Minnesota Deserves Answers
Immigration attorney Richard T. Herman writes about CNN's investigation into Operation Metro Surge, which revealed that a federal prosecutor warned colleagues someone would die after hearing commander Gregory Bovino describe plans to "pacify" Minneapolis, a warning that came 17 days before Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti. Herman argues the sequence raises urgent questions for Minnesota's Black and immigrant communities about whether officials recognized the operation's risks and failed to act, and calls for investigations up the chain of command.
On a call held after a federal immigration agent killed Renee Good but before Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, a federal prosecutor reportedly listened as Gregory Bovino described how his forces would “pacify” Minneapolis. Afterward, the prosecutor told colleagues: “They’re going to kill someone else.”
Seventeen days later, federal agents killed Pretti.
That sequence is the central revelation in CNN’s new investigation into Operation Metro Surge. It doesn’t prove Bovino caused Pretti’s death, or that any commander committed a crime. But it raises an urgent question: Did officials recognize the operation’s tactics were creating a risk of more bloodshed, and did anyone act on it?
The toll on Black and immigrant communities
For Minnesota’s Black and African immigrant communities, this isn’t an abstract dispute about federal management.
It’s a familiar civil-rights problem: heavily armed officers entering neighborhoods under a command structure that prizes control, resists oversight and expects its account accepted before the evidence is examined.
False narratives and unchecked enforcement
CNN reports Bovino was frustrated that prosecutors weren’t bringing enough cases against protesters accused of assaulting officers. But prosecutors who reviewed the proposed cases reportedly found many didn’t withstand scrutiny; evidence contradicted agents’ accounts, and agents were frequently found to be providing false information.
Federal prosecutors aren’t a charging desk for an enforcement agency. Their duty is to the Constitution, not to validating every arrest. Declining a case the evidence doesn’t support isn’t obstruction; it’s the system working as intended.
What prosecutors on that call apparently saw was more dangerous than weak cases: a culture that rewarded confrontation, treated skepticism as disloyalty and demanded charges even when allegations couldn’t survive review. One prosecutor predicted where that would lead.
After Good was killed Jan. 7, Bovino reportedly said his forces would not calm Minneapolis down but put it down, speaking of thousands of agents acting without waiting for local police. That was not the language of community-based law enforcement. It was the language of occupation.
When domination replaces public safety
Minneapolis knows the danger of a policing culture that equates domination with public safety. Neither Good nor Pretti was Black, but the accountability problem is recognizable: overwhelming force, residents dismissed as threats, oversight resisted.
The Spokesman-Recorder has documented how the deployment disrupted food access, health services and community care for Black residents, Somali Minnesotans and other immigrants who were never legitimate subjects of immigration enforcement. Once a community is treated as hostile territory, everyone in it becomes collateral damage.
The urgent need for chain-of-command accountability
Hennepin County prosecutors have already charged two federal agents over alleged misconduct during the operation, including an ICE agent accused of filing a false report after shooting a Venezuelan man. Federal officials also recently turned over body-camera footage and other evidence in the Good, Pretti and Sosa-Celis shootings after months of jurisdictional conflict.
That review must now extend up the chain of command. Investigators should determine when Justice Department and Homeland Security leaders learned agent-supplied cases were failing review, and whether concerns raised after the Bovino call reached supervisors. Congress and both departments’ inspectors general should investigate too, not to criminalize forceful rhetoric, but to determine whether officials knew the operation was becoming dangerous and failed to rein it in.
A federal prosecutor allegedly heard a commander describe subduing an American city and feared someone else would die. Then someone did. The question now is whether those warning signs were visible inside the government, and why the operation continued without enough restraint to prevent it.
About the Author:
Richard T. Herman is a nationally recognized immigration attorney and founder of Herman Legal Group. He has practiced immigration law for more than 30 years and is the co-author of “Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy.”