Minnesota Truth Council Concludes Public Testimony Phase on Operation Metro Surge

The Minnesota Truth Council, a body documenting the impacts of Operation Metro Surge — ICE’s enforcement operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area — concluded its public testimony phase on September 29, 2026, per the Minnesota Reformer. The council is chaired by retired Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill and co-chaired by Jennifer Prestholdt of The Advocates for Human Rights; its first full public meeting was August 26, 2026. The full scope of testimony received and what the council’s findings will be directed toward (a state AG referral, the legislature, or a standalone public report) is not detailed in the source reviewed here.

The Truth Council is a state-level institutional accountability mechanism that sits alongside, rather than inside, the existing documented response to Operation Metro Surge: Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office opened its own Transparency and Accountability Project in March 2026 to gather community evidence of agent conduct (2026-03-02–minnesota-probe-metro-surge-bovino-tap-portal), and that same office brought the first state criminal charge against a federal immigration agent during the operation the following month (2026-04-16–moriarty-charges-ice-agent-morgan-assault-minnesota). A Truth Council with a sitting former judge as chair, operating in parallel to county prosecution, marks a second and distinct track of state-level documentation independent of any single criminal case’s outcome.