The flowers are made of plastic, a sign of grief expected to last for a long time, through the changing seasons. The memorials are full of them, including the one for Renée Good, the 37-year-old American woman fatally shot in January during an operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The one for Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse killed three weeks later in an incident involving the U.S. Border Patrol.
The oldest one, too, dedicated to George Floyd, killed in 2020 by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
All three memorials were spontaneously created by the people of Minneapolis, a way of confronting the shock that struck the city in different moments of its recent history. That shock does not seem to have disappeared entirely. But neither has its strong sense of solidarity.
Flowers, plushes and letters dedicated to the 37-year old in the spot where she was killed
“These were three traumas that our community had to live through,” explained Angela Harrelson who we met at the memorial to her nephew Floyd. “The two most recent murders we had here were terrible. The community had to stand up. There was a lot of discomfort, because many immigrants, our neighbors, were afraid to send their kids to school.”
Harrelson added that some of her friends were detained and held in custody by ICE despite being American citizens. They were eventually released.
The Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota on December 1, 2025, as part of a large-scale effort to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants. The initiative reached its peak in the month of January 2026, when according to an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 3,000 federal agents were taking part in the operations in Minnesota.
“They left us with deep damage, generational trauma, economic ruin,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last February, in a press conference he held after the federal authorities announced the end of the operation.
During the height of the deployment, tens of thousands took to the streets to protest. Amongst them was Rich Wilson, retired attorney and Minneapolis resident.
“It was a Saturday and Alex Pretti had just been killed, but I didn’t know it yet,” he recalled. “There was police tape around an area and there were swarms of ICE agents. They suddenly decided to extend the perimeter and started pushing people. For no real reason they pepper-sprayed me.”
What stayed with Wilson, he added, was not only the aggression but the immediate response of the bystanders: the people around him just showed up and started helping him. Someone eventually gave him a ride home.
“Operation Metro Surge left the community deeply polarized, but some of the networks that were active in those months never went away,” he added. “Many millions of dollars have been donated by private people to support the grassroot mobilization movement.”
And yet, months later, a sense of unease remains. On a recent bright late-summer morning, the door of the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota is locked. To get in, we have to wait for a staff member to open it.
“One of the reasons the doors on campus are now locked is because of Operation Metro Surge,” explained Regina McComb, a senior lecturer at the university. “We tried to prevent ICE agents from entering the premises. A grad student was taken just outside the campus, and also others were approached.” She recalled those tense days but also the response from the community and media.
“Communities started Signal groups and used them to track ICE agents,” she said. “It became a real information line for journalists. Everyone was documenting what was happening. There was an overwhelming amount of videos and photography.” Major news organizations analyzed those videos and provided additional context to the initial statements by Trump administration officials, who described Good as “a victim of left-wing ideology” and Pretti as a “domestic terrorist.”
Still, no one has been indicted in either killing. The memorials to Good and Pretti remain, as their families and Twin Cities residents as well as other citizens all around the United States continue to call for justice.
At the oldest of the city’s three makeshift memorials, Harrelson reflects on the residents of the area that created and are preserving them. “The community is very strong here,” Harrelson said. “We can be frustrated and mad with one another. But we resisted together and we live together.”
