Sheletta debuts new podcast series documenting Operation Metro Surge impact at Minnesota State Fair

Stories and memories from Operation Metro Surge took center stage as broadcaster and podcast entrepreneur Sheletta Brundidge debuted a new podcast during the Minnesota State Fair.

Brundidge’s podcast series, called Voices of Minnesota, will create a ten-part oral history aimed at giving a platform to the Minnesotans who lived through the mass federal immigration action.

“We want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly, unredacted and unfiltered,” said Brundidge.

Even though the height of the ICE siege was in the depths of winter, Operation Metro Surge has shown up throughout the summer at the Minnesota State Fair. From crop art pieces at the Ag-Hort Building to designs on quilts at the Creative Activities Building to photographs and paintings at the Fine Art Building, many artistic Minnesotans illustrated experiences from Operation Metro Surge.

Brundidge wanted to bring the first episode of her podcast about Operation Metro Surge to a State Fair audience. Produced and distributed by Brundidge’s podcasting platform ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com in partnership with KARE 11+, Voices of Minnesota has begun collecting and recording first-person stories.

Seated before a live audience in the KARE 11 Barn, Brundidge led a conversation with Ben Damberg, from the Indivisible Twin Cities Rapid Response Team and Jennifer Prestholdt, vice chair of the Minnesota Truth Council, an independent, nonpartisan, volunteer body created to collect experiences from Operation Metro Surge.

Damberg shared his experiences as part of the Minnesota Frog Brigade, a group that donned frog costumes when they participated in numerous community rallies, walks, and protests.

“We wear frog costumes to emphasize the absurdity of the situation, ‘tactical frivolity’ we call it,” he said. “In negative 30 degree temperatures, I was marching in an inflatable frog suit. The condensation from your breath will freeze to the Inside of the suit so it was snowing inside my suit as I was marching.”

While the presence of hundreds of masked ICE officers is no longer part of daily life in the Twin Cities, Damberg warned that the federal force is still detaining immigrants in Minnesota.

“It’s not over and it's not done and people from this state are still getting picked up by ICE every day,” he said. “It's all across the state in every area, the resorts in the northern part of the state, the farms in the southwest. The work's not done.”

Prestholdt cited one particularly upsetting story that “really stuck with me” from a recent Truth Council event gathering citizen testimony in St Paul.

“There was a young women from the Southeast Asian community who trained her mother—a grandmother, an elderly woman—she trained her how to climb up into the attic in case ICE agents knocked down their door and and came in, and made her promise never come out of that attic,” she said. “That was really hard to hear.

“There's so much trauma that people are still carrying with them,” Presthold added.

“It's hugely emotional. I think everyone who's been sharing their stories has broken down crying even when they didn't expect to. Our story collectors have been trained in how to talk to people in a trauma-informed way. I think it's created some opportunity and space for healing that needs to happen.”

Future episodes of Voices of Minnesota will record first person stories from clergy, small business owners, community activists, and educators directly impacted by Operation Metro Surge as well as other citizens who responded to federal immigration enforcement operations through large-scale peaceful protests and community mutual aid efforts.