After Operation Metro Surge: Alex Pretti’s Death and the DHS Funding Clash

Thousands of protesters march during the Ice Out of MN march in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Courtesy of Lorie Shaull.

From December 2025 to February 12, 2026, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) carried out what they’ve referred to as “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out” in the nation: Operation Metro Surge.

President Trump’s aspirations to curb illegal immigration have been a cornerstone of his political platform since he first launched his campaign for the presidency in 2015. His attention turned to Minnesota after City Journal, a small right-wing media organization, published uncorroborated allegations that Somali Minnesotans were funding terrorist activity with money stolen from government programs. The subsequent rise in enforcement claimed to target Somali immigrants, the vast majority of whom are citizens or legal permanent residents. 

The state of Minnesota incurred 3,000 federal immigration agents by early January 2026. By January 10, 2026, Twin Cities’ local activist groups and elected officials reported a noticeable increase in immigration enforcement sightings, including numerous reports outside local businesses and apartment complexes and during traffic stops.

Frequent high-profile incidents have disrupted the quotidian of Minnesotan immigrants and natural-born citizens alike. A report on Operation Metro Surge from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform documents several disputes.

These include reports of agents racially profiling people; asking people to demonstrate proof of legal residency; detaining legal migrants and transporting them across state lines, as well as arresting journalists and activists; deploying tear gas on public school property; and causing numerous car accidents as innocent targets attempted to evade officials. The Committee alleges that the majority of these measures were based on targets’ appearance or spoken language.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials made approximately 4,000 arrests during the operation. Border czar Tom Homan was unable to estimate how many of these were targeted arrests of non-citizens or people deemed safety threats by the DHS.

A large decentralized movement dedicated to disrupting ICE operations emerged among locals. The sounds of car horns and whistles became a signal of ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities. They alerted immigrants to lock their doors and citizens to start recording.  

Minnesotans also organized a large-scale relief effort throughout the Twin Cities, setting up collection centers for food and other necessities in churches, schools, coffee shops, and local businesses. 

Tensions began to rise as protests emerged throughout the Twin Cities and across the country, as civilian bystanders started intervening in altercations between the federal agents and their targets. An email from ICE officials leaked in December 2025 warned agents of increased protest activity, telling them to “be prepared to take appropriate and decisive actions should you be faced with an imminent threat.”

Unrest in the Twin Cities reached its climax on the morning of January 24, 2026, when Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti was fatally shot by several ICE agents during an altercation between the officials and two civilian protestors. Pretti was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen who grew up in the Midwest. He moved to the Twin Cities area to attend the University of Minnesota for medicine, later becoming an Intensive Care Unit nurse. On the morning of his killing, Pretti was participating in a protest against the rise in immigration raids in Minneapolis. 

Two anonymous witnesses testified that Pretti was carrying a firearm during the altercation but never attempted to use it, contrary to the DHS’s account of the killing. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara stated that Pretti had a valid firearms permit. Minnesota law allows citizens to carry a handgun in public, openly or concealed, with a permit. 

One of these witnesses filmed the clearest video of the fatal shooting; the other is a physician who lives nearby. Both testified that they were initially impeded by federal agents from delivering medical aid to Pretti on the scene. This counters the DHS’s claim that “medics on the scene immediately delivered medical aid.”

“They shot him so many times,” the first witness wrote in her declaration. “I don’t know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him, and they just shot him.”

Pretti’s family described him as a lover of the outdoors and mountain biking. “He hated that, you know, people were just trashing the land,” his mother said in a January 25 statement. “You know, he loved this country, but he hated what people were doing to it.”

Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) and Attorney General Keith Ellison delivered an address on January 25, 2026, following the fatal shooting and amid the overall surge in immigration raids and subsequent disruptions to Minnesota’s communities. Walz described Pretti as “someone who went to work to care for veterans, someone who was valued as a co-worker, someone who relished and lived in this state in a big way, whether it was outdoor activities or being down there on the street as a First Amendment witness to what ICE is doing to this state.”

Homan concluded Operation Metro Surge on February 12, 2026. The decision, he stated, was made after examining two factors: the multitude of “public safety threat” arrests that have occurred and a decrease in the need for federal personnel for quick-response force teams. 700 officers were immediately withdrawn from the state, though approximately 2,000 still remain.

Trump deployed Homan to lead on-the-ground immigration enforcement following the drawdown, replacing Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) commander-at-large Greg Bovino. As a vocal defender of Trump’s immigration policy and mass deportations, he is a crucial Trump ally with decades of experience in immigration policy throughout both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

Bovino has returned to his prior role as the CBP’s chief patrol agent for El Centro, California; his removal from Minneapolis signals a shift in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy as it confronts bipartisan disapproval.

On January 31, 2026, funding for DHS expired because the fiscal-year appropriations deadlines had not yet been met. Democrats in the Senate refused to support a renewed funding bill without reforms to immigration enforcement policies following Operation Metro Surge, but Congress managed to secure additional time to continue negotiations. On February 14, the two-week grace period lapsed, and the DHS entered a partial shutdown. 

In response, the Democratic Party compiled a list of ten reforms they urged Congress to codify into law before agreeing to fund the DHS, addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). Some of their propositions–such as requiring immigration agents to wear body cameras–enjoy bipartisan support, while others have received pushback from Republicans, including prohibiting agents from concealing their identities with facial coverings. 

More than 90% of the DHS’s 272,000 employees continued working during the shutdown, though only about 44,500 were paid through supplementary appropriations. The DHS had other financial resources to draw from in the meantime: both ICE and CBP had received more than $70 billion from Congress as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in the summer of 2025.

By causing a partial shutdown, Senate Democrats have acknowledged the need for accountability for the wreckage caused by Operation Metro Surge. The intervention reflects a broader disapproval of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement model that major cities across the U.S. are now feeling. 

“These patriots of Minneapolis are showing that it’s not just about resistance — standing with our neighbors is deeply American,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement issued after Homan’s announcement to scale down DHS presence in the state. “This operation has been catastrophic for our neighbors and businesses, and now it’s time for a great comeback. We will show the same commitment to our immigrant residents and endurance in this reopening, and I’m hopeful the whole country will stand with us as we move forward together.”