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Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced the creation of the Transparency and Accountability Project (TAP) on March 2, 2026, establishing a formal investigative mechanism to collect evidence and build potential criminal cases against federal agents who may have acted unlawfully during Operation Metro Surge. The announcement came as the Trump administration declared the surge formally over while simultaneously facing multiple federal court contempt proceedings over its conduct during the operation.
The Transparency and Accountability Project
TAP is a public-facing evidence collection initiative through which residents can submit photos, videos, and written descriptions of incidents involving potentially unlawful behavior by federal agents during the December 2025 through February 2026 immigration enforcement campaign in the Twin Cities. The evidence is being routed to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which is also conducting its own witness interviews and building a case file for potential charging decisions by the county attorney's office.
Moriarty's office announced that her team was actively investigating 17 specific incidents brought to their attention by the community.
Greg Bovino and the Mueller Park Incident
The most prominent case under investigation involves Greg Bovino, a U.S. Border Patrol Commander who deployed a chemical irritant on community members protesting near Mueller Park in Minneapolis on January 21, 2026. Bovino was filmed deploying the substance on bystanders — including residents who were not engaged in any illegal activity — during an enforcement action. The incident drew national attention and contributed to escalating community resistance to the surge.
Bovino's conduct also figured in a separate context: U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen publicly called for Bovino's removal from Minnesota following the incident, in a significant intragovernmental rupture. DHS declined to act on that recommendation.
Roosevelt High School Incident
A second major incident under investigation involved ICE activity on the property of Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis on January 8, 2026. Federal agents deployed chemical irritants and physically tackled several people on or near school grounds — a particularly alarming escalation given the vulnerability of students and the legal and constitutional protections that generally limit enforcement actions at educational institutions.
DHS Response
The Department of Homeland Security rejected the premise of the investigation, asserting that "Federal officials acting in the course of their duties are immune from liability under state law." That claim was contested by legal experts who noted that federal officers are not immune from state criminal prosecution for actions that exceed their lawful authority. The assertion of blanket immunity was consistent with a broader administration posture of treating accountability mechanisms as illegitimate interference with executive enforcement prerogatives.
Significance
The TAP investigation represented the most structured state-level accountability effort mounted against Operation Metro Surge. That a county attorney's office found it necessary to create a dedicated public evidence portal for potential federal agent crimes illustrated the scale of alleged misconduct. The BCA's parallel witness interview program and case file construction signaled that the investigation had moved beyond a political statement into a genuine prosecutorial process.
The state-federal conflict created by Moriarty's investigation — with DHS claiming immunity from state scrutiny while federal courts simultaneously held the same agency in contempt for violating judicial orders — placed the legal question of federal accountability in sharp relief. Enforcement agencies that defy courts and claim immunity from state prosecution represent an executive branch operating beyond the oversight mechanisms designed to constrain it.