This is part of Amicus and Slate’s “By the People” series, which explores how the American people can reclaim the Constitution—and the law—from this monarchical Supreme Court.

This January, a neighbor texted me a video, along with a warning to avoid our neighborhood. The video showed dozens of people following a black SUV past my home in Minneapolis, blowing whistles and shouting. It was not quite a protest chant, but a verbal alarm for the neighborhood. People came to windows, porches, and icy sidewalks in below-freezing weather because someone had seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the vehicle, and the new ground rule was simple: None of our neighbors should be taken by ICE without witnesses.

This scene captured a common neighborhood response during Operation Metro Surge. There were whistles, Signal chats, legal observers, carpools, rent funds, and grocery deliveries. Warnings passed from block to block, orally and digitally. Some parents kept children home; other children insisted that their parents stay home instead. Residents relayed when not to drive, when not to return, when to stay inside, and when to come out in force.

My experience was not exceptional, and that was the point. The surge made public safety a daily practice for many residents. None of it sounded like law in a traditional register. Rather, it was accompaniment: feeding, sheltering, driving, watching, and warning so no one had to move in isolation. What we saw in Minneapolis this past winter was, among other extraordinary things, popular constitutionalism in action.

Popular constitutionalism usually names the idea that constitutional meaning is not the province of courts alone. Movements argue about the Constitution, organize around it, and sometimes make claims powerful enough that courts later recognize them as law. Operation Metro Surge belongs to that tradition, but at a more immediate and less familiar level. Residents were not waiting for judicial recognition. They were not claiming the state’s police power for themselves but acting as though they already had a legitimate claim to ensuring the entire community’s safety.

The state of Minnesota translated these safety claims into a federal lawsuit. Along with Minneapolis and St. Paul, it challenged Operation Metro Surge by arguing that the federal government had disrupted schools, businesses, emergency services, municipal resources, streets, and the trust on which local governance depends. The complaint invoked Minnesota’s “inviolable........

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