By Max Nesterak | Deputy Editor
Good morning, Reformers.
Several months ago, there were numerous news reports about a man facing federal charges for assaulting immigration agents, including hitting at least one with his car. One agent fired his weapon toward the man, Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero.
There weren’t any follow-up reports until Madi McVan dug into the details of the case and found significant contradictions in the stories of the agents’ on the scene.
She reports that those federal charges have now been dropped, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence.
Dozens of similar federal cases against immigrants and anti-ICE protesters have fallen apart across the country. The feds have dismissed more than than one-third of people charged with assaulting federal agents in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge, according to a Star Tribune tracker — including several people whose photos and names were posted online by former Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
This had me thinking about the case of Jaleel Stallings. It was widely reported that he fired a gun at police during the protests and riots in the days following the murder of George Floyd. Then, as Deena Winter reported, a jury acquitted him after video showed officers shooting rubber bullets at people from an unmarked van and then beating Stallings well after he’d surrendered.
Read Madi’s latest.
An observer films as armed ICE agents arrest two men during a traffic stop Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026 on Bottineau Blvd. in Robbinsdale. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
By Max Nesterak
The vast majority of Minnesota’s autism service providers have applied for provisional licenses under a new law aimed at bringing greater oversight to a Medicaid-funded program that in recent years has seen explosive growth — and credible fraud allegations.
Just eight sites that are active and have billed the Minnesota Department of Human Services in the past six months did not apply for a provisional license by the May 31 deadline, the Department of Human Services.
Some Republican lawmakers voiced concern in February that just six out of the roughly 500 autism service sites had applied for provisional licensing at that time. Rep. Patti Anderson, R-Dellwood, called it “shocking” at a hearing of the House fraud prevention committee.
By Ariana Figueroa
A hastily constructed immigrant detention facility on a military base in Texas wasted millions in federal funding and failed to meet basic standards, according to a report released Tuesday by a nonpartisan government watchdog.
The report by the Government Accountability Office documenting problems at Camp East Montana is one of the first independent investigations into a facility quickly constructed from the $170 billion in immigration enforcement and detention funding provided by Republicans’ “big beautiful” law enacted in July 2025 as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign. The camp is considered the largest immigrant detention center in the United States.
This is where many Minnesota residents arrested during Operation Metro Surge were sent, including Andrea Pedro-Francisco, an asylum seeker originally from Guatemala with no criminal record.
By Trisha Zachman
Trisha Zachman, who owns Feathered Acres Learning Farm + Inn with her family, writes today in opposition to the Save Our Bacon Act including in the House Farm Bill that would preempt state and local food safety and animal welfare laws across the country.
If it passes, farmers who invested in higher standards would face bankruptcy because they would lose a race to the bottom with less human producers.
“That is not saving family farmers. It is protecting a system that increasingly favors consolidation and corporate control,” she writes.
IN OTHER NEWS
Homeland Security retreats on plan to get data on mail-in voters | Reformer via States Newsroom
After nursing home crises, states target private equity’s role | Reformer via Stateline
The debt is coming due on many Twin Cities office buildings | Star Tribune
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