WILLMAR, Minn. — Julie Henslin had never considered running for office. Age 67 seemed an odd time to try.

But Henslin, who works at her family’s small manufacturing businesses in this city two hours west of Minneapolis, couldn’t shake what she saw this winter, when federal agents swarmed into the meatpacking town.

Headlines from Operation Metro Surge focused on the Twin Cities, but life here, where four in 10 residents are nonwhite, was upended as well.

Henslin tried to calm an angry crowd in downtown Willmar after federal agents forced a Somali high school student from her car and took her to a Twin Cities holding facility even though she was in the U.S. on legal refugee status. Henslin witnessed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detain a woman outside Goodwill despite the agents not knowing the woman’s name. She spotted an abandoned car in a snowbank then saw the terrified faces of two immigrants inside a nearby ICE vehicle.

“That’s why I’m running,” Henslin said about her Democratic candidacy for the Minnesota House. “Because of the trauma and pain inflicted on our community by ICE.”

In a county that voted for President Donald Trump by a two-to-one margin in 2024, and in a district that Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Baker won by 52 percentage points, the possibility of a blue wave here feels like a left-wing pipe dream.

Yet November’s midterms present a challenging environment for Republicans. Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president heading into midterms since President Harry Truman in 1946. As inflation lingers, affordability concerns mount. Fuel prices are at near-record levels as the war in Iran continues. Plenty of national polls predict this may lead to a Democratic wave that would shift the balance of power in Congress.

Republicans confront a unique political headwind in a place like Willmar, one of Minnesota’s most diverse areas, where immigrants have found work in turkey processing plants and injected life into downtown.

Here, this winter’s immigrant enforcement operation hasn’t receded from voters’ minds. Plenty of white residents remain angry at politicians, both at the federal level for directing the operation and at the state level for inflaming tensions. And immigrants, those who are citizens and those who are not, say they remain fearful of law enforcement, triggered by trauma and saddened at the feeling this country does not want them.

The question is whether that ICE-directed anger could bring a different version of an anti-Trump political reckoning to immigrant-filled regional centers like Austin, Worthington and Willmar.

“I don’t think this area is immune to the possibility of a blue wave,” said Steve Gardner, 67, a moderate Democrat and the Kandiyohi County board chair. “This winter was about as dark as it gets in these parts. No matter their political beliefs, people intuitively understand what happened here and in the metro was not right. It should never happen in the United States of America. Full stop.”

Political observers see the ICE operation hurting Republicans in the Nov. 3 election while Minnesota’s fraud scandal could hamper Democrats. A nonpartisan poll conducted in the middle of Operation Metro Surge found that immigration enforcement was costing Republicans nationally, with 57% of Americans disapproving of the Trump administration’s handling of deportations.

A parallel survey of Minnesotans found a rural-urban divide, with 44% of Minnesotans saying immigration enforcement made them less likely to vote Republican. That figure rose to 51% in the Twin Cities.

But voter outrage can be ephemeral, and it’s been eight months since the administration announced Operation Metro Surge would end.

Tim Lindberg, an associate professor of political science at University of Minnesota Morris who focuses on rural politics, expects the immigration crackdown will impact Minnesota’s midterms only on the margins.

“Partisanship really enables people to brush away a lot of their concerns,” Lindberg said. “You see people justify it: ‘If they weren’t undocumented, they’d have nothing to worry about.’ ‘If they weren’t criminals, they’d have nothing to worry about.’ The big question is how strong is partisanship over-swamping the reality people live in and what they see in their own communities with ICE enforcement.”

In a generation, Willmar has gone from virtually all white in the 1990s to a place where fewer than a third of public school students are white. The demographic changes have brought growing pains and resentment alongside a deep appreciation of immigrants. As many greater Minnesota cities have stagnated or shrunk, Willmar has grown.

As Willmar has become more diverse, the region has become more conservative. What had been seen as a politically purple area a generation ago, represented in St. Paul by Democrats Dean Johnson and Al Juhnke, is now solidly Republican.

Pablo Obregon, Willmar’s community growth director, who immigrated from Peru in the 1990s, said many local Latinos voted for Trump in 2024, citing religion, social issues and frustration with the Biden economy.

But Obregon expects recent GOP gains among Latinos to be erased.

“The immigrant community here is disappointed in so much about Trump, but ICE is at the heart of it,” Obregon said. “There’s going to definitely be more people thinking twice to vote Republican. It’s almost like an awakening.”

Justin Ask, a Lutheran pastor who announced his run for mayor shortly after Operation Metro Surge, doesn’t see a political awakening. Partisan times means most people are stuck in their views, he said. But he’s curious if people of color here will turn out at a higher rate than previous election cycles.

“Is this something that’ll motivate them?” he said. “If so, that could have a big impact.”

Baker, a small-business owner who has gained support across the political spectrum during six terms in the Minnesota House, believes Operation Metro Surge will hurt his reelection chances. Despite generally supporting law enforcement and border security, the Republican legislator publicly spoke out against Operation Metro Surge. He called for a pause in the operation in January, shortly after a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Other Kandiyohi County elected officials expressed reservations as well, with county Commissioner Roger Imdieke publishing an essay in February saying just about everyone disagreed with ICE’s tactics.

Baker called this his “hardest winter ever.” He believed ICE would go after the “worst of the worst,” like Trump promised. But that was not what Baker witnessed. He said he saw immigrants harassed, detained, shipped to the Twin Cities then released.

“Don’t drop them off in the middle of January when it’s freezing,” Baker said. “At least show respect.” He pressed for better communication from federal authorities to local law enforcement. Employees at a hotel Baker owns fled the state in fear, even though they were here legally.

Frustrated with the surge and warring between federal and state governments, Baker considered not running again. But he’s still proud to be a Republican, and he decided his voice matters in a divided legislature.

But ICE, he said, “will certainly make a difference with this year’s election. I know I’ll get less votes.”

Donna DeGeest, a retired accountant from Spicer who chairs the county Republican Party, believes Democrats set a tone that led to the volatile situation on the streets. Yes, federal agents made mistakes, she said. But law enforcement is a dirty job, an inexact science. Instead of blaming Trump or federal agents for this winter’s chaos, she believes voters will blame Democrats like Gov. Tim Walz or Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey even though neither are on the ballot.

“People were being told to resist instead of saying, ‘These are the laws, this is what’s on the books,’” she said.

As the autumn sun set over Green Lake in Spicer, a 10-mile jaunt from Willmar, Henslin addressed a dozen supporters who would door-knock with her. With two weeks until Election Day, they focused on getting out the vote, only knocking on doors friendly to Democrats.

“We’ve changed the whole mood,” said Rick Sather, a supporter from Spicer.

“We created a movement,” Henslin replied, “and we’ve done it with joy. There are so many disaffected Republicans out there.”

Henslin’s husband steered their SUV from lakeside home to lakeside home. At one house, Henslin spotted a “Trump 2024″ flag. They turned around without knocking. Another house flew the old Minnesota state flag, which Henslin typically chalks up as a Republican voter. The homeowner, Mike Coquyt, pedaled his bicycle up his driveway after an evening ride.

She told him how ICE propelled her to run. Coquyt told her he was disappointed by the area’s Republican leaders.

“I see signs for you all over the place,” he told her.

Back in the car, she pulled out a voter activation network app. “Strong Julie,” she marked.

At the next house, she recited her platform: people over politics, restore checks and balances, anger about Republicans not standing up to ICE. The homeowner, a physician in Willmar who declined to give his name, said he used to be a Republican, but not since Trump. He knows and likes Baker, but when Henslin told him ICE was her reason for running, his ears perked up. He would consider voting for her, he said.

After Henslin announced her campaign this spring, Democratic operatives told her she almost certainly couldn’t win here. This is a county that hasn’t picked a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1996.

But this, she said, is the cycle to change that.

“During the surge, it didn’t matter your political affiliation,” Henslin said. “They just saw the pain and the trauma and they stepped up to help. I believe that’s what started the shift. Now the combination of what ICE did and the economics of the tariff war, the war in Iran — most people vote their pocketbooks, and this time, voting their pocketbooks means a vote for me. Call me naïve. But I feel it.”

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