What is it about Minnesota that made it a target for Trump’s ICE crackdown? | Minnesota

Since the federal immigration surge began late last year, Minnesotans have offered varying theories for why their state was targeted by the Trump administration.

It’s a midwestern state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, including the three times it voted against Donald Trump.

A strong and growing Scandinavian-style social safety net and welcoming culture to immigrants has attracted populations from around the world over the last few generations, including the largest Somali population outside Somalia.

The state is a refuge for trans people and abortion access. It has high levels of civic engagement, regularly ranking at or near the top for voter turnout. It is a donor state, sending more money to the federal government than it receives. It has higher organized labor participation rates than the national average.

Minneapolis, its largest city, ignited the nationwide 2020 protests over police brutality and racism after a police officer killed George Floyd.

What many explanations boil down to is that Minnesota serves as anathema to the Trump administration.

“He’s attacking Minnesota because of Minnesota’s virtue,” said Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney general. “We’re not perfect. You know, we got problems to solve, but the people admit that. When’s the last time you ever heard Trump say that he needed to improve on anything?”

The Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, put it bluntly: “It’s political retribution,” he told the Guardian. “It is going after a Democratically run city and a Democratically run state, trying to paint Minneapolis as a place of chaos, when in fact, it’s these ICE agents that have caused it.”

“They hate us because we don’t hate each other,” said Marcia Howard, an English teacher and president of the teacher chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators.

Tina Smith, a US senator from Minnesota, said: “They decided that they could use Minnesota as a proving ground for the worst of their anti-democratic strategies, and so they came at us.”

Before the US border czar, Tom Homan, said on Thursday that the operation would wind down, the onslaught on the state not only featured thousands of federal agents but multiple investigations into the state’s government and attempts to withhold several streams of federal funding. Two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by agents in the streets, and many more have been injured or hit with chemicals. Thousands of immigrants, including small children, have been detained. Protesters and journalists have been arrested and charged, with one protester then mocked by the White House in a digitally altered photo. The justice department issued subpoenas to several high-ranking officials in the state, suggesting they could face prosecution, while members of Congress have brought some in for questioning.

Multiple lawsuits allege systemic violations of due process and constitutional rights for immigrants and people protesting against agents. The economy, especially businesses run by immigrants, has been hit hard.

“Of course it’s an authoritarian effort,” said Jason Stanley, a professor at the University of Toronto who left his university in the US because of what he saw as rising fascism. “They’re trying to completely smash the state … It’s not random, but it is a brutal example to the rest of the United States, saying, we can completely have a military occupation of your city. We can kill your citizens, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

When asked why the administration chose to go after Minnesota, the White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said: “The Trump Administration is enforcing federal immigration law around the country – with surge operations having occurred in various cities and sanctuary cities. In Minnesota alone, heroic ICE officers removed over 4,000 dangerous criminal illegal aliens from communities. Everyone should be thankful for their work.”

The White House’s numbers have not been independently verified. According to the Guardian’s data, the majority of people in immigration detention nationwide do not have a criminal history.

The Trump administration’s desire for retribution against Minnesota has been clear from the beginning of the surge, local residents and officials said. Though Trump never formally challenged the results of his three losses in Minnesota, he has frequently claimed, without evidence, that he actually won the state each time.

“The numbers are very clear that he has not won Minnesota in any of the three times that he’s run,” Minnesota’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, told the Guardian. “That’s not a partisan statement. That’s just what the results show clearly in Minnesota.”

The state’s governor, Democrat Tim Walz, ran for vice-president against Trump, who has called Walz “either the most CORRUPT government official in history, or the most INCOMPETENT”. Much of Minneapolis is represented by Ilhan Omar, a refugee Somali American congresswoman, and Trump has called her a “scammer” who should be denaturalized and deported.

Trump’s attention was also brought to Minnesota because of fraud scandals, after rightwing media, including a 23-year-old YouTuber, distorted and expanded on allegations of widespread fraud. Dozens of people who stole from state programs have been convicted, and other prosecutions are still under way.

The administration was also probably thinking about the optics. While other blue cities saw surges of agents before Minnesota, the influx of thousands of agents could have a much bigger footprint in a smaller, dense urban area like Minneapolis, offering plenty of imagery to an administration focused on flashy videos of deportations with agents roaming the streets in military-style gear.

“They wanted the image of angry Black people, cowering brown people, and all they got were multicultural hordes of folks with whistles and phones,” Howard, the teacher, said. “They got Presbyterians singing.”

The Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin blamed local policies that prevented jails from coordinating with immigration enforcement for the agency’s “significant footprint” in Minnesota and called the operation in the state a “HUGE victory for public safety”. She also cited the fraud scandals in the state.

“Our Homeland Security Investigators are on the ground in Minneapolis conducting wide scale investigations to get justice for the American people who have been robbed blind,” she said.

Ellison, who has sued the Trump administration more than 50 times since the start of Trump’s second term, said some Democratic states have bigger populations and larger law enforcement apparatuses, making them harder targets.

But the surge into Minnesota wasn’t just about immigration or fraud.

“We are a successful, multiracial, multicultural state that has one of the highest standards of living, that values our people,” Walz offered as a reason why Minnesota became a target at a recent press conference. “Minnesotans are decent, caring, loving neighbors, and they’re also some of the toughest damn people you’ll ever find.”

Walz’s national reputation grew after 2023, when he and the Democratic-led legislature pushed through a long list of progressive reforms, including a statewide paid leave program, protections for reproductive healthcare and stricter gun laws.

In a letter to Walz on 24 January, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, laid out three demands to the state to “bring back law and order to Minnesota”: turning over records on social programs including Medicaid and food assistance so the federal government can investigate, ending any policies that prevent local officials from coordinating with immigration enforcement agents, and handing over the state’s voter rolls to the federal government for inspection.

Local officials called the letter an attempt to coerce and extort them into falling in line with the federal government, and the letter revealed that the federal government’s interest in the state went well beyond immigration enforcement procedures.

“I’ve called that letter a ransom note,” Simon said.

As to whether it would work – whether local officials would give in to these demands in order to get federal agents off the streets? “That’s a hell no,” Ellison said. “Now in the next election, if Minnesotans want somebody to capitulate, they can get them. But I will never quit.”

The administration’s choice of a smaller city, with a population ready to activate in response, may have backfired, many residents said.

Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, said the administration probably underestimated the state, but they should have known how its people would respond. The state has high “social capital”, a measure of community engagement and connection, Jacobs said, which helps explain high voter turnout, high levels of donating and volunteering.

Tens of thousands of Minnesotans learned how to track and observe federal agents. Broad networks helped people throughout the state stay home to avoid interacting with agents, delivering groceries and supplies, dropping off homework for kids attending school virtually, helping with medical needs. They stood outside schools and daycares at drop-offs and dismissals after ICE sightings near these locations. They contributed to rent funds for people who hadn’t worked in months for fear of ICE persecution.

“One of the things that we woke up to is how strong and proud Minnesotans are of their neighbors,” said Nadia Mohamed, the mayor of St Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. “That is one thing I stand 10 toes behind, regardless of what rhetoric that is passed around: Minnesotans are strong, and I’m extremely proud to be Minnesotan.”

Omar told the Guardian that the Trump administration was “threatened by communities that refuse to be divided, silenced, or turned against each other”.

“While ‘Operation Metro Surge’ showed just how far the administration was willing to go to terrorize Black, brown and immigrant communities in our state, Minnesotans did not back down in the fight against authoritarianism,” she said.

Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, recently addressed the US Conference of Mayors, warning other cities that what happened to Minnesota could come for them, but that they couldn’t avoid it by cowering from the federal government.

“You can’t bow your head in despair, hoping that you won’t attract attention, thinking that if you simply don’t speak out or don’t speak up, then you can avoid some sort of federal action that creates chaos on your streets,” Frey told the Guardian.

Still, as much as the surge served as a way for anti-ICE protesters and rapid responders to build up processes and networks, it served as a training ground for ICE and the federal government, warned Stanley, the professor who studies fascism. Agents may leave Minnesota, but they will go elsewhere.

“This is the beginning,” he said. “It’s so shocking in the beginning, but everyone then gets used to the shocking.”

David Smith contributed to this report