None of us will ever forget Operation Metro Surge: neighbors detained, police brutality, families torn apart, communities living in fear. Less visible but just as far-reaching is the economic damage Trump’s federal agent surge left behind. As the Governor’s Truth Council wraps up months of testimony from those harmed, it’s clear that the economic damage from Operation Metro Surge ran deep across Minnesota, and we are still paying for it. Those personal accounts line up with a growing body of quantitative evidence, gathered both during the surge and in the months since.
As researchers at North Star Policy Action and the W.E. Upjohn Institute, we set out to use the tools of social science to measure the scale of the impacts. What we found was striking. In the first six weeks of the surge, the number of people working in the Twin Cities fell by almost 3%, and total hours worked dropped by nearly 2%. Those may sound like small numbers, but picture the unemployment rate jumping three percentage points in a matter of weeks. It would be recognized as an economic emergency. Using conservative assumptions, we estimate Twin Cities workers lost at least $106 million in wages between early January and mid-February alone.
The harm wasn’t isolated to the Twin Cities metro. Statewide, in the leisure and hospitality industry, we found the surge cost 4,600 jobs and 3.8 million work hours, adding up to more than $70 million in lost wages in that industry alone…