They Sent 3,000 Agents to Minnesota. Nobody Bothered to Train Them.

The Whistleblower Says So

Ryan Schwank worked as a lawyer and trainer at the ICE academy beginning in September 2025. He resigned earlier this year. In his first public interview with local news, he described what he called a training system that is "deficient" and "broken" — one that allowed agents to deploy to Minneapolis without adequate preparation for the situations they would face. [5] Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison put it plainly at a January 12 press conference: "Thousands of poorly trained, aggressive, and armed agents of the federal government have rolled into our communities. They have fired chemical irritants at people obeying lawful orders. This is an unlawful commandeering of police resources." [3] The training gaps weren't just a personnel problem — they were, in some cases, policy. An internal ICE memo from May 2025, obtained and reported during the operation, asserted that ICE officers have authority to forcibly enter homes with an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant. According to a whistleblower, ICE trainees were explicitly taught to follow the memo's guidance instead of training materials that contradicted it. [3] This is the part that matters most to the broader story: the inadequate training wasn't accidental incompetence. Some of it was deliberate. Agents were taught that the legal standard for entry — requiring a judicial warrant issued by a federal judge — didn't apply to them. Judges later disagreed, repeatedly.

This surge has made us less safe. Thousands of poorly trained, aggressive, and armed agents of the federal government have rolled into our communities. They have fired chemical irritants at people obeying lawful orders. This is an unlawful commandeering of police resources.

— Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, press conference, January 12, 2026

The Courts Are Keeping Score

While the administration described Operation Metro Surge as lawful, necessary, and constrained by officer safety, the federal judiciary was reaching different conclusions in real time. By January 28, Minnesota chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz found that ICE had violated at least 96 court orders in Minnesota since January 1 alone — less than four weeks into the expanded surge. [3] Judge Jerry Blackwell, reviewing cases brought before him by ICE agents, found that the "overwhelming majority" involved people lawfully present in the United States. [3] Judge Katherine Menendez barred ICE from detaining, tear-gassing, or retaliating against peaceful observers and protesters. [2] In a separate ruling, Judge Jeffrey Bryan found that a forced entry into a Liberian immigrant's home — using a battering ram and only an administrative warrant — constituted an unconstitutional warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. ICE detained the man again the very next day when he attended a routine check-in at a federal building. [3] This is what the institutional record shows: not the story of a lawful operation that had some rough edges, but an operation that generated 96 court order violations in 28 days, that systematically arrested people with legal status, and that was repeatedly found by federal judges to have exceeded its legal authority. And for the two people who died, the federal accountability system produced precisely nothing. The DOJ's Civil Rights Division declined to investigate either killing. Instead, the department opened an investigation into Good's widow — apparently for filming the shooting. Career prosecutors in Minneapolis and Washington, appalled by the decision, resigned. Twelve or more of them. [1][2]

What a Real Reckoning Would Look Like

The argument that gets made here — and it will be made — is that Operation Metro Surge was an extraordinary effort against an extraordinary problem, that the deaths were tragic but isolated, that the operation ultimately succeeded in removing dangerous people from the community. Set aside, for a moment, that judges found most of the people ICE arrested were lawfully present. Set aside that the operation was launched in a city where federal agents outnumbered local police five to one. Set aside the 96 court order violations. Even if you accept the administration's framing at full value, you still have to answer the whistleblower. Ryan Schwank wasn't an activist or an attorney general. He was an ICE lawyer who trained agents. He resigned and went on the record to say the system is broken. That's not a political attack — it's an institutional confession. So here is what accountability would actually look like, stated plainly: First, training standards have to mean something. Agents deployed for major operations should have completed full academy training. Full stop. Second, the judicial warrant requirement is not bureaucratic obstruction — it is the Fourth Amendment. Administrative warrants do not authorize forced entry into homes, and any internal memo that says otherwise should be rescinded and publicly disavowed. Third, body cameras are not optional. Tom Homan announced during the operation that body cams would be "prioritized" — after two people were dead and video from civilians had already contradicted the federal account. That's not accountability; that's damage control. And fourth, there needs to be an independent investigation into both killings. Not by the DOJ that was already investigating Good's widow. A genuinely independent one.

Renee Good was a mother who dropped off her kid at school. Alex Pretti was a nurse who spent his weekdays keeping veterans alive. They were both thirty-seven years old. They were both American citizens. They were both killed by federal agents whose accounts of what happened were contradicted by video evidence that anyone can watch. There's a version of patriotism that insists federal officers are always acting in good faith, that any critique of enforcement is tantamount to endorsing crime, and that the people killed must have done something to put themselves in danger. That argument survived Rodney King. It survived Eric Garner. It gets deployed every time footage contradicts the official story, and it is deployed here too. But here's what that argument can't explain: why Ryan Schwank quit. Why twelve prosecutors resigned rather than follow DOJ's instructions. Why three federal judges issued findings in January alone that contradicted the administration's account of its own operation. We're remarkably good at finding human rights violations on the other side of the world. We should try that same energy here, at home, where it still might make a difference.