Minneapolis: What did ICE accomplish?

The people of Minneapolis just handed President Trump the “biggest political humiliation” of his second term, said Erika D. Smith in Bloomberg. Border czar Tom Homan last week announced the end of Operation Metro Surge and a “significant drawdown” of the masked ICE and Border Patrol agents whose thuggish, trigger-happy tactics traumatized the city and left two U.S. citizens dead. Homan did his best to “save face,” citing 4,000 undocumented migrants detained, and touting a new agreement with local jails to assist in deportations. But city officials deny any deal, and it took 3,000 federal agents two months to arrest those 4,000 immigrants, at an estimated cost of about $50,000 a detainee. Metro Surge “was a failure by every metric” said Zeeshan Aleem in MS.now. On its first “test drive,” Trump’s fledgling “secret police force” was defeated by citizens armed with smartphones and whistles. And the brutal scenes captured by bystanders—of the killings of protesters Renée Good and Alex Pretti, of people being dragged from their homes and cars, of 5-year-olds being detained—generated some brutal poll numbers. Trump’s approval rating has sunk to about 40%, a plurality of voters say he’s doing a worse job than President Joe Biden, and his approval on immigration is 12 percentage points underwater. For a president once thought to be “unbeatable” on this issue, this could be a turning point.

The “optics” of Metro Surge were a predictable disaster, said National Review in an editorial. The theory was that a muscular show of force in Minneapolis would persuade illegal immigrants nationwide “to self-deport.” But a “broader audience” of Americans was also watching, and they sided with civilians over the agents in camouflage. The operation needed more focus and discipline, and the “no-nonsense” Homan—who recently took over in Minnesota from buffoonish Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino—could have supplied it. But to “throw in the towel” like this, handing a win to leftist “agitators,” sets an awful precedent that will hamstring future efforts to enforce immigration laws.

ICE did accomplish its mission in Minneapolis, said Larry Lee in the Fort Wayne, Ind., Journal Gazette. As with Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles and Chicago, the “real purpose” of Metro Surge was to “normalize” the presence of troops in U.S. cities, and to “scare away” nonwhite citizens who might otherwise head to the polls in the midterms. Trump ally Steve Bannon has said openly that the plan is “to have ICE surround the polls in November,” said Paul Blumenthal in HuffPost. That’s probably bluster, but ICE has already “spread enough fear and chaos to terrorize” many members of minority communities into staying home on Election Day.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

If Metro Surge was a ploy “to scare citizens out of voting,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch, it won’t work. Every viral video of agents tear-gassing children and demanding Americans show their papers was a de facto “campaign commercial for Democrats.” Come November, minority voters are more likely to “show up in numbers to signal their defiance” than to stay home in fear. “We still have three years left in Trump’s second term, and his descent into madness will continue,” said Peter Wehner in The Atlantic. But thanks to the “brave patriots of Minneapolis,” who refused to take the bait of constant provocations, “we have the beginnings of a road map to help us withstand the Trump assault” on our communities, our democracy, and the essential goodness of America.