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More Metro Surge Injustices Documented
If you don't subscribe to the Daily Reformer, well: A) you should and; B) you might be missing out on some interesting context regarding Madison McVan's most recent story.
Here's Reformer Editor-in-Chief J. Patrick Coolican in today's newsletter:
A couple months ago Madi McVan came to me with a crazy idea. Her colleague Max Nesterak had published a few compelling stories based off the more than 1,100 habeas corpus filings since Operation Metro Surge in December—that’s when someone makes a claim that they’ve been wrongly detained.
Madi wanted to digitize all the filings. The problem is that they aren’t part of the online federal court filings system known as PACER. You have to go to a federal courthouse, print them out and scan them. She said this would take two weeks, but would yield important information about the people impacted by Metro Surge and the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
I like crazy journalistic ideas, so I said go for it.
The first of McVan's stories to emerge from this dogged journalistic pursuit hit the Reformer's site Friday. In it, she writes about the immigrants who had valid permits to work in Minnesota and who were nonetheless detained—in some cases, even deported—throughout Operation Metro Surge.
McVan's analysis of more than 1,100 habeas corpus petitions identified 273 individuals who were arrested by immigration authorities despite obtaining permits, a figure she admits is "almost certainly" an undercount since, just for one example, many were removed from the state (or the country) before they could challenge their detention.
It's awful stuff. We live in a bad country. But it's great work.
First Response Drones: Robocops of the Sky?
Minneapolis City Council is weighing the pros and cons of launching a “Drones as First Responders” program, where emergency services could send Skynet, er, Skydio-made drones to a crime scene, blazing fire, hostage situation, or natural disaster to check things out before cops, EMTs, and/or firefighters show up. It’s a tool places like Brooklyn Park, Minnetonka, Rochester, and Duluth are already using.
If your dystopian alarm bells are ringing, you’re not alone. Digital privacy advocate Adam Schwartz tells Trevor Mitchell of MinnPost that systems like these are “custom-built for immigration enforcement to try to get their hands on.”
While Council Member Soren Stevenson brought up Big Brother concerns, it sounds like Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw is all in. “I wanted to assure you that the North Side is OK with this form of Big Brother, as you called it,” she responded during a committee meeting, also praising ShotSpotter, a system that has been criticized for leading to over policing in non-white neighborhoods. Drones, horses—Vetaw hasn't encountered a cop she doesn't like.
Mine's Back on the Menu, Boys!
Of course we're referring to underground access at Lake Vermillion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park, where for basically the past four years visitors couldn't access the popular tour of an iron ore mine that dates back to 1882.
Flooding put the kibosh on mine tours from 2024 through 2025, Dan Kraker reports for MPR News, and before that the shafts closed beginning in 2022 due to a $9 million reconstruction project. Starting May 23, 90-minute mine tours will resume; it'll run ya $15 for adults, $10 for kids 5-12, and free for youngsters.
Clinging to vintage '60s equipment, around 35,000 folks descended 2,341 feet into Soudan Underground Mine each year before the closures. "To be able to travel a half mile underground, experience brief total darkness, to imagine what it would have been like to work in an underground iron mine, it’s a really unique experience,” the DNR's Andrea Doerr tells MPR.
Minneapolis Is on a List!
From Crete to Vietnam, from Hawaii to Tasmania, the folks at National Geographic traveled many places and ate many things that you and I may never get a chance to eat for their new feature, “15 of the best places in the world for food right now.“ But! One of those places happens to be Minneapolis. “The culinary map once zoomed in on Scandinavia,” the blurb begins a bit spuriously, before surveying the diversity of our current marquee restaurants. Name-dropped are Sean Sherman’s Indígena by Owamni, as it will be known at the Guthrie, Yia Vang’s Vinai, Diane Moua’s Diane’s Place, and Gustavo and Kate Romero’s Oro by Nixta. Also included is a general shout out to sambusas. OK, we’re convinced!
