Forced From Home Episode 4: “They’re Everything it Means to be American”: Protecting Refugees in Minneapolis with Major Jacob Frey
Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant operation across the Minneapolis–St. Paul region in Minnesota, brutalized members of the local community, including lawful refugees, immigrants, and American citizens alike.
At this year’s Refugees International Advocacy Awards, we presented the McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award to Mayor Jacob Frey, whose courageous leadership protected refugees and community members in the face of ICE and CBP’s assaults across Minneapolis. In this episode, we hear from Mayor Frey about the city’s legacy of welcoming refugees and immigrants, what it was like living through Operation Metro Surge, and the power of community action and local emergency response.
Jump to the transcript.
<Timed Takeaways:
[02:36] The social fabric of the city of Minneapolis and the integral role of refugees and migrants
[07:44] On the ground during Operation Metro Surge
[14:32] Mounting a local response: municipal tools, mutual aid groups, and the power of a welcoming community
[22:25] The obstacles to engaging the Trump administration and the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens
[29:33] Accountability for ICE and CBP abuses
[31:49] Honoring the contributions of refugees and migrants in Minneapolis and the harms of scapegoating immigrant communities
[36:00] Roundup: Displacement in the news this week
Mentioned in This Episode:
Minneapolis grapples with the impact of Trump’s largest immigration crackdown yet – NPR
Refugees International Celebrates Frontline Leadership at 2026 Advocacy Awards, Honoring Mayor Jacob Frey and Palestinian Healthcare Workers in Gaza – Refugees International
The Team Meticiously Tracking ICE Deportations to Third Countries – This Week on ICE
This Week on ICE Podcast – Spotify
Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong – The Atlantic
Strong Majority of U.S. Voters Support Refugee Resettlement as Administration Plans to Slash Program by Nearly 95 Percent – Refugee Advocacy Lab
State Violence and Community Resistance in Minnesota – Human Rights Watch
ICE agent charged in shooting of immigrant during Minneapolis crackdown – Washington Post
From Bogotá to El Fasher: The UAE’s Role in the Deployment of Colombian Fighters and Other Backing to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan – Human Rights Watch
Blood on the Ball – bloodontheball.org
Refugees International Condemns the Racialization of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program – Refugees International
Why this Ebola outbreak will be so difficult to contain – Washington Post
Leadership, Agency, and a New Architecture of Recovery – IV Annual Ukrainian Aid Leadership Conference – Alliance of Ukrainian Civil Society Organizations
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and consider a donation to support our work at https://give.refugeesinternational.org/a/forcedfromhome
For more show episodes, visit https://refugeesinternational.org/forced-from-home-podcast
Thoughts or suggestions? Get in touch with our team at ri@refugeesinternational.org
Subscribe with us wherever you get your podcasts and follow Refugees International on social media @refugeesintl (Twitter/Instagram/Threads) and Refugees International (LinkedIn/Facebook/YouTube). You can also follow Jeremy on Twitter at @JeremyKonyndyk.
This episode of “Forced from Home” was produced by Refugees International. Our technical director and sound designer is Joshua Suhy. Our executive producer is Madison Cullinan. The show’s production team also includes Sarah Sheffer. Our music is composed by Richard Adam Keyworth from Sound Pocket Music. And special thanks to Kate Brick and Jen Schmid.
Transcript
Jeremy (00:03)
Hi, I’m Jeremy Konyndyk and you’re listening to Forced From Home, a podcast about global displacement.
In December 2025, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge, a series of brutal immigration raids across the Minneapolis-St. Paul region of Minnesota. The country watched in shock as masked ICE and CBP teams brutalized members of that community, including many American citizens and legal immigrants. Ultimately, federal agents gunned down two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, in separate incidents. And the resulting political backlash forced the administration to draw down the operation.
In today’s episode, I talk with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey about what that was like for the city, about how important refugees and immigrants have been to Minneapolis, and we zoom in on how citizen activism helped to counter ICE abuses and protect the community.
Refugees International recently honored Mayor Fery at our annual Advocacy Awards for his courageous leadership standing up for refugees and immigrants during Operation Metro Surge.
Before we jump into that conversation, quick topical plug for our friends at the This Week on ICE podcast, who have some excellent episodes uncovering ICE abuses. In their latest episode, Refugees International’s very own Yael Schacher talks about her work meticulously tracking ICE deportations to third countries. Check out their show wherever you get your podcasts and we will also put a link in the show notes. And hang on after the conversation with Mayor Frey for a few other important headlines about global displacement this week.
I’m here with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Welcome Mayor Frey. We’re recording this the day before Refugees International’s annual advocacy awards. This year we’re proud to honor Mayor Frey with the McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award, our highest honor, which we award to individuals who made a significant contribution to advance the rights and safety of displaced people. And after his leadership during the federal assault on his city earlier this year, we couldn’t think of anyone more deserving than Mayor Frey.
He showed immense courage and commitment in the face of a fierce federal crackdown and retribution, sometimes targeting him directly in order to protect his community’s proud legacy of welcoming refugees and other newcomers to his city. So it’s a true privilege to talk to you today, Mayor. Welcome to Forced From Home.
Mayor Frey (02:27)
I’m really honored to be here. You guys are doing the real work every single day and to be here with you is truly special.
Jeremy (02:36)
We’re so glad to have you. Let’s dive in with something that I know is important to you and important to the city of Minneapolis. And that’s the long history of welcoming refugees in Minneapolis. And seems to be a major part of why President Trump and Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem and company targeted Minneapolis earlier this year. Your city has welcomed refugees going back many decades. The Somalis, of course, as everyone knows, but also Hmong, Ethiopians, Vietnamese, other refugees from Southeast Asia. Talk a little bit about what refugees have meant to the city of Minneapolis.
Mayor Frey (03:08)
A lot of people look at the welcoming of refugees as purely this benevolent act, but I want to talk about it as a selfish one, as one that has quite simply benefited our city in a major way. We have welcomed refugees and immigrants going back hundreds of years. More recently, it’s been the Hmong community as well as the Somali community and everybody acknowledges the truth at this point, which is that they have made our city a better place. And whether that is opening local businesses or contributing to the economy, whether that is providing for the social fabric that make Minneapolis this unique haven in the United States or just the day-to-day life.
I think one of the big differences that set Minneapolis apart is people in Minneapolis largely don’t look at them as refugees. That’s not the first thing that comes to mind. They’re insurance agents and my security detail. They’re our babysitter. They’re business people. They’re just heavily involved. They’re the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street. And because of that, they’re family. And I think that is a big difference is that there wasn’t this othering because that’s not the first thing you think about when you interact with refugees on literally a daily basis.
Jeremy (04:33)
We’ve done some research now for the past few years, looking at public attitudes towards refugee resettlement. And one of the things we find is if people personally know a refugee, or someone with a refugee background, it is just game changing. There’s good support, but it adds 20 points if you know a refugee.
Mayor Frey (04:48)
Without a doubt.
Jeremy (04:49)
And what you’re saying is something really essential, which is when people come to see refugees, not as some other, but as members of the community, that’s really transformative. And Stephen Miller, over and over, frames refugees and migrants generally as this “invading other,” as people who can never be part of the American identity, of American community. Minneapolis is such a counterpoint to that. How have you seen that welcoming and that inclusion play out within communities in Minneapolis? You know, Stephen Miller’s kind of thesis, if you will, is that refugees can never be truly American. And I think Minneapolis really shows that that’s wrong.
Mayor Frey (05:30)
Well, it’s, yeah. I wish we could introduce him in full to, for instance, our Hmong community. The Hmong people of Minneapolis are perhaps the most patriotic Americans that I have ever met before. They came here because they were fighting the communist revolution at the time during the Vietnam War. They fought on the side of America. They were very proud to have done so.
They, at the time, were military leaders. And when they got welcomed to America, it was this responsibility and duty that they felt to make America a better place. And so I’ve been over to dinner at Hmong persons house countless times and almost all of them, you start the dinner by standing up straight and tall, putting your hand over your chest and reciting the pledge of allegiance. And that’s not cause I’m there. That’s a ritual that they have as a people. The American Pledge of Allegiance. The American flag is draped on the wall. And of course they retain these beautiful Hmong and Lao traditions, but at the same time they’re incorporating them into the fabric of what we’ve got in Minneapolis to make it a better place. And so the notion that they’re less than American, my God, I mean, they’re everything that it means to be American.
Our Somali community, this is a community that has been in Minneapolis far longer than I have. They’re more Minneapolis than I am. And they’ve contributed beautifully to the entrepreneurship and the economic fabric of who we are here in the city. They love Minneapolis, they love America. They care so deeply about the fact that they’re here right now. And they also understand that they’ve got a responsibility.
And so I think he’s just got it so backwards. I mean, what is the test of being an American? And clearly for him, it’s being white.
Jeremy (07:34)
Yeah.
Mayor Frey (07:35)
And perhaps he should shift it a little bit. And it’s about having this greater abidance and respect and understanding and love for what America is.
Jeremy (07:44)
Yeah. And that seems to be a big part of why your city was targeted, that kind of battle over who gets to be American, what it means to be American, and who counts. So let’s turn to that. Minnesota came into the spotlight with Operation Metro Surge, and there had been an escalation in several cities around the country. We’d had it here in the D.C. area. LA had gone through it. Chicago had been hit pretty hard. Portland. But it reached a whole new pitch in Minneapolis. What was your first indication of how bad it was going to get?
Mayor Frey (08:13)
Well, we were expecting some form of influx of ICE agents from virtually when Trump first took office. We knew that Minneapolis would likely be a target, given the large number of Hmong and Somali immigrants and refugees that we have in our city. And so frankly, we were expecting something in significant form earlier. But then sometime around December, there was this increasingly hostile rhetoric towards our Somali community. There was this focus on fraud, which had taken place throughout the state of Minnesota, which is a very significant and concerning issue. But the Somali community in particular was being villainized for it.
And I believe what happened, and this is in part speculative, but I am 95 percent sure that I’m right. Somebody from very high up in the Trump administration said, go to Minneapolis, detain, and deport a bunch of Somalis. And there wasn’t the proper pushback on that directive only for them to get to Minneapolis in smaller numbers and then increasingly gigantic numbers and realize that hang on a second, they’re all here legally. The vast majority are here lawfully. They have protected status. They come here lawfully as a refugee.
They’re citizens, the vast majority have been here for like generations. They’re United States citizens. And there’s not like a place where you can go to get a hundred or 200 undocumented Somali immigrants. They got here on Delta. I don’t think they were expecting that.
And of course they then shifted their gaze towards our Latino community and our Southeast Asian community. But those initial numbers were concerning, but then the influx got to the point where it was three to four thousand ICE agents and border patrol. That would be significant in New York City. Population that is far in excess of the 435,000 that we have in Minneapolis. And when you have 600 police officers juxtaposed against 4,000 ICE agents and border patrol, yeah, it’s an invasion.
Jeremy (10:30)
Yeah. What were your days like as you were trying to manage this and hold your community together, protect your citizens, and deal with this federal invasion?
Mayor Frey (10:38)
Yeah. I’ll start by saying what you saw on the news. I mean, it did it justice, but I’ll say it was even worse than that. What you saw on the media, some of these horrific scenes, that was taking place throughout many corridors in our city and specifically the cultural corridors.
There were periods of time there on a daily basis where we had dozens of ICE agents and border patrol practically goose stepping down the street, marching down the street looking for people that appeared to be Somali or Latino or Southeast Asian indiscriminately going after them. I guess discriminating only on the basis of do you look Latino or Somali and then indiscriminate pickups thereafter.
People were detained that are full blown American citizens. United States citizens were taken away to undisclosed locations. People didn’t know where they are. It was days before we were able, if not weeks before we were able to get them back. This tragically became the norm for several weeks there and we weren’t going to accept it as such. And to give people an idea of what was taking place, that was the reality that we were living and it was so bad that they were picking up American Indians.
And if it weren’t so ridiculous and cruel, it would be funny. These are the people that have been here the longest, of course. And so our days, of course, were spent coordinating and planning and providing strategy, both along with some of these mutual aid organizations that were providing food and assistance and care. Those constitutional observers that were making sure that what was taking place in the streets were documented. And of course, pushing out a public and national narrative about what was taking place on the street because people needed to know.
Jeremy (12:39)
And how did your emergency management system deal with that? I mean, this is the sort of thing I know as we talked about another time, I’ve worked with your emergency manager before when we both worked together at USAID, she’s top notch. How did you mobilize that architecture? How did you adapt that to deal with what your community was facing?
Mayor Frey (12:57)
The mobilization of our emergency management system dates back far before Operation Metro Surge began. We had another crisis, an emergency following the murder of George Floyd. And not all of it went well. And so we didn’t just sit on our hands through that period of time. We did training, we ran simulations, everybody got trained on national incident management systems so that you know who’s incident command, what they’re doing, what the proper lines of communication are, and you’re better able to respond to emergencies as they’re taking place in real time.
We did work that culminated in a trip out to Emmitsburg, Maryland, which was the FEMA simulation headquarters. And we ran simulations, some of which literally took place, protests and counter protests, groups that were oppositional on the street. Of course, I don’t think anybody has fully anticipated the federal government invading our city in full. But the point being is that we were really well prepared to respond to crisis.
And of course, with the work of Director Rachel Sayre that was able to lead that emergency management coordination, we had a great system. And you couple that with our Director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Michelle Rivero, and we had a system where we were able to communicate with people in the community. We were able to provide guidance and at times help and support. And there were a number of organizations out there that we were incessantly working with to make sure that, again, people were safe.
Jeremy (14:32)
Yeah. The Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, that’s something that is now increasingly common in a lot of cities. Some states have them. Talk a little bit about what the function of that office is.
Mayor Frey (14:42)
The function is to help. We know that immigrants and refugees have been disproportionately targeted, especially in the second Trump administration. They were in the first as well, but obviously it’s reached a whole new fever pitch in the second. And we wanted to make sure that whether it was legal assistance, connection to an attorney, whether it was a Know Your Rights campaign, or just access to programs and tools that we have available at the city that having this office was of critical importance and of course became more so.
We created task forces with a number of these organizations out in communities so that information was able to be readily shared both to them and then back up to us. And having those groups that were constantly communicating was yeah exceedingly helpful again just to make sure that people were abiding by the law, that they were safe, that they understood their rights. And then they were able to get things like food. We had community service officers that were out there delivering food to families that were otherwise terrified to go outside. And of course, and I got to give credit where it’s due, the tens of thousands of people, both in Minneapolis and beyond, that were dropping off groceries and standing watch over a daycare and peacefully protesting in the streets. They’re the one that changed this national narrative in a beautiful way that allowed us to push back and ultimately get ICE out of there.
Jeremy (16:19)
And I think, what really caught not just the country’s, but the world’s attention and imagination about Minneapolis was this massive mobilization of the population. And, again, thinking of Stephen Miller’s theory of the case that really these people are not genuine Americans, refugees and immigrants are not genuine community members. And here you see an entire community rise up and say, no, we are one, we are unified, we’re going to stand up for our neighbors.
I’d been in Chicago last fall talking with the mayor’s office there at the time when Bovino was in Chicago. And one of the things that a lot of community leaders in Chicago were focused on was how much Bovino and DHS were really trying to divide different parts of the community against each other, to turn black Chicagoans against immigrants and turn longer term Latino immigrant communities against the newer immigrant communities.
That didn’t work in Minneapolis. In fact, it backfired hugely on the administration. Why do you think that is? And what do you take away from that?
Mayor Frey (17:22)
There’s a really special culture in Minneapolis and you realize it the moment you set foot there. And it is this belief that everybody can make a difference.
I remember attending one of my very first neighborhood association meetings when I got to Minneapolis and the topic that they were discussing was this peace march that was happening across the world. And at first, candidly, I was annoyed. I was like, what the hell are we doing? Let’s talk about the graffiti over on 4th Street or the affordable housing. We’re trying to get in on Main Street. What relevance is this? And then I checked myself and I realized the first step to making a difference is to believe that you can.
And everybody in Minneapolis believes that they’re part of something that is bigger than themselves. They believe that they’re part of this city, their neighborhood, the people in it that is part of this social fabric in this contract that they have indeed signed on to. We’ve all signed on to it. And these mutual promises that we make to one another, which is basically, if you come after one of us, you’re coming after all of us. And when your family members, both literal family members and the broad family that we’ve got here are getting attacked, yeah, people don’t put up with that shit. They’re not okay with it. And rightfully so.
And again, I said earlier that you you don’t think of them as refugees or immigrants in Minneapolis. And I got to really emphasize that point. People don’t think to themselves, these refugees and immigrants make Minneapolis a better place. Of course, that’s true. That’s not the thought process. The thought process is, this is my friend. This is Ibrahim. He’s a good guy. We hang out. He’s funny. And that’s what, that’s the way it is. The thought process is around, man, we’ve really got some great food in Minneapolis. And of course that is in part due to the diversity of the community that is here.
And what you saw is people say, we’re not tolerating this. We’re gonna, we’re going to rise up. We’re going to do it peacefully. And I think that was another important thing. Part of Bovino’s strategy here, I believe, was for us to take the bait. It was to sow violence on the streets, to have these violent confrontations where they could more legitimately invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow them to literally bring military into Minneapolis. And of course it didn’t work. It failed miserably. The political narrative was so horrible and it was such that they had to leave.
Because let’s not kid anybody, that’s why they ultimately left. It wasn’t like they accomplished some massive mission or like made the city a safer place because of their presence. That’s garbage. No, the reason they left was the political narrative was disastrous.
Jeremy (20:13)
It was a total catastrophe for them politically. Absolutely, and in that nonviolence, there’s real echoes of the civil rights movement in the 60s where there was so much training and so much emphasis put upon, don’t take the bait, do not meet violence with violence. They will be violent, do not reciprocate, do not give them the pretext they’re looking for. And fascinating and really inspiring, I think, to see that brought forward now into Minneapolis this year.
How did your office engage with the mutual aid, with that movement, with the mutual aid groups, was there much coordination? It was very organic, obviously. It came from the community, but that provides also real asset, I would imagine, to you as you’re governing and leading.
Mayor Frey (20:52)
Yes, the mutual aid work that took place was largely organic. It came and bubbled up from the community. Not surprisingly so because I know the culture that we’ve got in our city. I mean, these are people that want desperately to help. And yes, certainly there was coordination with the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, with our Office of Emergency Management and well beyond. And what it became is we were then helping to fill gaps. So where gaps existed, where mutual aid was not able to step in. The city was in many cases able to help.
But again, the credit, I need to be really clear, belongs to the tens of thousands of people that were providing that assistance. I mean, it was just inspirational. You walk over to one of these mutual aid spots and like you would see lines out the door around the block. And it wasn’t just the people that are traditionally involved in providing mutual aid or activisting. It was regular ass people that drop their kid off at daycare and decide, hey, before I go to work, I’m gonna drop a couple meals off for a family that’s in need. That was the dynamic. And then on your way into daycare, you’d see another family that was standing guard outside the daycare to make sure that they were videotaping what was actually taking place in public.
Jeremy (22:11)
Yeah, I grew up in West Michigan and Grand Rapids and it’s a similar vibe there. And I can, I know those people. I know there’s the Michigan version of those people. And, yeah, it’s when you get them onto the streets, A, it takes a lot to get them onto the streets, but B, they’re pretty formidable when they turn up.
You talked a minute ago about Greg Bovino, who was the – leading this basically field marshal on the ground, if you will – for the surge, someone who uses some pretty extreme rhetoric.
What was your experience with him? Did you deal with him much? And how much of what we saw do you think traces to just how he chose to approach that operation?
Mayor Frey (22:48)
It appeared to me that there was this jockeying for influence over the President and that jockeying I’m sure was taking place between Stephen Miller, with Kristi Noem, and then of course, Bavino. It was never clear who was in charge. It felt hands on the bat and each person was doing the more violent, the more vitriolic thing to try to curry favor with President Trump.
And I strongly believe that they were doing these things, setting these narratives, using the language and the conduct that they were using very intentionally. It is an intentional decision to have a Nazi style trench coat and march down the street with dozens of ICE agents and border patrol and terrorize people. That you don’t do that on accident.
And, no, I didn’t have any interaction directly with Bovino. One, because this is not a person that you work with or compromise with given the conduct that we were seeing. Two, it wasn’t clear he was in charge. So we were trying to reach out to and engage with the Trump administration directly and were not able to get in contact with them until after Alex Pretti was killed.
Jeremy (24:12)
Wow. So they’d been invading your city for more than a month at that point. That’s very unbelievable. Wow. And no contact, no engagement with the mayor’s office. They weren’t, not even going through the motions?
Mayor Frey (24:25)
We had a number of messages that we were trying to back channel. We were working with business leaders to send a message. We were talking to Republicans of, at least, privately like mind that were able to send a message up and maybe potentially get some information back. And then none of this was really working. And then so finally we just sent an email.
Jeremy (24:48
Right.
Mayor Frey (24:49)
Are you willing to meet? And we heard nothing back for a couple of weeks until Alex Pratt got shot and killed and the narrative changed in that we suddenly became the city of don’t tread on me, which is not the way that I traditionally think about Minneapolis. That’s not like you see don’t tread on me bumper stickers on the south side of our city.
But many of the Republican ideals, these core and important convictions of freedom and 10th Amendment rights and ability for local communities to instill their own values, those were demolished, including, by the way, the Second Amendment, which is, I’ve never been a big defender of the Second Amendment. That’s not my thing. But Alex Pretti was a lawful gun owner and was doing nothing wrong. And I think that suddenly started to backfire because you got like the NRA suddenly coming out and saying, hey, hang on a second. You’re allowed to carry a gun to a protest. Something that, by the way, I’m not really on board with in general, but if that’s the rule and that’s what you’re attesting to, then certainly the rule should apply equally regardless of your political beliefs.
Jeremy (26:03)
One of the other really gross abuses that we saw over the course of this was the detention of many migrants, also protesters, American citizens were detained, brought to the Whipple building. What did you hear from some of the folks who went through that process about what conditions were like in Whipple? How were their rights denied? And what did they take away from that?
Mayor Frey (26:24)
There are countless stories, many of them are different, but the common denominator is a lack of seeing the common humanity in the individual that was being detained. They did not care. These were not people that were, the people of Minneapolis were not treated as if they were human beings.
Early on, there was a young Somali male that was walking out of his workplace to go get a cup of coffee or some tea. And he walks downstairs, he sees the ICE agents and the border patrol, they look at him and start running at him. He had the same reaction that I think anybody with common sense would have, which is, yeah, okay, this is scary. I’m going to run in the other direction.
Jeremy (27:10)
Right.
Mayor Frey (27:11)
Hasn’t done anything wrong. This is not even a guy that was like involved in a protest or something like that. He was just going to get a cup of coffee so he could wake up a little bit and go do some work. And he gets chased down, violently detained, thrown in the back of the car, taken to an undisclosed location. They take his cell phone away. He didn’t know where he was. Continues to say, and I believe this was the same situation where you got people saying, he’s an American citizen. What are you doing in their showing…they did not care.
And so they took him out to, I’m not sure if it was the Whipple building or some other location. And then horribly mistreated, according to him, wasn’t given any water. And then eventually down the line, they come to this realization that, I don’t think we can detain this guy any longer legally. He’s a full blown American citizen. What are we doing? And his cell phone was dead at this point. He had no way of getting in contact with his family. It’s not like the Whipple building is a short walk from wherever he lived. And it was freezing cold. And they just turned him out on the street.
It was only by the grace of God and the strong will of his mom that he was able to find a way back. His mom was frantically looking for him as any good mom would do. She found him and picked him up and of course brought him back. But come on, this kid has been here his entire life.
Jeremy (28:43)
Yeah, we heard stories from some of the activists there of even federal agents dumping people in local parks in the middle of the night in the freezing cold with no concern for their safety. Doing the same sort of thing a few weeks later actually got a Rohingya refugee killed in Buffalo.
Mayor Frey (28:59)
Yeah, the situations that they were creating on the street were wildly dangerous for the people in the residents of our city.
Now, here’s the other thing. The situations that these ICE agents were putting themselves in due to directives was wildly dangerous for them too. And the chief and I were saying this from the very, very beginning. Early on, we were saying due to their conduct and behavior, either a resident, a police officer, or an ICE agent was gonna get seriously injured or killed. And then tragically it happened multiple times.
Jeremy (29:33)
Yeah. Twice. Yeah. So that there was so much impunity at the time for all of this behavior. What kind of accountability do you think is needed? I’ve seen that Governor Waltz has announced now that there will be a commission on this. What are you hoping for? What do you hope to see in terms of accountability for this assault on your city?
Mayor Frey (29:50)
Alex Pretti and Renee Good need justice for the actions that resulted in their tragic death. The people that were involved in that need to be held accountable by the law. That’s justice. And more broadly than that, those were two incidents of hundreds that were horribly unconstitutional, that result in serious injury to people. I mean, we’re not even talking about the third shooting, which was arguably the most horrific and unconstitutional of them all.
Jeremy (30:24)
This is the one where they chase the guy into his house?
Mayor Frey (30:25)
They chased the guy towards his house and apparently shot at him from behind. Like he was running away. A bullet almost killed a little baby in the house. Either the bullet went through the door or it was through an open door. There’s an investigation into all of this. But I don’t see any scenario where he didn’t shoot at the person who was running away. I mean, that’s like rule number one. When there is no threat, there is no clear danger. This is a person that is running in the opposite direction. You don’t shoot at them. That’s full on horrific.
And again, the only reason that this is not more of a known issue is that thankfully he lived. And then situations that were horribly dangerous were happening all the time on our streets. Our chief often talks about in 2025, our police officers were able to get about a thousand guns off the street in some fairly dangerous situations sometimes. And they didn’t shoot a single person. ICE was in Minneapolis for a month and shot three.
Jeremy (31:29)
Yeah. And I think it speaks to just a level of impunity and complete lawlessness and disregard for the basic humanity of anyone, frankly, not just immigrants and refugees, but even the Americans who they perceive as being opposed to their project, that they just have zero regard for their rights, zero regard for their safety.
Mayor Frey (31:48)
That’s right
Jeremy (31:49)
Maybe a question to end on here and something that is really core to what we’re trying to do with this podcast, which is to counter the rampant disinformation that exists around refugee issues in the U.S. and the wider world. And it’s striking to me that some of what seems to have precipitated the attack on Minnesota coincided with the Minnesota fraud issue, the fraud case really spinning up in the right-wing online ecosystem. You had these right-wing streamers coming to Minneapolis and going door to door at daycare centers, trying to break their way in and so on.
So the disinformation really play, seems to have played a pretty direct role in why Minneapolis went through this, or at least in getting it to that level of attention on the Trump administration’s radar screen. What disinformation or misinformation or wrong assumption about your community or about the role that refugees have played in your community would you want to try and swat down?
Mayor Frey (32:45)
You gotta acknowledge the truth and there are multiple truths here. The first is that the immigrant and refugee community members in Minneapolis have made our city a better place definitively. They’ve contributed so beautifully to our economy. They’re starting businesses. They’re entrepreneurial. They’ve been elected to office and assigned as chief executives of major businesses within our city. And that’s not because people are benevolent or like good nature. That’s because they earned it. Right. That’s because they’ve done good things in our city and those contributions have led to them rising to prominent roles within Minneapolis.
They work extensively with our police officers and law enforcement. They’re law abiding people. We’ve got a huge influx of Somali and among police officers right now on our force. And they themselves are making Minneapolis a safer and better place quite actively every single day. That’s truth.
Now, it is also a truth that the fraud issue was very real. This is not like a fake issue. It did happen. It was extensive and it was awful. Now importantly, here’s the thing. In America, when somebody commits a crime, you investigate the crime. You prosecute the crime. You arrest the individual. You put him in jail. As an individual.
Jeremy (34:08)
Yeah.
Mayor Frey (34:09)
You do that as an individual. You don’t hold an entire city accountable. You don’t hold an entire community accountable. I’m Jewish. Nobody ever went after me when Bernie Madoff stole a bunch of money. That would make no sense. You go after Bernie Madoff. Ted Kaczynski is Polish. Nobody goes after the whole Polish community when Ted Kaczynski does something awful.
And that should be the case all the time. Not just because we’re good natured but because we’re Americans. Stephen Miller’s got this whole concept of what it means to be American. One another concept to be American means that you have your freedoms and your rights as an individual.
Jeremy (34:49)
Right.
Mayor Frey (34:50)
And that you’re not held accountable for the crimes of others. It’s just so standard and obvious.
Jeremy (34:54)
Yeah, and I think they were trying to make those outlier cases into sort of a proxy for the whole community. And as you’re saying, there are refugees and the descendants of refugees and migrants who are in the community or on the police force who are contributing to the commerce of the city. It would be a very different Minneapolis, I think, if refugees had not started coming there many decades ago.
It’s been such an honor to talk to you today. And again, we are so grateful for the leadership of you and really the leadership of your whole community in pushing back on this attempt to really demonize and assault the whole concept of refuge here in the United States. You’ve done a service and your community has done a service to the whole country and to refugees all across the U.S. So thank you for that and thank you for your leadership and we’re eager to see what happens next in Minneapolis from here.
Mayor Frey (35:47)
Thank you, Jeremy, and thank you to your whole team. You guys are heroes and so proud to work alongside you.
Jeremy (35:54)
Awesome. Thanks so much, Mayor.
And now for a few other stories that we’re watching in the world this week. First, with the NBA Finals kicking off next week, it’s an important time to call on the NBA to end its partnership with the United Arab Emirates for their role in fueling the war in Sudan.
Over the past week, there have been a couple more developments on this file. Human Rights Watch just released a new and very painstaking report on how the UAE was involved in sending Colombian mercenaries through Abu Dhabi to Chad and then to Darfur who ultimately took part in the genocidal violence that overran the town of El Fasher. And our colleagues at The Sentry have written extensively about how this NBA partnership plays into the UAE’s larger strategy of “sportswashing”, basically using global sports sponsorship to distract from their nefarious activities.
And so The Sentry has launched a new campaign called “Blood on the Ball,” which calls out the NBA for that hypocrisy – particularly notable because the NBA likes to present itself as a league that is very conscious of social justice. So keep up the pressure on the UAE and ask those with leverage, like the NBA, that have partnerships with them to hold them accountable at bloodontheball.org to take action and learn more.
Continuing on the domestic front, last week, President Trump notified Congress that he intends to increase refugee admissions by a further 10,000 people this year. But there’s a catch.
It’s exclusively for white Afrikaners. This is a grotesque manipulation of the U.S. refugee program to advance what is really an explicitly racist and exclusionary immigration policy that undermines longstanding protection programs in the United States.
When Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980, it explicitly and consciously required that refugee admissions be for populations of humanitarian concern, meaning those who are at grave risk. And that risk rather than race or cultural factors would determine who would be admitted. The Trump administration is actively rejecting that notion and really trying to turn refugee resettlement into a racial project by rejecting any refugees from non-white populations and turning white Afrikaners from South Africa who really don’t meet the standard of persecution that is outlined as the basis for refuge under US and international law.
The Trump administration is pursuing an explicitly racist immigration policy. There’s really not a way to sugarcoat that. We put out a statement last week condemning this move and you can go and read that on our website and we will also drop a link in the show notes.
Turning overseas now, there is another outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And this one is huge. In a previous life when I was at USAID, I oversaw USAID’s response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. And this one is on track to be the biggest outbreak since that one and may even come to challenge it in terms of total case numbers.
In just 11 days since the outbreak was announced on May 15th, and I should say we’re recording this on May 26th, the total number of cases has jumped to more than a thousand. And it took about four months for the West Africa outbreak to reach that scale. There’s some big questions about this one. It is taking place in the midst of a massive humanitarian emergency. There are about three and a half million people internally displaced in this region of Congo. And of course, this is the first large scale Ebola outbreak that the world will have to take on since the U.S. shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and withdrew from the World Health Organization. A
lready, it looks pretty likely that those moves by the Trump administration delayed the detection of the outbreak and are slowing the scale of the response effort. And that is going to make this job much, much harder and lead to a lot of infections that could have otherwise been avoided and a lot of harm that’s going to go along with that.
To end on a more positive note, I want to talk about real progress on local humanitarian leadership in Ukraine. So about four years ago, after the full-scale Russian invasion, Refugees International began working with Ukrainian frontline humanitarian organizations who told us that they were feeling pushed aside and marginalized by the international humanitarian response. And that’s a pretty common thing in international crises. Often the international community will come in as a bulldozer and kind of ignore and shove aside the local responders.
So we wanted to support them to see if we could get a different outcome in Ukraine. And over the past four years, we have worked with those response organizations to put together something called the Alliance of Ukrainian Civil Society Organizations, which has now had great success in shifting donor behavior and uplifting local leadership of the humanitarian response in Ukraine.
And just last Friday, a day before a massive Russian military bombardment of Kyiv, we worked with the Alliance to convene the fourth annual Ukrainian Aid Leadership Conference, which brought together more than 600 Ukrainian aid leaders, diplomats, even representatives from President Zelensky’s team. And that effort has now succeeded in redirecting more than $100 million of funding to directly support Ukrainian-led response efforts.
The localization agenda, as it’s called in the humanitarian world, has really struggled for many years. And very little has changed in terms of how responses are financed. I think this progress in Ukraine shows that there is a way forward when local aid leaders in a crisis are supported and empowered to conduct advocacy directly. And so we are now really excited to build on this progress and begin adapting and replicating this model in some other crises.
Thanks so much for joining us today. Don’t forget to subscribe to Forced From Home on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the episode, consider donating to support our work at refugeesinternational.org or the link in our show notes. For more, follow Refugees International on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and stay tuned for more Forced From Home episodes coming soon.