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ICE Operation Targets "Real People Living Real Lives"
So, what has ICE been up to since it began terrorizing our community last week with its stupid "Operation Metro Surge"? So glad you asked.
- In Burnsville, ICE agents detained four people from a home, leaving a 7-year-old child without his parents, according to KARE 11.
- Agents detained Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi, an addiction recovery leader described by friends as "a person that would give his shirt off of his back to anybody." The agency claims Abdi is a gang leader.
- In Minneapolis, agents detained an Edina-born woman of Somali descent—a U.S. citizen—and mocked her for her hijab.
- On the Augsburg University campus, agents pointed guns at witnesses outside of a residence hall as they detained a student; they did not have a warrant. "These tactics, with the implicit threat of violence, are unacceptable, dangerous, and profoundly disturbing," the university wrote in a statement.
According to local immigration leaders who spoke with Sahan Journal's Katelyn Vue and Joey Peters last week, law-abiding clients who have been following immigration rules are being arrested, with some being detained during their required check-ins with ICE.
“These are real people living real lives,” Minneapolis-based attorney David Wilson tells Sahan Journal of the bulk of ICE detainees. “They’ve done nothing wrong but being from the wrong country at a time when the president gets mad.”
“I Will Blow My Whistle and I Will Scream”
That’s just one of many great quotes from ordinary people in Minneapolis that you’ll find in Jon Collins’s story about “ICE watchers” for MPR News. Among the folks Collins speaks to are Lucia Webb, who drove around in pursuit of frustrated feds. (The agent told her, “You can not do this.” Webb insisted, “Yes, I can. Yes, I can.”) There's also a fellow named Dan who claims correctly that ICE is creating “the opposite of safety” in the city, and Jonathan, whose quote I’ll now provide in full: “If I find feds, I will honk at them, and I will blow my whistle, and I will scream.” Read the full story to learn more about how these people are working to protect their neighbors—and maybe get involved yourself.
Nobody Wants to Talk About Cyndy Martin
That’s the real takeaway from Michelle Griffith’s story in the Minnesota Reformer today about the northern Minnesota DFL party leader who’s been charged with criminal vehicular homicide.
On July 3, 2024, Cyndy Martin allegedly struck and killed 19-year-old Carter Haithcock on Highway 169 in Itasca County. She called 911 the following morning and said she believed she’d hit an animal. The prosecution’s charges rest on whether she had a duty to stop and investigate the collision. As the state puts it, “There is a stark difference between an adult male and an owl or a turkey.”
Martin is Chair of the 8th District DFL but, as journalist Taylor Dahlin points out, that's hardly the full extent of her involvement with the party. She's also Vice Chair of the Itasca County DFL and 2nd Vice Chair of the DFL Feminist Caucus, and she sits on both the party’s Constitution, Bylaws, and Rules Committee and Code of Conduct Committee.
Should she resign or be removed from some or all of those positions? That’s the question party officials are dodging. According to Griffith, “Multiple DFL elected officials in the Northland didn’t respond or declined the Reformer’s requests for comment about Martin.”
State DFL chair Richard Carlbom, who has hemmed and hawed about due process when asked about Martin in the past, refused to discuss the matter, saying, “Because this is an active legal case, we’re not going to prejudge the judicial process.”
One of the few Dems talking is former 8th District DFL vice chair Lee Cutler, who says Martin should resign from her 8th District position. “Party leaders are meant to support that work in the background, so the story should never be about us,” says Cutler.
MPD Blows Budget by Millions
Much like war, policing ain’t cheap. In 2025, the Minneapolis City Council allotted $230 million to the Minneapolis Police Department, making policing—along with things like road maintenance, housing, and infrastructure projects—one of the bigger line items of its $1.9 billion budget. Now the city needs to add $19.6 million to that number, as Police Chief Brian O’Hara says costs of recruiting and training new officers to fill the city’s deficit has thrown their numbers way off.
Overtime also keeps breaking records annually. “The biggest driver of the budget busting is $31 million in overtime—$3 million more than last year’s record-breaking total and $11.4 million over what was planned,” writes Deena Winter for the Star Tribune. (MPD is ending “double overtime,” where officers would receive a special pay rate when covering for staffing gaps, in 2026.) Other big expenses in 2025 included mandatory use of force training sessions and a brand-new motorcycle unit made up of four pimped-out bikes that cost us $136,500 total. (Can they even drive them in the winter?)
“Why is a department head who is running over their budget spending money on Harleys?” Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai wondered at a recent meeting. She’ll be able to ask O’Hara that herself at tomorrow’s budget meeting.
