Protesters and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents face off in Minneapolis following the January 13, 2026 fatal shooting of Renee Good. (Photo by Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Human Rights Watch said of the deadly blitz.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday published a scathing report detailing how President Donald Trump “caused a human rights crisis” in Minnesota by ordering the deadly federal invasion of the Twin Cities in service of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
HRW called Operation Metro Surge, launched by Trump last December, “an unprecedented deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents and officers to the state of Minnesota,” including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The Trump administration claimed that Operation Metro Surge was designed to keep Americans safe and often stated that it was targeting noncitizens with violent criminal histories,” the report states. “But the operation itself caused significant harm, and nearly two out of three immigrants arrested by ICE during Operation Metro Surge had no prior US criminal history whatsoever.”
At least three people have been killed in connection with the operation. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7. A week later, 36-year-old Nicaraguan detainee Victor Manuel Díaz, who was arrested during the operation, became the third person to die at the notorious East Montana concentration camp in Texas. On January 24, CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, also in Minneapolis.
“Federal agents shot a third Minneapolis resident and pulled guns on dozens more,” the report continues. “Agents also violently smashed car windows without justification, physically threw people to the ground who were not resisting arrest, and deployed chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades on dozens of occasions, sometimes at close range and without warning, resulting in injuries, including to journalists.”
Furthermore, federal agents “unlawfully arrested and detained hundreds; engaged in racial profiling, harassment, and surveillance; and terrorized Minnesotans, chilling their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and impacting their rights to education and health, among others,” HRW said, adding that “residents faced further abuses when they collectively acted to protest, prevent, and stop these violations of their rights.”
The HRW report calls for an immediate end to abusive federal enforcement operations in Minnesota; independent investigations into alleged unlawful killings, racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, excessive force, and other rights violations; and full accountability for officials responsible.
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Reagan Williams, HRW’s crisis and conflict researcher, said in a statement. “Minnesotans mobilized to protest, to document abuse, and to provide critical aid to one another. National-level action is needed to ensure accountability, end ongoing abuses, remedy the harm, and prevent another crisis of this scale.”
“Operation Metro Surge put the violent and abusive practices of these agencies on full display,” Williams added. “We have clear proof of how they operate when impunity prevails, and we need to urgently chart a new way forward through accountability and structural reforms that put an end to these abuses.”
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Protesters and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents face off in Minneapolis following the January 13, 2026 fatal shooting of Renee Good. (Photo by Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Human Rights Watch said of the deadly blitz.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday published a scathing report detailing how President Donald Trump “caused a human rights crisis” in Minnesota by ordering the deadly federal invasion of the Twin Cities in service of the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
HRW called Operation Metro Surge, launched by Trump last December, “an unprecedented deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents and officers to the state of Minnesota,” including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The Trump administration claimed that Operation Metro Surge was designed to keep Americans safe and often stated that it was targeting noncitizens with violent criminal histories,” the report states. “But the operation itself caused significant harm, and nearly two out of three immigrants arrested by ICE during Operation Metro Surge had no prior US criminal history whatsoever.”
At least three people have been killed in connection with the operation. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7. A week later, 36-year-old Nicaraguan detainee Victor Manuel Díaz, who was arrested during the operation, became the third person to die at the notorious East Montana concentration camp in Texas. On January 24, CBP officer Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti, 37, also in Minneapolis.
“Federal agents shot a third Minneapolis resident and pulled guns on dozens more,” the report continues. “Agents also violently smashed car windows without justification, physically threw people to the ground who were not resisting arrest, and deployed chemical irritants and flash-bang grenades on dozens of occasions, sometimes at close range and without warning, resulting in injuries, including to journalists.”
Furthermore, federal agents “unlawfully arrested and detained hundreds; engaged in racial profiling, harassment, and surveillance; and terrorized Minnesotans, chilling their rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and impacting their rights to education and health, among others,” HRW said, adding that “residents faced further abuses when they collectively acted to protest, prevent, and stop these violations of their rights.”
The HRW report calls for an immediate end to abusive federal enforcement operations in Minnesota; independent investigations into alleged unlawful killings, racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, excessive force, and other rights violations; and full accountability for officials responsible.
“The federal government sent hordes of masked, armed agents to grab people off the street, whisk them away in shackles, and abuse those who sought to bear witness,” Reagan Williams, HRW’s crisis and conflict researcher, said in a statement. “Minnesotans mobilized to protest, to document abuse, and to provide critical aid to one another. National-level action is needed to ensure accountability, end ongoing abuses, remedy the harm, and prevent another crisis of this scale.”
“Operation Metro Surge put the violent and abusive practices of these agencies on full display,” Williams added. “We have clear proof of how they operate when impunity prevails, and we need to urgently chart a new way forward through accountability and structural reforms that put an end to these abuses.”
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People watch as Israeli forces carry out a raid in the Baruk area, east of Masafer Yatta accompanied by several demolition vehicles, demolishing home of a Palestinian man, Hamza Kamil Addara, with bulldozers on the grounds that it lacked a permit in Hebron, West Bank, Palestine, on June 17, 2026. [Mamoun Wazwaz – Anadolu Agency]
Israeli authorities are accelerating home demolitions and forced evictions of Palestinian residents in the Silwan district of occupied East Jerusalem, Human Rights Watch said today. The organisation said the forcible deportation or transfer of the population of an occupied territory within or outside the territory, unless justified on a temporary basis for the protection of the population itself or imperative military reasons, is a violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime.
Silwan lies south of Jerusalem’s Old City. Among its 12 neighbourhoods, al-Bustan and Batn al-Hawa have for decades been the primary focus of eviction and demolition campaigns led by Israeli authorities and settler organisations such as Ateret Cohanim. These campaigns intensified under cover of the hostilities in Gaza and, this year, Iran.
Of the 587 Palestinians displaced by demolitions since October 2023, a quarter were displaced during Israel’s war with Iran in March-April 2026, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Over 2,000 people are at risk of forced displacement in Silwan, which, if not halted, will be one of the largest waves of expulsions in East Jerusalem since 1967, according to Ir Amim, an Israeli group that tracks government policies in Jerusalem.
“Israeli authorities are intensifying their longstanding illegal policy of emptying areas surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City of Palestinians and replacing them with Israeli settlers,” said Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israeli efforts to change the demography of Jerusalem are war crimes, enabled by the impunity granted by Israel’s close allies.”
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, forcible transfers of residents of Occupied Territory are prohibited. The only exception is temporary evacuation of an area if necessary for the security of the population or imperative military reasons.
In its 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Court found Israeli policies and practices, including its forcible evictions and extensive house demolitions in East Jerusalem, contrary to the prohibition of forcible transfer of a protected population under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Court confirmed a transfer is “forcible” not only when it is achieved through physical force, but also when people have no choice but to leave. The ICJ further found that Israel’s practice of demolishing property for lack of a building permit amounts to prohibited discrimination. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is a war crime for an occupying power to deport or transfer all or part of the population within or outside the occupied territory.
Human Rights Watch has previously found that Israeli authorities intentionally caused the massive, deliberate, and long-term forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity. In both cases, senior Israeli officials have declared their aim to expel and keep Palestinians out of parts of Gaza and the West Bank.
The continuing, accelerating violations against Palestinians in East Jerusalem is a direct consequence of Israel’s disregard for international law and impunity for ongoing violations, Human Rights Watch said. Other countries should impose targeted sanctions against individuals and organizations responsible, ensure accountability for war crimes, ban trade with settlements, and suspend preferential trade agreements with Israel.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
In the bedroom of Rosalina González’s youngest son, detained in February 2025, a toy monkey hangs next to a drawing made by his six-year-old daughter | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
Pregnant women, babies and children are being swept up in the mass arrests ordered under Bukele’s ‘state of emergency’
Rosalina González’s granddaughter is nine months old. Every day of her short life has been spent in Izalco penitentiary in Sonsonate, the maximum-security prison in western El Salvador notorious for its documented history of torture and abuse.
The child was born in the prison after her already pregnant mother was detained on 19 February 2025, alongside her father and uncle, González’s sons. That night, González remembers being awoken at her home in Chilamates, in rural north-west El Salvador, by police who accused her family of unlawful association with gang members and took them away.
The charge is often used to imprison people under the state of emergency introduced in March 2022 by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who once described himself as the “world’s coolest dictator”.
The state of emergency has suspended key constitutional rights in a purported effort to dismantle the criminal networks that wielded substantial power in El Salvador at the time. Human rights organisations say it has fuelled a startling democratic backslide, as well as arbitrary detentions and deaths in custody. Yet Bukele has an approval rating of 94%, which he attributes to the country’s falling homicide rate, which has gone from one of the highest in Latin America to the lowest in the region amid draconian policies and pacts his government has quietly made with gang leaders.
After more than a year in detention, González’s sons and daughter-in-law have still not been convicted of any crime. Yet like many of the more than 90,000 people who have been imprisoned under the state of emergency, they have been denied all contact with the outside world.
Today, González fiercely defends her family’s innocence. “My sons were working men,” the 59-year-old told openDemocracy. “My kids are honest… I could leave money here on this table and they would not touch it.”
Although she has reported their detention to the Public Prosecutor for Human Rights, no progress has been made on their case.
“I ask myself: what did the baby do?” says Sylvia Portillo, the mother-in-law of Gonzalez’s youngest son, the uncle of the child born in prison. “The babies have nothing to do with anything.”
Rosalina González, 59, whose 9-month-old granddaughter was born in Izalco prison and remains in custody to this day. Her two sons and daughter-in-law (the baby’s mother) are also in prison | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
Children with life sentences
It is not just those born behind bars who are growing up in El Salvador’s prisons.
More than 3,000 under-18s were detained between March 2022 and July 2024, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Some of those children have described being tortured and abused whilst in custody.
Last month, new reforms came into effect that give judges the power to hand out life sentences to children as young as 12 who are convicted of crimes including homicide, femicide, rape and gang membership. Gang association sentences were previously capped at ten years for children aged 15 and under, and 20 years for adolescents aged 16 to 18.
The reforms have sparked “deep concern” from UNICEF and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which, in a joint statement, accused El Salvador of “a contradiction of the standards enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child”.
Defence lawyer Lucrecia Landaverde believes many of the children being arrested were never involved with gangs. “It is very likely that innocent children will end up with life sentences,” she said, explaining that El Salvador’s judicial system is heavily stacked against defendants.
Many people are found guilty based only on the testimony of a police officer or “co-operating witness” – a convicted gang member offered a reduced sentence for testifying for the prosecution. “The reward consists of reducing their sentence or even pardoning their crimes in exchange for helping to testify and point the finger at everyone, regardless of whether they are making it all up,” Landaverde said. “The criminal protects himself and his own family, and starts accusing people he doesn’t even know.”
This testimony is rarely scrutinised adequately, she added, saying a judge once called for her arrest in open court for cross-examining a prosecution witness.
Landaverde vividly remembers the early days of the state of emergency, when “mass arrests were carried out without any oversight”, she said. “[Our office] looked like a health clinic, packed around the clock with people crying in the waiting room because their young children had been arrested.”
She told openDemocracy how a 13-year-old boy was detained after refusing to share his fried chicken with police officers. “They arrested him, took the chicken, put him in prison and charged him with unlawful association,” she said, “then they ate the chicken.”
Some in El Salvador view the reforms that hand life sentences to children as part of Bukele’s continued crackdown on freedom of expression. “This is a message to young people that no one can oppose the regime, that no one can speak out here,” Samuel Ramírez, the founder of Salvadoran human rights organisation MOVIR, told openDemocracy.
Meanwhile, it is not known how many infants and young children are living in prisons after being born there.
“We have cases of children who have been born in prison, whose mothers were arrested while pregnant. There are other children who have died from a lack of medical care in prison,” Ramírez said. “No matter how much the family or the grandmother asked for them to be returned, they were never returned.”
At least four babies who were born in prisons in the country were confirmed to have died due to poor conditions and limited medical care last year, with causes of death including pneumonia and liver failure. There are also “reports of additional deaths of pregnant women and newborns, including stillbirths resulting from the denial of care”, according to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.
In February, the committee expressed grave concern over the conditions for pregnant women in El Salvador’s prison system, highlighting a lack of adequate prenatal and postnatal care, as well as an environment unfit for detained children.
openDemocracy asked the Salvadoran presidency about abuses of rights under the state of emergency, criticism of the detention of babies and children, and the imposition of life imprisonment on children as young as 12. The government did not respond.
‘We’re dying inside’
Today, Rosalina González lives in the shell of the home that her sons were building for the family when they were arrested. With no one to continue construction, the front room is still without a roof.
Standing in the bedroom of her youngest son, she carefully removes a few of his belongings from a plastic bag and lines them up on the bed. His photograph is pinned on one wall, alongside a collection of children’s toys and drawings made by his six-year-old daughter, who lives with her other grandma, Sylvia Portillo, and has never met her baby cousin.
Rosalina’s 6-year-old granddaughter runs through her grandmother’s house. Her two sons were still building the house when they were arrested | Euan Wallace/openDemocracy
“Every time I’d put my hat on, he would take it off me again,” says the child, laughing as she remembers her father. “It was like a game.”
She skids across the dirt floor of the roofless main room, skipping giddily between stripes of shade and sunlight. A pink folding fan flashes in one hand. Dancing tip-toe across the dust, she uses it to conceal her face from an imagined audience.
Inside, her grandmother repacks her father’s belongings and places them out of sight. González spends much of her time alone these days, denied contact with her detained sons and daughter-in-law. “You feel like you’re dying inside,” she says. “They destroyed my life. They destroyed my children’s lives.”
Euan Wallace is a freelance journalist and photographer. His work focuses on human rights and the climate crisis across Latin America. He is currently based in Bogotá, Colombia.
Martina Mariano is a freelance journalist and aspiring anthropologist, based in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work focuses on human rights and migration.
Responding to the expansion of Israeli military ground operations in southern Lebanon, Human Rights Watch has warned that countries that continue to provide Israel with arms and military aid risk complicity in the Israeli government’s serious violations in Lebanon. [1]
Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Reacting to the warnings of UK complicity in Israel’s violations in Lebanon, Dr Ellie Chowns MP said:
“Israel has continuously flouted international law with apparent impunity. That impunity must end. Throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank, the UK Government has refused to pursue appropriate action against its government for breaching international law or to re-evaluate Israel’s status as an ally to Britain.
“This permissiveness has not tempered but emboldened the Israeli government. Following its strikes on Iran, Israel has expanded its ground campaign in Lebanon, displacing a million people throughout the country, killing over 1,000 people – including 118 children – destroying civilian infrastructure, and seemingly preparing for prolonged occupation of southern Lebanon.
“Israeli government and military officials have made repeated overt comparisons between its plans for Lebanon and its genocidal destruction of Gaza. Human Rights Watch has now warned that Israeli officials have signalled an intent to wantonly destroy homes in Lebanon’s border villages, forcibly displace and prevent the return of “hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of southern Lebanon”, and conduct strikes in Beirut that could target civilians simply for being “near Hezbollah members, facilities, or means of combat.” All these actions would constitute war crimes.
“The Government must heed these serious warnings and act decisively to avoid the UK’s complicity in further crimes and to end the impunity which has enabled and emboldened Israel. The Green Party reiterates our calls for the UK to halt all arms sales to and military cooperation with the Israeli Government, to drive independent investigations into war crimes committed and support justice mechanisms for victims, and to impose sanctions on government officials responsible for breaches of international law.”
Human Rights Watch highlight recent statements from Israeli officials that signal “an intent to forcibly displace residents, destroy civilian homes and conduct strikes that could target civilians. Forcible displacement, wanton destruction and attacks deliberately targeting civilians are war crimes.”
Since the recent escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah on March 2, Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,029 people in Lebanon, including 118 children and 40 medical workers, as of March 22 according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, and over one million people have been displaced following a series of displacement orders by the Israeli military.
Human Rights Watch recommends that “Israel’s key allies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel and impose targeted sanctions on officials credibly responsible for ongoing serious abuses. They should levy further pressure on Israel to ensure that displaced residents can return to their homes once hostilities end or once the reasons for their displacement cease to exist.”
Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, Ramzi Kaiss, said, “Atrocities flourish when there is impunity, and other countries should no longer stand by as they continue.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying only 9 days ago that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
