Since December 2025, Minnesota has been right in the thick of the country’s toughest immigration enforcement. That was when Operation Metro Surge rolled in, flooding the Twin Cities with thousands of federal agents. Over 2,000 ICE agents and another thousand from Customs and Border Patrol hit the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area. Now, agents aren’t obvious. They are sneaking around, using quieter, more hidden tactics, especially in Twin Cities suburbs.
A Minnesota community activist put out a video that has gone viral, warning everyone about a shift in how ICE agents are showing up in the state. In the video, the activist lays it all out: agents aren’t wearing face masks anymore. Now they are sporting baseball caps, beanies, and sunglasses.
Even the tactical gear is gone. Instead, you see hoodies, canvas jackets, puffy coats, blue jeans, and khakis. The usual grey-toned gear that made them easy to spot has been replaced with colorful buffs from places like North Face and REI. “They are trying to blend in with the Midwest,” the activist says. “Not just prepare for the cold weather, but blend in as all of us.”
The Associated Press described agents staking out a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Shakopee, wearing high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, while sitting in a vehicle marked with a fake electrician decal.
Outside the federal building where people are detained, protesters said they spotted agents using bumper stickers with Mexican flags and loading up truck beds with tools or lumber, all to make their vehicles look unremarkable.
After several confirmed cases where ICE agents pretended to be employees from Xcel Energy and CenterPoint Energy, the Citizens Utility Board of Minnesota, a St. Paul nonprofit, released guidance in multiple languages to help residents check if a utility worker is real.
The activist’s video pushed things further, saying that ICE agents had started emailing families at a local elementary school, offering food services. The school responded by telling parents to only go through official social workers.
Internet Reacts to Minnesota Activist’s Warning About ICE Disguise Tactics
Social media responded with a mixture of alarm, dark humor, and sharp political commentary. Many users focused on the vehicle tactics specifically, with several warning their communities that “if you see a delivery van parked for an extended time or repeatedly at the same general location, your antenna should go up.”
Others raised the legal question of what happens when someone in civilian clothes attempts to detain a person, arguing that if a government official “drops all pretense that uniforms imply authority and goes undercover, they should lose any expectation that their authority should be acknowledged.”
The Second Amendment crowd drew pointed sarcasm, with many asking why the “Don’t Tread on Me crowd” that constantly warns about tyrannical government thinks “people should just stand down when what they are witnessing, by all evidence, appears to be a kidnapping.”
Perhaps the most viral reaction compared the activist’s breakdown of ICE’s tactics to “Reese explaining how Terminators infiltrated the resistance.” The overall tone across platforms was one of a community that has stopped being shocked and started paying very close attention.
Operation Metro Surge might be done on paper, but people in Minnesota aren’t buying it. All across neighborhoods, suburbs, and even school parking lots, people are speaking up, and they are making sure everyone else hears where they stand.
