Minnesota voters left “I Voted” stickers on memorial sites for Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, the two US citizens killed by federal immigration officials earlier this year, while organizers in the area deployed their “democracy guardians” to visit and monitor polling sites for disturbances or the federal government.
Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Good, a writer and mother of three, were killed during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the Minneapolis region in January.
Donald Trump’s aggressive and violent mass deportation campaign has been a key issue for voters across the country during this midterm cycle, and has played a large part in Minnesota’s election.
“I knew Alex Pretti,” said a retired physician who worked with Pretti and asked only to use his first name, Arne. “I just knew that he was a competent nurse – a really, really liked guy. And he was assassinated.”
Arne left his “I Voted” sticker at the memorial site and choked up when speaking about his vote, Pretti and when federal immigration officials killed him.
Another voter, Mike F, who withheld his last name for privacy reasons, left his sticker at Good’s memorial site: “I felt like my vote felt a little bit more in touch with some of the things that happened earlier this year in the city,” he said. “So I felt like it was just the right thing to do – to come pay some respects and attach my vote to what happened here.”
At the end of 2025 and early this year, Minnesota became a central target for the Trump administration. Federal immigration officials descended on the area during “Operation Metro Surge”. Community groups organized rapid response teams throughout the city to prevent officials from arresting immigrants, and the situation escalated after Good and Pretti were killed.
Many groups involved in the immigration rapid response work have since shifted their attention on to the elections. In Minnesota, voters are choosing a Senator and governor, as well as House candidates.
The grassroots network of organizers primarily arose earlier this year in response to the Trump administration’s massive immigration enforcement operation, called Operation Metro Surge. Now, those groups have been channeling their networks, organizing methods and de-escalation techniques towards electoral work for this year’s midterm elections – and they have been visiting polling sites statewide.
One of those groups is Groundwork Action, which is working with various on-the-ground teams to train “democracy guardians” to visit polling sites and monitor the scene in case of any disturbances or federal government intervention that may interfere in people’s ability to vote. Other groups participating in the electoral work include immigration defense and faith-based organizations.
Wintana Melekin, the executive director of Groundwork, said in an interview they trained more than 1,000 people in anticipation of this year’s midterm elections.
“One thing we saw with Metro Surge is that if you had Black skin, you were a target of the federal government,” Melekin said. “And so we made sure those folks had a safe and secure opportunity to cast the ballot.”
“They are US citizens and eligible to vote, and we wanted to make sure they had the same access to the democracy as everyone else,” Melekin added.
The Trump administration announced that election monitors from the justice department would be deployed around the country to observe elections. This coincided with threats that federal immigration officials would be deployed to polling sites nationwide. The justice department later said that neither FBI nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would serve as poll monitors – but other federal agents would.
For Melekin and others in the state, they saw those claims as a natural progression of the Trump administration’s overreach in the region.
“After we saw the decrease of ICE officers, I knew that our elections would be the next target,” said Melekin. “What I’ve decided to focus on is build a system so strong and so sturdy that they would have no chance.”
Last December through January of this year, federal immigration officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) descended on Minnesota to carry out aggressive arrests of immigrants under Metro Surge. In response, community groups organized “rapid response” teams to protest and prevent federal immigration officials from arresting immigrant communities during the large-scale operation in the region.
The operation was personal for Melekin – she received a call from a community member that her cousin had been arrested by ICE. Melekin helped organize some rapid response groups, training community members to respond to ICE and border patrol presence in their neighborhoods.
Operation Metro Surge culminated in the shooting deaths Good and Pretti, leading to mass protests nationwide against the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown.
“The country has humiliated itself by putting in a bad man, a very, very bad character,” Arne said of the president. “Today is a chance for America to say whether they support this kind of thing.”
If they don’t oppose it, “then fuck America”, he added.
Tuesday’s midterm elections have widely been seen as a verdict for the second Trump administration, including its aggressive immigration arrests, detentions and deportations.
The Guardian participated in a ride-along with a team of “mobile de-escalators” with the Election Protection Network, a group in Minnesota that is part of the coalition organized by Groundwork. The “mobile de-escalators” are group of people trained to respond and de-escalate to any disturbances at polling sites – whether it be from federal officials or rightwing agitators.
Throughout the day, polling sites remained relatively calm, with few calls to the Groundwork network throughout the Twin Cities region. Observers and organizers throughout the day said it may have been likely due to a big push for early voting in the state.
At one point on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the de-escalation team, dressed in pink vests, received information that federal election monitors from the justice department were present at a polling site and that neighbors in the community began to yell at them. When the team arrived, the neighbors and federal officials had seemingly left.
According to the de-escalation team, that neighborhood had been a major site of contention during Metro Surge, including one instance in which officials pepper sprayed anti-ICE protestors in a local park.
“In the face of so much trauma and fear, it means a lot to me that I can be out here with others showing up for our neighbors,” said Alex M, one of the de-escalators. “That’s what we do in Minnesota.”
The day progressed with few, minor disturbances. But the organizers were well-prepared, just in case.
There is a long history of community organizing in Minneapolis. One of the other de-escalators that took the Guardian on the ride-along, who requested they not be named for fear of retaliation, began to get active in 2020 during the George Floyd and racial justice movement. They participated in the anti-ICE protests during Metro Surge and are now involved in the electoral defense work.
“It feels so good and so correct to be coming together in a community like this,” the activist said. “I have learned so much from this community of people.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
