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On Thursday, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library announced that the people of Minnesota’s Twin Cities will receive the Profiles in Courage Award for their resistance to President Donald Trump’s brutal immigration crackdown earlier this year.
The annual award — named for a book written by President John F. Kennedy listing figures who displayed courage and political integrity throughout U.S. history — seeks to recognize individuals or groups of people who resist government abuses, oftentimes at the risk of their careers or lives.
The presidential library said that the people of Saint Paul and Minneapolis are deserving of the honor for “risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members from an unprecedented federal law enforcement operation, peacefully defending the human rights and values that serve as the foundation of our Constitutional democracy.”
In December 2025, the Trump administration launched Operation Metro Surge, deploying over 3,000 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other agencies to Saint Paul and Minneapolis to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Over the next two and a half months, federal agents terrorized and abducted immigrants and U.S.-born residents alike, denying people their due process rights and brutalizing protesters en masse, shooting and killing two people.
Throughout the operation, residents of the Twin Cities organized to protect their community through multiple channels of resistance, launching a statewide general strike and consistently showing up in the tens of thousands to protest in sub-zero weather. As a result of their efforts, the White House eventually called off the operation, resulting in a dramatic drawback of federal agents in the cities in February 2026.
The presidential library cited residents’ efforts in announcing their Profiles in Courage award.
“Tens of thousands took to the streets to peacefully protest federal overreach and threats to immigrant families and constitutional protections, while others documented enforcement activity and alerted neighbors to federal agents’ presence,” the library said in its statement, adding:
Faith leaders organized demonstrations, community groups built rapid-response networks, labor leaders and small business defended workers, and volunteers provided critical support and resources. Across religious, racial, and political lines, a broad coalition of residents of the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs united in peaceful resistance despite violent confrontation and real personal risk, defending their neighbors’ rights and strengthening the national movement to protect American democracy.
As it often does, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library awarded a second Profiles in Courage recognition, this time to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, citing his refusal to comply with Trump’s demands to lower interest rates.
“Despite relentless political pressure and unprecedented attempts to influence the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell stood firm in his commitment to the institution’s independence and the nation’s economic stability,” the library noted.
Indeed, over the past several years, the Profiles in Courage award has been given to several individuals who refused to cooperate with schemes by Trump and his allies, including:
- Mike Pence in 2025, for refusing to be involved in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election;
- Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Rusty Bowers, an Arizona Republican who refused to take part in the fake electors scheme, and Georgia election worker Shaye Moss, all in 2022, for defending freedom (including taking principled stances against efforts to overturn election results disfavorable to Trump);
- And Mitt Romney in 2021, for his decision to vote to convict Trump in the Senate trial following the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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