The ruling landed like a punch to the gut for thousands of Somali families in Minnesota. The Trump administration had just won a court victory that gave it the green light to deport any number of Somalis in the United States who were under Temporary Protective Status. The news broke over the last few days, and across the state, people were panicking. Everyone remembered the ICE surges from earlier in the year.
They were terrified that federal agents would start rounding up hundreds of people from their homes and communities. Even if the mass deportations didn’t happen immediately, losing TPS meant those people could lose their work authorization. Without that, they couldn’t legally work, and their employers could be pressured to let them go. “It’s a devastating blow to the entire TPS program,” said Jaylani Hussein with the Council on American Islamic Relations.
He estimated the ruling could mean deportation for hundreds of people in Minnesota alone. But he also pointed out that most people with TPS were already in the process of applying for citizenship through other programs. He was hoping they could rely on that as a backup. President Trump had first announced his intention to terminate the TPS program for Somalis in November, claiming they were responsible for billions in missing money.
The federal government’s ramped-up focus on Minnesota law enforcement began in December. Homeland Security repeatedly stated they were going after people in the country illegally—the “worst of the worst. ” The TPS program was originally set to end in March, but a judge’s ruling put that on hold until now. Immigration attorney Roger Tsai said the new ruling essentially confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security had the authority to end the program.
He didn’t think federal agents would immediately start sweeping people off the streets, but he acknowledged the more likely outcome was that immigration authorities would suspend or end work authorizations for some people. They might also notify employers about the change. “My understanding is their focus is on criminal individuals,” Tsai said. “But certainly there will be an impact immediately in terms of work authorization.
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There was no clear timeline, but Hussein said the court action gave the Department of Homeland Security the green light to begin eliminating the TPS program, even if legal challenges were still pending. In the middle of all this, another controversy was brewing. During the elections the previous week, James O’Keefe walked into a polling station in Minneapolis and was told that one person could vouch for up to eight different people to vote. The video he posted to social media sparked immediate outrage.
Commenters were upset, and the Minnesota Secretary of State announced that law enforcement was reviewing what he called “outrageous misconduct” at Minneapolis polling sites during Tuesday’s primary election. In the video, O’Keefe said he was testing the limits of the state’s vouching requirements and what ID was needed. He gave poll workers the name William Pomerantz. The video showed him leaving after being told he needed to sign an oath.
But there was a problem. Will Pomerantz, a real Minnesota voter, saw his name in that video and he was furious. “It feels like smoke and mirrors, and it makes me mad,” Pomerantz said. His reaction was shock first, then anger.
He had to watch the video a couple of times to believe it. He had no idea how the conservative group got his name, and he demanded answers. O’Keefe’s group responded with a statement saying they did not impersonate anyone or claim to be William Pomerantz or any other voter. They claimed they simply stated a name and asked election workers questions.
Minnesota is one of only two states—Iowa being the other—that allows vouching. But Iowa’s rules are stricter: a voucher must attest to both the person’s identity and residency, and it’s limited to just one person on Election Day. And if that wasn’t enough, there was yet another story breaking that summer. It turned out ICE had infiltrated different anti-ICE groups in Minnesota.
People were angry, accusing the federal government of spying on them for exercising their First Amendment rights. Federal court documents laid out a sweeping, months-long investigation that targeted labor unions, activists, and protesters during what was called Operation Metro Surge. Fifteen people had been federally indicted for allegedly trying to impede or injure federal officers. All of them pleaded not guilty.
Now, an attorney for one of the 15 was accusing the federal government of infiltrating group chats, meetings, and protests—all without any evidence of wrongdoing. The court filing included DHS reports on investigations nicknamed Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield. DHS said the goal was to crack down on violent opportunists who exploited the protests as cover to attempt breaches of federal properties and assaults against federal officers. But the attorney argued that the Department of Homeland Security had embarked on an improper investigation of First Amendment protected activity without any suggestion that the targets had committed any crime.
In one late December instance, an undercover agent attended a meeting at a Minneapolis Public Library and learned of a planned noise protest outside a hotel suspected of housing ICE. The agent tipped off investigators, then joined a Signal chat of citizens tracking ICE’s movements. Other reports detailed undercover agents wearing wires and using AI to look for photos of protesters online. DHS even investigated labor unions, including the AFL-CIO.
So there it was. Three separate stories hitting the state all at once: the TPS ruling threatening to strip work authorization and deport hundreds of Somali immigrants, the voting vouching controversy that left a man humiliated by having his name used without permission, and the revelation that ICE had been spying on protesters and activists. On the streets of Minnesota, a quiet fear spread through immigrant communities. People checked their doors twice, spoke in hushed tones, and wondered who among them would be next.
The families with TPS status faced impossible choices—stay and risk arrest, disappear into the shadows, or abandon everything they had built and somehow start over in a country many of them barely remembered. Parents debated whether to keep their children in school or prepare them for a sudden midnight departure. The state that had welcomed them now felt like a trap closing in from all sides. For the activists, every conversation felt risky.
They looked at each other across meeting tables, wondering which face would end up in a federal report. Some stopped showing up to protests altogether. Others started using burner phones and scheduling meetings outside, away from any microphone that might be listening. As the days passed, the full weight of the situation settled over the state.
The Somali community braced for what came next, realizing that everything they had worked for could be taken away overnight.
