On Tuesday, the Miller Center and the UVA School of Law’s Karsh Center for Law and Democracy held a virtual panel to discuss the ongoing constitutional crisis in Minnesota. The event, called “The Crisis in Minnesota: Executive Power and Civil Liberties,” brought together experts in policing, history, and law. They examined “Operation Metro Surge,” a federal immigration crackdown that has turned the Twin Cities into a focal point of debates over executive overreach and local sovereignty.
The discussion, led by UVA Law Professor Micah Schwartzman, focused on the plan to send 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul in December 2025. The administration says this policy increase in law enforcement has made the state safer. However, many residents strongly oppose it and raise concerns about violations of civil liberties.
Guian McKee, a professor at the Miller Center, traced the origins of the crisis to a social welfare scandal within the Somali immigrant community that gained traction in conservative media last fall. McKee noted that President Trump’s rhetoric intensified following a cabinet meeting where he claimed the community was “ripping off” the state. However, the federal response quickly ran into demographic realities. “Most people of Somali origin in the Twin Cities are actually citizens,” McKee explained, noting that approximately 95% are citizens and nearly 58% were born in the United States. This “low yield” for deportations led the administration to broaden this operation to other African and Latino communities, fueling perceptions of racial targeting.
The scale of the federal presence has been unprecedented. Rachel Harmon, Director of the Center for Criminal Justice at UVA Law, described a scene more akin to a war zone than a standard law enforcement operation. She reported that 3,000 agents — compared to the usual 150 — were deployed in tactical gear, wearing masks and carrying M4 assault rifles. This show of force has turned deadly.
Harmon highlighted two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by federal officers during protests, which sparked widespread community pushback. Richard Schragger, a Miller Center senior faculty fellow and UVA Law professor, characterized this strategy as a “widespread attack on American cities” rooted in deep “anti-urbanism” and nativism.
A central theme of the panel was the breakdown in cooperation between federal and local authorities. David Lazar, an advisory board member at the UVA Center for Public Safety and Justice and retired assistant chief of the San Francisco Police Department, emphasized that “building trust and legitimacy is essential.” He pointed out that while the Minneapolis Police Department recovered 900 firearms last year without a single officer-involved shooting, the federal agents lacked the de-escalation training necessary for such a “combustible situation.”
The disparity in training was a point of contention. Harmon noted that the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) reportedly cut new officer training from five months to just eight weeks to expedite their deployment. Ashley Waters Gundersen, a lecturer at UVA Law, suggested that the absence of a “buffer” provided by local police, who often refused to cooperate due to sanctuary city policies, pushed federal enforcement into more dangerous, public-facing encounters.
The panel also addressed the role of the public in checking executive power. Daniel Stid, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the effectiveness of “constitutional observation.” This act of “witnessing” by protestors, often recording on their phones, according to Stid, played a significant role in making the policy unpopular enough to force the administration to begin winding down this operation.
During the Q&A session, I asked the panel, “How do you assess the role that perceptions of racial profiling and targeted federal activities in communities of color play in undermining civil liberties? What laws or policies make sure federal agencies are accountable and do not enforce their power in a discriminatory way?” Gundersen pointed out that the law states race cannot be a major reason for starting an investigation. However, proving that discrimination was intended is still difficult, even when an operation disproportionately impacts communities of color. Schragger noted that the Supreme Court has granted federal immigration agents a degree of “legitimacy” to operate under a much looser standard. He argued that the operation utilized explicit racial profiling, noting that agents were not stopping white Minnesotans but were instead focusing almost exclusively on people of color.
As Operation Metro Surge begins to retreat, the panelists agreed that the “rule of law erosion” and the economic and social disruption, estimated at over $200 million in Minneapolis, will leave a lasting scar on the relationship between the federal government and American cities.
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