Minnesota police chiefs say officers of color are being racially harassed and profiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during aggressive traffic stops, as concerns mount that the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge is trampling civil rights, according to accounts shared at a Tuesday news conference. Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley described how a female off-duty officer from his department was boxed in by vehicles driven by ICE agents, who approached with guns drawn and demanded immigration “paperwork” to prove she could be in the United States. “She’s a U.S. citizen, and clearly would not have any paperwork,” Bruley said, adding that an agent knocked her phone from her hand when she tried to record the encounter, before the agents “immediately” backed off after she identified herself as law enforcement. Bruley said every off-duty officer targeted by ICE in Brooklyn Park over the past two weeks has been a person of color, noting, “I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident… If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt, the county’s first Black woman sheriff, said she is now hearing reports of American citizens being stopped “solely because of the color of their skin,” warning that the tactics are shredding trust in law enforcement. “We demand lawful policing that respects human dignity,” Witt said, stressing that the surge is battering both residents and already exhausted local officers. St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry said while television images show angry protesters, police chiefs are dealing with people “that are scared to death, that are afraid to go outside,” adding that residents are “getting stopped by the way that they look, and they don’t want to take that risk.” Bruley emphasized that the chiefs were not calling for an end to immigration enforcement, saying, “What you won’t hear from any of us today is rhetoric of ‘abolish ICE’ or that there shouldn’t be immigration enforcement… immigration enforcement is necessary for national security and for local security, but how it’s done is extremely important.”
The complaints come as more than 2,000 federal immigration officers have been deployed to Minnesota under Operation Metro Surge, which began in December 2025 and has been described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever conducted. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, alongside the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed a federal lawsuit last week seeking to halt the operation, accusing DHS of deploying “armed and masked” agents to conduct militarized raids at locations including schools and hospitals in violation of the Constitution. Public anger intensified after ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, during a Minneapolis immigration raid protest on Jan. 7, followed a week later by the shooting of an undocumented Venezuelan man during a traffic-stop arrest. DHS officials have denied allegations of racial profiling, saying agents only request identification near enforcement scenes, while a spokesperson said the agency could not find records of ICE or Border Patrol stopping a police officer but would continue to look into the claims.