For weeks, reporters at The Minnesota Star Tribune were covering scattered immigration enforcement actions around Minneapolis and St. Paul. Tom Scheck, the paper’s investigative editor, had assigned his small team of about four journalists to the story.

“We were trying to cover events, but they were not like 30, 40 people who were being detained. It was like more one-offs,” Scheck said.

Then, on Jan. 7, Renee Good was shot and killed by immigration enforcement officers as she tried to drive away from them.

“Our executive editor looked at me and said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ And I said, ‘I have four people.’ And that was a moment where she said, “Everyone in our newsroom will cover this story.”’

It marked a turning point in news coverage of Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration crackdown that brought thousands of immigration officers to Minneapolis and St. Paul last winter.

During a community conversation hosted by Poynter on Wednesday night, Scheck and MPR News senior photojournalist Kerem Yücel reflected on what it was like to cover the operation as local journalists — and, in Yücel’s case, as an immigrant.

Both described a city transformed by the scale of the federal response, as well as an unusual sense of camaraderie among competing newsrooms. Everyone was dedicated to the story. The Minnesota Star Tribune hosted safety trainings that were open to other newsroom reporters. While out in the field, Yücel said reporters from other newsrooms stuck together to protect one another. They’d extend safety gear if he lost some of his, and they all kept a Signal chat or WhatsApp group to communicate.

Any of the typical competition between newsrooms was erased by an understanding that they needed to work together and protect each other.

For Yücel, documenting the impact on ordinary residents  — the teachers and mothers, the doctors and clergy, and how they protected their fellow community members — became the focus of his work. Yücel, who immigrated from Turkey seven years ago, has covered the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath in Minneapolis in 2020 and spent five years covering the conflict in Syria.

“In the city (Minneapolis), I never imagined facing this reality,” he said as he flipped through photos he’d taken during the operation.

Scheck said he realized he needed to start paying attention to ICE presence in the Twin Cities in October — well before President Trump deployed waves of immigration enforcement to the city.

He was sitting at a bar in Washington, D.C., where he was attending a conference, when a Chicago reporter told him his newsroom needed to be ready.

Scheck asked his editor if there was a plan in case Minneapolis saw the kind of immigration crackdown that overtook Chicago. “Like any good manager, they said ‘congratulations, you’ve volunteered.’”

He dug into how other immigration enforcement crackdowns had transpired.

“I looked at the coverage in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in Portland, in Charlotte, and I made a timeline of the things that happened.”

Within a month, the first ICE raid took place in Minneapolis.

“They raided a facility called Bro-Tex … and I think they detained about 10 or 12 people at that event.”

US Border Patrol agents detain a person near Roosevelt High School during dismissal time as federal immigration enforcement actions sparked protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 7, 2026. (Kerem Yücel/MPR News)

About two weeks later, a conservative outlet in the city ran an article alleging that members of the Somali community were engaging in fraud, which the Trump administration latched onto and used as its reason to deploy thousands of immigration agents to Minneapolis.

As the operation expanded, both journalists found themselves reporting on a major story unfolding in their own communities.

Yücel’s citizenship status was questioned by immigration officers routinely. There were many times out in the field when he feared what might happen.

“Well if something’s happened to me, I only know I have my wife and my kids, and there is no other person to call in for the emergency,” he said.

For him, the severity of the situation became clear the day after Good was shot and killed. He went out to the scene, but found himself at the nearby Roosevelt High School where Greg Bovino, then-commander of Border Patrol, was holding a canister of gas and running into crowds of teachers, parents and students.

“Everywhere was covered with the tear gas and smoke and they detained a person just in front of me.”

After he photographed the moment, Yücel had to pick up his children, twin boys. That night, they asked him hard questions. Were they considered white or brown? Could they be detained? They were scared, having witnessed a classmate being taken away, and knowing that they weren’t American.

It was the next day, sitting in his therapist’s office, that the reality of his experience as a photojournalist documenting an immigration crackdown as an immigrant himself really came into view.

“That day I was start(ing) thinking, ‘Oh, this story is also becoming my story.’”

From left, Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network; Tom Scheck, investigative editor at The Minnesota Star Tribune; Kerem Yücel, senior visual journalist at MPR News; and Amy Sherman, senior correspondent at PolitiFact, participate in a community conversation about Operation Metro Surge on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at Poynter’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. (Chris Kozlowski/Poynter)

In Minneapolis, no community or person was left untouched by the scale and force of Operation Metro Surge, not even the journalists. Yücel went out and reported despite the fear that he might be detained or arrested. During protests following a Nov. 25 immigration enforcement operation, he was injured by tear gas and rubber bullets fired by local police and was hospitalized. He kept reporting.

Scheck said that by day, at the office, he focused on getting the story right — what needed to be covered and where to send reporters.

But, at home, the reality that he was living through Operation Metro Surge rather than just reporting on it was unavoidable.

“You see all these people who are like out either protesting or out on the streets just watching the school because they want to make sure that kids feel safe … it was just a little bit jarring.”

Portraits of Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti and other people killed by law enforcement in Minnesota are displayed on a wooden fence beside a memorial along Portland Avenue South on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Kerem Yücel/MPR News)

For both journalists, Operation Metro Surge wasn’t just a story. It was something unfolding in their own neighborhoods, among their friends, families and neighbors.

Yücel said the experience changed how he felt as a resident of Minneapolis and an immigrant in the United States.

“It wasn’t my home, but when I saw the people outside just standing, I found that I started feeling like I was growing some roots. My home is Istanbul, Turkey. But those people had an impact on my life. My roots are starting to reach down in the soil. I’m starting to call Minneapolis my second home.”

For Yücel, that connection to the community was essential to the work. Had he not been there to witness its pain, resilience and solidarity, he said, he would not have been able to tell the story in the same way.

Update (June 4, 2026, 2:40 p.m.): An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of MPR News senior visual journalist Karem Yücel and incorrectly linked an injury he sustained while covering immigration enforcement protests to the Bro-Tex raid. The injury occurred during a separate operation later that month.