chased a man at high speeds through my neighborhood Wednesday, which led to a three-car wreck, I found myself in a state of agitation and contempt for the usurpers that was only matched previously by the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. 

It hits different when it’s your own neighborhood. Which, I realize, is morally provincial. After all, other neighborhoods have been dealing with this on a daily basis for two months. (Some communities have suffered under repressive policing for much longer.)

And, for that matter, other nations have been dealing with rulers’ boots on their necks  — including proxies of the United States government — for years, and, in some cases, decades.

So my final takeaway is that we ought to be extremely humble when we seek to impose our will on other people, communities, states, nations. 

Now, let’s spend the weekend toasting and dancing in the streets.

Before Operation Metro Surge sent thousands of armed federal agents into Minneapolis, terrorizing families and spreading chaos and violence in formerly peaceful residential neighborhoods, local parent organizations were already setting up networks to provide mutual aid and safely transport children of immigrants to and from school.

“My school group of friends formed our first network of communication in October, after we saw what had happened in Chicago,” the mother of an elementary school student in South Minneapolis named Elizabeth told me in a phone interview Wednesday. She asked that her last name not be published, because of the danger of reprisals. 

The encrypted neighborhood chat started chiming for the first time on Tuesday, Dec. 9, she recalls, when “there were two people abducted early in the morning within blocks of my kid’s school.” When her child asked what was going on, “I said, you know, people are concerned about the safety of coming to school today,” Elizabeth recalls. “And like a good Minnesotan, my child realized that it was foggy outside and said, ‘Well, fog creates ice, and so the roads are probably slippery …’ And I said, yeah, they’re worried about ice on the roads. And I really had hope in that moment of naivety that that would be the last time we’d have to have that conversation. But it wasn’t.”

Since December, when Operation Metro Surge began, Elizabeth said her child’s class has shrunk from 25 students to just five. The school district has offered a remote learning option to immigrant families who are afraid to let their children leave the house. Meanwhile, the neighborhood chat group, which began with five families whose children played soccer together, has connected with hundreds of volunteers, many of whom don’t have kids in the school.

Because most of the families at the school are people of color, “we really had to start relying on our neighbors around us to help us, because we don’t have enough families that are not in danger,” Elizabeth said. Residents of nearby neighborhoods joined to form a group of 200 people who patrol the playground in the morning and afternoon and during recess, guard the nearby bus stops, and drive children from home to school and back again. 

In addition, volunteers pick up laundry every other week from families that are shut inside, and bring groceries, shopping for food at local Hispanic markets, which have taken a heavy hit after losing employees and customers during the immigration enforcement surge. 

There are many similar mutual aid groups throughout the area, each doing things in different ways. “There are a lot of micro projects happening everywhere,” Elizabeth said. And things are constantly changing. “It’s a living process,” she said. “No two days are the same.” 

While she tries to avoid contact with federal agents, ICE is everywhere in their neighborhood, Elizabeth said. She no longer allows her child to walk to the corner store alone. 

“ICE is constantly driving through our neighborhoods. They’re not obeying traffic signals. They’re not obeying traffic laws. They’re running through stop signs. They’re going the wrong way on one-ways,” Elizabeth said. While she isn’t afraid that her child, who is white, will be snatched and sent to immigration detention, she worries about the possibility of her child stumbling upon a violent action, “or they could get tear-gassed, very easily.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s rationale for the federal immigration enforcement surge is to enhance public safety. But it’s very clear from talking to people in Minneapolis that armed agents speeding through neighborhoods, smashing car windows and dragging people out of their homes has shattered the sense of safety residents used to have. 

Elizabeth does not claim that her neighborhood group can overcome that, or effectively deter ICE. Instead, she describes its purpose as offering comfort to immigrant parents. And for the children, she says, “I really make sure that I’m there every day so they can see the same faces, so there’s some stability in their day.”

“We’ve got families that have been in hiding for nine weeks now,” she adds. “… I want them to know that we were here for them.”

As for her own child, “I have to be really honest,” she said. She’s had to give up her hope, before the surge, not to have to talk about the sickening danger all around them. “They live in a community, and they need to be part of their community,” she said. “Right now, their community is under attack, and so I think it is my responsibility as a parent to make sure that they see that, and that they understand that this is not how you treat your neighbors. That, like I said, our community needs love, help and support right now. And so we have lots of conversations about it.”

Her child misses the friends who aren’t coming to school, and makes an effort to stay in touch and fill them in on what is happening. And there are the daily car rides with the handful of kids Elizabeth drives to school and home again. 

Those car rides are important, she said. She has a bag of snacks and a playlist the kids get to curate. “We’ve listened to a lot of K-pop,” she said. “We try to have as much joy and fun as we can for them, and to create those safe spaces and make sure that there’s laughter.”

As Wisconsinites worry about whether we will be next, I asked Elizabeth about the reluctance of some public officials to make concrete community defense plans, for fear it might put a target on our so-called sanctuary communities, and draw the very ICE surge they dread. 

“It comes back to being a good neighbor,” she said. “I’m not sure that any organizing that we’ve done or did or will do is necessarily a flag calling attention to us. It’s just we’ve got neighbors that are hungry. How are we going to feed our neighbors? We have neighbors that can’t pay their bills. How are we going to help? … To some degree it’s somewhat selfish, right? Like, I need, in order for my child to succeed in school, there needs to be continuity … I care about my community.”

“I would recommend people not be scared and not think of it as organizing against the government, but organizing for the people in your neighborhood,” she added. “And if it’s not your neighborhood, if it’s a neighborhood next to you, know where those neighborhoods are that might be impacted, and find ways that you can support that neighborhood.”

Brent Ganger, far left, and Luke Ganger, second from left, brothers of Renee Good, watch a forum on Department of Homeland Security use of force organized by congressional Democrats on Feb. 3, 2026. Good was killed by a federal immigration officer Jan. 7. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Renee Good’s family, distraught and in disbelief over her killing, took some comfort in the past few weeks thinking her death might prompt change in the country, her brother Luke Ganger said Tuesday. 

“It has not,” Ganger told congressional Democrats at a forum on the disproportionate use of force by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents. “The deep distress our family feels because of (Renee’s) loss in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress and desperation for change.”

Brent Ganger, another brother of Good, also appeared at the forum, saying Good “had a way of showing up in the world that made you believe things were going to be okay.”

Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by a federal agent Jan. 7 in Minneapolis. 

Her death prompted widespread outcry over the immigration enforcement tactics of President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation,” Luke Ganger said. “This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents — these encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever.” 

Backlash over the administration’s immigration efforts grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti, also a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. 

Administration officials have defended the immigration crackdown, including the aggressive tactics used in Minneapolis and other cities.

“The president is never going to waver in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws and protecting the public safety of the American people in his ardent support of” Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.

First-hand accounts

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California hosted the forum. More than 20 Democrats in the House and Senate joined them. 

The unofficial forum is one of several events put on by congressional Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers, over the past year to protest a host of actions from the administration. 

Three witnesses across Illinois, Minnesota and California — all U.S. citizens — offered harrowing accounts of their encounters with immigration agents in recent months, detailing the trauma, fear and mental distress as a result. 

Marimar Martinez was shot five times by an immigration agent in Chicago. Aliya Rahman, a Minneapolis resident with autism and a traumatic brain injury, was dragged out of her car by agents while on her way to a doctor’s appointment and said she was later refused medical care in DHS detention. And Martin Daniel Rascon was shot at by agents while traveling in a car with family members. 

“Why do we continue to wait for more public executions when we have already seen the evidence in our TVs and computer screens?” Martinez asked the panel. “We have heard the testimonies, we have watched the pain unfold in real time — how many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?”

The meeting came the same day the House passed, and Trump later signed, a funding package that includes a two-week stopgap measure for DHS, as Congress and the administration try to iron out a solution to Democrats’ demands for additional restraints on immigration enforcement following Pretti’s death. 

Many Democrats in Congress have vowed not to support a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that does not include such restraints. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Investigations Subcommittee of the Senate committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security, made that explicit Tuesday.

“Some day we should have a truth and justice commission to investigate the systematic failing,” he said. “But for right now, I can promise that I will not support another dime for the Department of Homeland Security unless there is this fundamental, far-reaching reform and restraint in effect — a rebuilding of the agency.” 

Report blames DHS tactics for fatalities

Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a report ahead of the hearing Tuesday on Democrats’ findings regarding the deaths of Good and Pretti.

The report claims that the administration’s “extreme policies, violent tactics, and culture of impunity led to the killings.”

The report also argues that “the available evidence suggests that the Trump Administration is attempting to cover up misconduct” and is also “continuing its cover-up by impeding thorough and impartial investigations into the shootings.” 

“We’re seeing ICE, CBP, other parts of DHS, all across our country, terrorize communities,” Garcia said at the forum, pointing to warrantless searches, arrests and detainments of individuals with no prior criminal history and people being sent to detention centers and released without explanation. 

“Now, American citizens — innocent people — have been brutalized … and to be clear, we’ve seen people dragged from cars, beaten, gassed, attacked with crowd-control weapons, blinded, like back in my home state of California, left with broken ribs, run off the road, beaten, injured, disfigured and shot,” he said.  

(Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gracias, Minnesota.

Gracias, America.

While Minnesota is where much of the resistance has been happening, my gratitude spills beyond its borders because the resistance has been virtually everywhere ICE brutality occurs.

Even before two citizens were killed by immigration authorities in Minneapolis recently, the country responded with a collective “ugh” to federal agents’  tactics.

It hasn’t escaped notice that this purge’s purpose, according to abundant evidence from the Trump administration, is to prevent the “civilizational erasure” white supremacists believe will be triggered by non-white immigrants. 

The deportations have gone far beyond the stated mandate of removing undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes. Undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, legal immigrants and citizens have been routinely ensnared as if relentless quotas are at work.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave immigration authorities permission for their campaign of terror against all immigrants, whether they are in the country legally or not. Justice Brett Kavanaugh undid an order by a lower court that barred immigration authorities from using ethnicity as cause to arrest and detain. This is now appropriately called the Kavanaugh Stop.

Americans, even those who believe immigration really is a problem, are saying, enough.

Protests and polling tell us as much. 

Trump supporters are turning on key architects of the purge, advocating a purge of their own. They are urging throwing Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem under the bus to appease voters as the congressional midterm election begins in earnest. The administration sent the guy who led the crackdown in Minneapolis, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, packing and replaced him with Border Czar Tom Homan.

This is progress.

Gracias, America, but the work won’t be done until Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are effectively neutralized. They created and cheered on pedal-to-metal deportations that feature traumatizing children to deport them.

Other features of this purge:

• Harsh mass detention used as a cudgel to get immigrants to stop their claims for lawful stays.
• Inviting undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens and who are pursuing legal status to come in for interviews where they  are then arrested and detained for deportation.
• And the jack-booted tactics generally of masked immigration agents who trample rights and deny due process.

The protests grew after immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, white U.S. citizens who  had empathy for the scores of non-white victims of this purge.

They didn’t have to step up. And they haven’t been alone. 

Minnesota doesn’t have a large undocumented immigrant population relative to other states such as California, Texas, New York and Florida, but its citizens, armed only with whistles and cellphone cameras, have put themselves on the frontlines.

Empathy lives.

Enter hope.

U.S. history’s lesson: When injustices have been overcome, it is because people who don’t directly bear the brunt of the injustice have risen up. Good and Pretti were two of them.

More than 77 million people voted to reelect Trump in 2024. They knew exactly who and what they were getting.

It’s difficult to not give in to despair when your fellow Americans reelect venality and cruelty, Trump’s trademarks.

No, despair doesn’t quite capture the feeling. It is a gnawing pain in the soul that makes one feel so desolately alone. Cynicism and hopelessness beckon.

Gracias, America, for giving me and others hope that MAGA may not ultimately speak for America.

But, for now, it is a hope that requires nurturing. We’ve been disappointed before.

The midterm election and then the 2028 election will tell the tale. The first could make Congress a truly co-equal branch of government with the power to check this imperial presidency. The second will send an even stronger message if candidates who follow Trump’s playbook of nativist division are trounced at the polls.

It will take both those events to signal course correction.

Undocumented immigrants live in the crosshairs. It is part of their existence. They’ve always known that arrest, detention and deportation could happen. They’ve always known the risk but brave it to escape persecution and poverty in their native countries and to secure brighter futures for their children.

What’s different now is the brutality.

The broadening pushback is a signal that America may be at yet another turning point – that the direct targets of injustice are not alone, that others stand and fight with them because humanity counts and citizens feel called to stand up when they see American values betrayed.

From the son of people who were once undocumented, a heartfelt gracias.