Operation Metro Surge and the Rhetoric of State-Sponsored Violence: An Interview with Atilla Hallsby

Abstract In late 2025 the US Department of Homeland Security initiated Operation Metro Surge, an unprecedented deployment of approximately three thousand underqualified and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and other cities in Minnesota. The authoritarian architects of Metro Surge justified their brutal campaign as a response to ongoing and already resolved fraud cases, which they loosely connected to Minnesota's status as a “sanctuary state” and its Somali, Hmong, and Latino immigrant communities. Over two months, ICE murdered two white civilians, indiscriminately detained thousands of green card applicants, asylum seekers, and US citizens, and routinely deployed weapons of war against civilian protestors. And yet the rhetoric used to sensationalize Operation Metro Surge, widely circulated in the news media, often ran counter to on-the-ground realities. To analyze Metro Surge's political rhetoric, the issue's Against the Day guest editor, Alya Ansari, spoke with Professor Atilla Hallsby, a scholar of rhetoric, secrecy, and conspiracy in contemporary American politics.