Minnesota Truth Council: Metro Surge Report Released

Minnesota’s state-appointed Truth Council says the federal immigration surge in the Twin Cities violated the Constitution. Its preliminary record is built from testimony and state data, with no federal participation and no subpoena power.

The Minnesota Truth Council, a panel created by Gov. Tim Walz to document Operation Metro Surge, has concluded in a preliminary report that the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota violated the U.S. and Minnesota Constitutions. The report, dated Oct. 31, finds that the operation and a companion effort called Operation PARRIS “laid waste to due process and the rule of law,” and promises a final report with recommendations by Dec. 1.

The report was released on the Friday before the Nov. 3 midterms, and it is the most formal statement yet of the Walz administration’s case against the operation. It is not a court ruling, and its limits matter as much as its findings.

Formally the Governor’s Council on Recording the Truth of Operation Metro Surge and Operation PARRIS, the body was created by Executive Order 26-05 on March 25 and is chaired by Peter Cahill, a retired Hennepin County judge, according to MPR News. The executive order calls for 15 members; they include representatives of the ACLU of Minnesota and The Advocates for Human Rights, with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the attorney general’s office sitting ex officio. The Advocates for Human Rights also serves as the council’s implementing partner.

What the council gathered	Count
People who testified at four public meetings	74, over 13.5 hours
Individual stories collected (five languages)	More than 700
People and organizations contributing	More than 2,500 people; more than 185 organizations
State agencies consulted by the data team	17

Source: Minnesota Truth Council preliminary report, Oct. 31, 2026 (outreach counts as of October 2026).

Where the Minnesota Truth Council’s numbers come from

The report’s sharpest figures appear in Cahill’s opening letter: more than 70 Minnesota children detained between Dec. 1, 2025, and March 10, 2026, and $244 million in lost wages for workers in Minneapolis and St. Paul alone. It also says more than 3,000 federal agents were sent into the state. The preliminary report does not cite a source or method for any of those three numbers. It points instead to eight data reports produced with state agencies; until those are examined, the totals are best read as the council’s own estimates.

Much of the record also comes from volunteer observers who logged agents’ activity in encrypted group chats, along with collected personal stories. The report says its analysts separated what the data “clearly showed from what it only suggested,” but it does not explain how individual accounts were checked.

Two structural limits matter more. The report states plainly that the council “is not a legal process and does not have subpoena power,” so it could not compel federal records or testimony. And it contains no response from DHS or ICE; it does not say whether federal officials were invited to take part. The executive order also walled off the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, which remain the subject of a separate dispute over evidence between Minnesota and the Justice Department.

The federal government tells a different story about the same operation. DHS announced on Feb. 4 that it had made more than 4,000 arrests in Minnesota since Operation Metro Surge began, describing those arrested as including “murderers, sex offenders, gang members, and terrorists.” DHS has also framed the operation around Minnesota’s limits on cooperation with ICE; a Dec. 12, 2025 department release on Minnesota arrests referred in its headline to “Tim Walz’s Sanctuary Minnesota.” The council’s findings on constitutional violations are its own legal conclusions; no court has adopted them as a whole, though federal judges in Minnesota have ruled against the government in individual cases, including the release of a dentist arrested at his green card interview and an order to return a man deported to the Central African Republic.

What the council does have is breadth: missed school days, lost shifts and skipped medical visits rarely reach a courtroom. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office fed into that record with its own account of crime victims avoiding court, submitted to the council on Oct. 20.

The practical test comes Dec. 1, when the final report goes to Walz, the leaders of both parties in the Legislature and Minnesota’s congressional delegation. Recommendations aimed at state law, such as courthouse protections or limits on local cooperation, could move in St. Paul. Anything aimed at federal practice depends on Congress, and the composition of the next House and Senate, decided Tuesday, will shape whether a state commission’s record becomes the basis for federal oversight or stays a state document.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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