After three months of the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, the White House appears to be acknowledging the limitations of its anti-immigration efforts in the state. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino has been recalled as various administration figures begin conducting meetings with local leaders to ease tensions in the community. While immigration raids continue unabated across the state, there’s a growing sense that Minnesota has shown a model for resisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement sieges favored by this White House. 

Minnesota’s response to the immigration surge was “broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent,” said The Atlantic. It’s the sort of thing that only comes from “sustained attacks by an oppressive state.” By shattering MAGA assumptions about weak communal bonds and liberal hypocrisy, the state demonstrated that its “community is socially cohesive, because of its diversity and not in spite of it.” Minneapolis, then, “may be Trump’s Gettysburg,” said The New York Times. 

Minnesota has shown “something like an immune response” to ICE’s presence, with “unions, nonprofits, church groups and private citizens” participating, said The Economist. Moreover, the 2020 police murder of George Floyd “sensitized even the city’s privileged residents” to how the law could be “abused and rights rendered null.” 

There’s also a sense that serious demoralization has taken its toll among federal troops after months of contentious deployment. Even among federal agents who “support immigration enforcement,” there’s a feeling that Minnesota is “something else entirely,” said journalist Ken Klippenstein at Substack. The sentiment is that of an “open-ended counterinsurgency in a faraway land and under an out-of-touch leadership in Washington more concerned with optics than immigration.”

With a partial government shutdown looming at the end of the month, congressional Democrats have zeroed in on the Department of Homeland Security as a major sticking point in the wake of recent deadly immigration actions in Minnesota. Vows not to fund ICE are now complicating the passage of a larger bill, which includes the DHS budget, ahead of a Friday deadline to keep the government open. 

Another government shutdown in President Donald Trump’s second term seems “almost inevitable,” said Manu Raju on CNN. Facing “enormous pressure from the base,” Democratic lawmakers have promised to block government funding measures unless “significant restrictions” are imposed on ICE and DHS operations, said NBC News. Senate Republicans, however, are “shrugging off Democrats’ vows to filibuster the legislation” and plan to move forward with the GOP-controlled House’s spending package, said Semafor. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is hoping to “cleave the DHS measure” from the other must-pass bills, which have “overwhelming bipartisan support,” said NPR. Even if Democrats can uncouple the DHS funding from the larger enterprise, that legislation “needs approval again in the House,” currently on recess and not likely to be called back by administration ally Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), “increasing the risk of a partial shutdown.”

It was “perhaps unwise” of the White House to “gleefully ramp up” violence in Minnesota at a “rare moment” of leverage for congressional Democrats, said Talking Points Memo. At the same time, “public pressure is too loud” for Democrats to “comfortably cave” on DHS funding.

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