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THE HORROR OF OCCUPATION, THE SOLIDARITY OF COMMUNITY: MINNESOTANS
TESTIFY ON OPERATION METRO SURGE  
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Amie Stager
September 11, 2026
Workday Magazine
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_ Workers and community members gave public testimony at the
Convergence for Democracy about the human rights violations they
experienced during Operation Metro Surge. _

On February 28, 2026, community members gathered to protest at the
Sherburne County Government Center in Elk River, Minn., where the jail
there also serves as a detention center for immigrants. , Photo by
Amie Stager.

 

“I’m taking this risk because I know we have to fight hard to make
changes that we need, to make changes that we deserve,” said
Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco, a Minnesota labor organizer who was
abducted
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by ICE on January 9 during Operation Metro Surge. He was giving
testimony at the Minnesota Truth Council on August 21, one of numerous
people speaking about the ordeals they went through as a result of the
federal crackdown.

On March 25, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued
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executive order creating the “Governor’s Council to Record the
Truth of Operation Metro Surge and Operation PARRIS,” also known as
the Minnesota Truth Council. The goal of the Truth Council is to
produce a historical record of experiences of Operation Metro Surge
that will include a report with findings and recommendations for
policymakers. Orozco Verdusco gave his testimony to the Truth Council
at an event hosted by the Advocates for Human Rights, a nonprofit
organization located in Minnesota that has been collecting stories
since mid-May.

Orozco Verdusco said that when he first learned about Operation Metro
Surge, he didn’t leave his house for more than 20 days. “I left
because I had a work meeting. I was followed just a few blocks from
our home. They followed me for about eight miles before pulling me
over and arresting me,” said Orozco Verdusco.

He says the next day they were flown to Texas. “After 72 hours we
were told we could talk to our families which didn’t happen. Three
or four days later we had the opportunity to talk to them for three
minutes. Only three minutes,” he said. Three weeks later, they were
moved to New Mexico. “During that move, we were given no food, no
drinks, all day and night,” he continued. “They stopped at a gas
station. They got food, they got drinks, they ate and drank in front
of us. They said when we arrived we would be given food and drinks.
Well it was not that way. It wasn’t until the next morning that we
could have breakfast. Finally we could call our families and talk for
a little bit longer. When I talked to my family they told me my lawyer
had presented a habeas corpus which had been denied. Every time I had
an opportunity to talk to my family, they were telling me stories
about people, organizations, communities, supporting me.”

Orozco Verdusco was released in June after being in detention for
almost six months. In May, a federal judge ordered
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that anyone who was in the process of obtaining a T or U visa should
be taken out of detention. A T or U visa enables immigrants who are
victims of trafficking to remain in the U.S. for a period of time and
grants them protections. Because Orozco Verdusco and his wife are in
the process of getting a T visa, he was released. “This is a bad
moment we are living in, but it’s going to be better because of the
people that live here,” he said. “I’m thankful to all those who
prayed for me to come back, to join my family again.”

The event where Orozco Verdusco spoke took place at the first ever
Convergence for Democracy at the Minneapolis Convention Center in
downtown Minneapolis, Minn. The Convergence, hosted by Tending the
Soil and co-sponsored by May Day Strong and Freedom Trainers, served
as a national gathering for labor, community, faith, and legal
advocates devoted to defending democracy in a moment of increasing
authoritarianism
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and fascism
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Speakers iterated that defending democracy means defending each other.
The gathering was full of learning and trading resistance stories, and
the opposition and resistance to Operation Metro Surge was highlighted
in many of those stories. 

Six more people testified to the Truth Council at the Convergence,
including Christin Crabtree, a grassroots community organizer and
Minneapolis resident and parent who cofounded Minneapolis Families for
Public Schools. She gave testimony about the day ICE swarmed
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upon Roosevelt High School in South Minneapolis on January 7, which
was also the day ICE shot and killed Renee Good.

Crabtree says that she was at work the day that Renee Good was killed,
and she had not planned to be at school dismissal, but showed up
anyways. As students were exiting, a convoy of SUVs stopped in front
of the main entrance of the school. “I ran faster than I ever had in
my life,” said Crabtree. “I saw masked men with giant guns and in
my mind visualized what had happened to Renee Good just hours before.
Agents tackled our educators, aimed guns at our kids, and used
chemical agents on our community, on our kids who were just trying to
go home. I was mere inches from Greg Bovino. I remember the sound of a
gun being cocked.”

Crabtree referenced the detention of Quentin Williams, an assistant
teacher at Roosevelt who is now pursuing
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a lawsuit against the federal government after being tackled by
agents. “He was a Black man being attacked by militarized police as
high school students bore witness,” said Crabtree. “I felt echoes
of 2020.”

Gabby Benavente Hobart is an educator at a high school in North
Minneapolis working with Spanish-speaking students who are learning
English and math. After the 2024 election, educators organized
meetings to develop safety protocols for what to do if ICE showed up
at school. “Still this preparation would not prepare us for the
scale of the horror that was about to unfold,” said Benavente Hobart
in her testimony to the Truth Council. “I am deeply grateful to my
fellow educators at my side and in my union as well as community
members in all walks of life.”

She recalled how one student apologized for having to log out of Zoom
because ICE was in the street nearby. She shared how she consoled
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a mother whose son and husband were detained and separated by ICE.
“To this day I think of him, how he was denied the joy of walking
alongside classmates during graduation.”

Matt Allen is a local hip hop artist who goes by Nur-D. He gave
testimony about his ICE detention
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after attending a protest after Border Patrol agents shot and killed
Alex Pretti. 

“I watched on my phone as Alex Pretti was murdered in cold blood,”
Allen said. “When I went out to have my voice be heard, I was
attacked violently from behind by more than half a dozen men with guns
who threw me to the street. They beat my body, they sprayed acid in my
face, they told me I was being arrested for assaulting an officer, a
charge I have yet to see.”

Allen said agents put him in a vehicle and he was released later.
“We are living the worst case scenario,” he said. “What are you
willing to do to stop it? They are killing people. And they will
continue to capture and kill people not because a law says they can,
but because they want to.”

Garrison Gibson Brown gave testimony about his arrest
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and time in ICE detention. Gibson Brown said he was born in Liberia,
that he has resided in the U.S. since four years old, and that he has
been checking in with ICE regularly since 2009. He said on January 11,
his family was woken up by ICE agents who had entered his house
without a warrant and broke down the front door. The agents cuffed him
in front of his family.

“After being at Whipple for a couple hours, the next morning they
put some of us on a plane and sent us to Texas,” said Gibson Brown.
“It was no better in Texas than it was at Whipple. The cells were
dirty, the [correctional officers] they talk to you like you’re not
human.”

On the day ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, civil rights
attorney Nicole Salonek Schladt was at Powderhorn Park bringing her
child to therapy when she saw three large SUVs in the parking lot
surrounded by masked agents. She approached the vehicles and noticed
three teens huddled in the back seats. “They were all my children at
that moment,” she said.

After an ICE agent told her to get out of the way, she began walking
alongside the vehicle from a distance when another agent approached
her from behind. “A gun appeared less than 12 inches from my face. I
had no time to react, no time to panic,” she said. “The agent shot
me in the face at point blank rage with what I learned were two
projectile pepper balls. Everything went black. When I came to, lying
in the snow, I could hardly breathe, I could hardly think.”

She vomited, removed all of her clothes, and was frothing at the
mouth. “A park employee ushered me out of the cold into the rec
center, a street medic emerged from literally nowhere and began
flushing my eyes, a neighbor brought me a sheet and held it around my
naked body,” she said. Her child’s therapist did breathing
exercises and several people offered to share video recordings of the
incident. It was then that they received news about Good’s killing.

“Another queer white woman, a mother like me, was dead, and I by the
grace of God or something was not,” she said. Although she was
alive, she experienced the impact of being shot by pepper balls, and
was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and cervical
radiculopath that gave her nerve pain throughout her arms and hands.
“My nail beds and scalp blistered,” she said. “I learned
intimately why pepper ball projectiles are prohibited as chemical
weapons in international armed conflict.”

Benjamin gave testimony about his father who was detained and deported
during Operation Metro Surge. He says he grew up in Honduras learning
about movements for equality in the U.S. He says his father was often
working with Fe y Justicia, a nonprofit in central Minnesota that
provides training and clinics for community members. On January 10,
Benjamin says his father was driving when he was pulled over and his
seatbelt was cut and he was abducted by masked men. After being
detained, he was moved to Texas where his attorney had no
jurisdiction, and then they moved him to New Mexico. “During the 43
days my dad spent in detention he tried to stay sane, he held back his
tears because he did not want us to worry,” he says.

Eventually, his father was deported to Honduras. “When someone comes
from a country where access to healthcare, freedom of speech is
limited, I cannot blame my dad for wanting something different,” he
said. “I’m not here to pretend my dad did not overstay his visa.
I’m here to tell you that breaking an immigration rule should not
take someone’s humanity away. Behind every case number, there is a
person and behind them is a family loving them and waiting for them to
be treated as a human being.”

Formed in 2018, Tending the Soil is an alignment
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the Twin Cities that includes CTUL, Inquilinxs Unidxs por
Justicia/Renters United for Justice
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[[link removed]], SEIU Local 26
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Salonek Schladt, executive director of Tending the Soil, said that the
goal of the conference was to build the national movement to resist
authoritarianism. “We sit in the reality that the government is
fueled by corporate greed that is killing everything in this young
country,” she said in the opening plenary.

Ricardo Levins Morales, visual artist, organizer, and author
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based in Minneapolis, whose work inspired the name Tending the Soil,
spoke during the closing plenary at the Convergence. “What we live
under is a system for whom the basic hardline non-negotiable is the
permanence of a permanent underclass. It cannot survive without
that,” said Levins Morales. “Waves of movement ebb and flow, but
they can still be part of a rising tide. People can often get really
scared when a movement ebbs away and think, ‘oh it’s over now,’
when it could sometimes only be the first wave of a rising tide that
will continue to climb. That’s what we’ve been experiencing.”

 

_Amie Stager is the Associate Editor for Workday Magazine._

 

_Workday Magazine holds the powerful to account while bringing the
perspectives of everyday workers, and the organizations that defend
their rights, to focus. We emphasize long-form investigative
journalism to unearth the concealed and buried. Our publication is
based in Minnesota and covers the greater Midwest, along with
international issues that affect workers, like climate change and U.S.
militarism._

* ICE
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* Minneapolis
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* Authoritarianism
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* Fascism
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* resistance
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* truth commissions
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* immigrant rights
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* community organizing
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* Labor Organizing
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