Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: ICE moves to the Minneapolis suburbs

by Chitown Kev

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(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff before publication.)

Sunday, February 22, 2026

We begin today with Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark reporting that DHS and ICE has not pulled out of Minnesota but has primarily moved from Minneapolis/St. Paul to the suburbs.

One of the hallmarks of war is that combatants engage in a continual cycle of tactical adaptation and counteradaptation. Example: Russia invades Ukraine with tanks. Ukrainians deploy Javelin anti-tank missiles. Russians construct anti-missile cages around tank turrets, to detonate missiles before they can burrow into the armor. Ukraine responds by designing suicide drones that hunt Russian armor and attack not just weak points around turrets, but exhaust grates and other spots where there is an opening. Russia responds by building anti-drone drones, designed to hunt the hunters. [...]

The latest trick of the regime has been to pretend that the occupation of Minnesota is over. Greg Bovino was removed from command and the new head of operations, Tom Homan, announced that DHS was pulling out of Minnesota. But this has not happened. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told us, point blank, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The observers I spoke to at Whipple said they have seen no reduction in the number of DHS vehicles going in and out on a daily basis, or detainees being released (more on this in a moment, too), or street abductions.

Another adaptation has been for DHS to push its theater of operations outward from the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs, where the lower population density makes it harder for a critical mass of citizens to observe them.


Nicolas Scibelli of Sahan Journal confirms many of the details of Last’s report including some of the operational changes in the tactics ICE is using (including canvassing the streets disguised as environmental activists).

In the Twin Cities, officials say ICE activity has reduced since Homan’s announcement, with fewer agents conducting operations using less aggressive tactics. DFL Sen. Doron Clark said while ICE vehicles are still being observed in his district, which encompasses Cedar-Riverside and parts of northeast Minneapolis, they are mostly passing through.

“We’ve still seen ICE vehicles around, but they seem to be driving up to Fridley and Columbia Heights,” Clark said. “It seems to be up in the suburbs.”

This next story...chile!

Stephen Starr/The Guardian

Tens of thousands of Arab Americans in Dearborn and beyond flocked to Trump in the 2024 presidential election due to his opponent, Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. For the first time since 2000, a Republican presidential candidate won a plurality of votes in the city in 2024, where more than half the 110,000 residents claim Arab heritage.

Since retaking office, Trump has mandated travel bans and a shutdown on immigrant visa processing for citizens of 12 Arab-majority countries and territories, angering the voters who helped him to the White House.

“In the past, [Arab Americans who supported Trump] would say things like: ‘You got to control the border,’” says Abdul-Galil Ahmed of the Yemen American Cultural Center, who says he didn’t vote for Trump or Harris in the 2024 presidential election. “Now, the mood has changed, they are saying this is too much. We have become a target.”

Ahmed says there are thousands of Yemeni nationals in the Detroit area on temporary protected status (TPS) who are living in fear with the Trump administration due plans to terminate TPS for Yemenis in April.

Ethan DeWitt of the New Hampshire Bulletin reports that a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and education organizations against Trump’s anti-DEI directives; lawsuits that the Trump regime seems to be on the losing end of, by and large.

In an order Wednesday, Judge Landya McCafferty accepted an agreement between the National Education Association and American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Department of Justice. That agreement, filed with the court Feb. 3, declared the battle over the policy moot.

The lawsuit targeted a February 2025 “Dear Colleague Letter” sent by the federal Department of Education to public schools across the country. The letter, sent a month after President Donald Trump took office, stated that the department would be investigating school districts with policies or contacts related to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The letter demanded that school districts change any policies and drop any contracts that included DEI, and it said keeping those policies could violate federal civil rights law and prompt the department to withhold federal funding. [...]

A District of Columbia federal judge also blocked enforcement of the policy, ruling on a separate lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Teachers, another teachers union. On Jan. 21, the Department of Education decided not to appeal that order, instead signing a joint stipulation with plaintiffs that it would stop any enforcement attempts.

On Feb. 3, that same department came to a similar agreement with the New Hampshire plaintiffs. Among the points: “The challenged Agency Actions will not be relied on in any way by Defendants including by way of seeking to enforce its substance through (Department of Education) or (Department of Justice) civil rights enforcement procedures.”

Arthur Sullivan of Deutsche Welle says that the European Union is studying the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to declare many of Trump’s tarifs unconstitutional.

The verdict has created deep uncertainty over the EU-US trade agreement struck last July. EU lawmakers had paused the ratification process of that deal after Trump's threats to annex Greenland, but the European Parliament's trade committee is due to vote on the deal this coming Tuesday (February 24).

That vote is now in doubt, and EU lawmakers will hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the next steps. "The era of unlimited, arbitrary tariffs ... might now be coming to an end," Bernd Lange, chairman of the trade committee, said on X. "We must now carefully evaluate the ruling and its consequences."

That deal, struck in the wake of Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs, saw tariffs on most EU goods entering the US fixed at 15%, while the EU agreed to eliminate tariffs on all US industrial goods imported into the EU. Ratification of the deal, widely criticized for being uneven, was expected in March or April, but the Supreme Court decision has left the entire timeline and process in doubt.

Finally today, Ishaan Tharoor of The New Yorker reports on Trump’s Board of Grift Peace.

A lot remains confusing and uncertain about the Board of Peace. Thursday’s event produced apparent pledges of about seven billion dollars from nine countries for the reconstruction of Gaza while Trump has separately suggested that the U.S. would muster ten billion dollars on its own for the board, though it was unclear where that money was coming from and whether it would pass congressional scrutiny. There were also offers of thousands of military personnel from countries including Indonesia and Morocco to compose an “international stabilization force” to police the territory. And yet details are sketchy on where such a force would be deployed and how all the money earmarked for it will be tracked and disbursed. A video presentation shown at the meeting touted A.I.-generated images of skyscrapers and luxury beach resorts in Gaza and proffered airy visions of the enclave turning into an “Abrahamic gateway,” a hub for trade networks that would span Europe and India and thread together the Middle East. Less was said about the bleak facts on the ground in Gaza, where Hamas refuses to fully disarm, humanitarian organizations are being denied access by Israel, and civilians languish in limbo, as well as unresolved political questions surrounding the conflict, including the fading prospects of a viable, independent Palestinian state. Among the officials at the Board of Peace meeting, mentions of the need for a two-state solution were scarce. [...]

This is the “world order Trump prefers,” Phil Gordon, a former White House coördinator for the Middle East in the Obama Administration and former national-security adviser to Vice-President Kamala Harris, told me. “It’s not a genuinely multilateral one where others have a say, or the United States is constrained,” he said, but one where “the United States, and Trump personally, is at the center of everything.”

On Thursday, Trump outlined his more expansive desires, suggesting that the board could “take it a step further” to deal with other “hot spots” around the world. The faltering U.N., he said, would be brought “back to health.” It was a curious statement, given Trump’s hostility toward the U.N.—in the space of a year, his Administration has pulled the U.S. out of dozens of U.N. or U.N.-linked agencies, and the U.S. still owes the cash-strapped U.N. close to four billion dollars in outstanding dues. That shortfall is one of the reasons for a punishing wave of austerity currently ripping through the U.N. system.

Everyone have the best possible day that you can.