Immigration & Civil Rights

An 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay/partial stay of U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez’s injunction that barred ICE and DHS from detaining, tear‑gassing, or otherwise using force on peaceful protesters and legal observers around Operation Metro Surge, effectively restoring broader authority for ICE and Border Patrol to use crowd‑control tactics while the government’s appeal proceeds. Civil‑rights lawyers and the ACLU warn the ruling raises the risk of arrest or force against activists, and confrontations — including deployments of tear gas and pepper spray — have continued and intensified in the Twin Cities.

Minnesota judges are being inundated with federal habeas petitions — 312 filed by Jan. 21, surpassing all of 2025 — as immigration lawyers report more than 90% of recent filings win releases or bond hearings after rapid street arrests and overnight flights out of state. Courts have already found Metro Surge tactics unconstitutional in high‑profile cases like Liberian Garrison Gibson, whose north Minneapolis home was breached with a battering ram by agents with only administrative paperwork; a judge ordered his release, ICE re‑arrested him hours later and says it will seek to resume removal, prompting fresh habeas and immigration challenges.

A FOX 9 investigation finds that 312 immigration detainees have already filed habeas corpus petitions in Minnesota federal court through Jan. 21 — more than the 260 filed in all of 2025 — as lawyers race to challenge arrests and detentions under Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis–St. Paul. Attorneys describe a "dizzying" pace of emergency filings because people seized on Twin Cities streets often vanish into ICE custody and are flown out of state, sometimes to El Paso, within hours, spending little or no time at the Whipple Federal Building. They estimate that federal judges are granting relief in over 90% of cases, either ordering detainees released outright or forcing bond hearings in immigration court, allowing people to fight their cases from home instead of distant prisons. The story highlights rulings like the one freeing Liberian resident Garrison Gibson after a judge found ICE’s battering‑ram home raid in north Minneapolis violated the Fourth Amendment, and it underscores how the courts are becoming the main check on federal tactics that have terrorized families and neighborhoods across the metro. Advocates are amplifying these outcomes online, urging more families to push counsel toward habeas petitions, while ICE continues to stonewall media questions about why so many of its Minnesota detentions are failing basic constitutional scrutiny.

A Woodbury realtor says he followed and filmed ICE agents in public — including a grocery‑store parking lot and his cul‑de‑sac — and was detained by ICE for more than nine hours, alleging agents pulled him from his car, put him in a headlock, threw him to the ground and left him with a black eye and facial abrasions though he was never formally arrested or charged. ICE declined to explain the legal basis for the detention, First Amendment experts say recording law enforcement in public is protected, and the account comes amid DHS’s Operation Metro Surge — a deployment of roughly 2,000 ICE officers (with plans for 1,000 more) that has sparked lawsuits, protests and business community concerns in the Twin Cities.

Video footage shows federal agents detaining a man at a St. Paul gas station; DHS says the man was from Honduras with a final order of removal issued in 2020 and that Border Patrol broke the vehicle window and arrested him only after “multiple warnings and several minutes” as a crowd formed. The takedown sparked protests and a Maple Grove High School walkout, and DHS says a U.S. citizen in the crowd refused lawful orders, hit an officer and was arrested — a claim that contradicts protesters’ accounts circulating online.