ICE is bad for business, heat is bad for coffee, and sci-fi is bad for markets
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode: How Minnesota workers were affected by Operation Metro Surge, why coffee’s getting more expensive, and what happens when a sci-fi AI scenario meets the stock market.
Related episodes:
How ICE crackdowns are affecting the workforce
Why this rural town wants an ICE facility
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:02.1 | This is the indicator from planet money. |
| 0:13.8 | I'm Waylon Wong. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm Daryan Woods. |
| 0:16.0 | And I'm Adrienne Ma. |
| 0:17.0 | And today is the day of the week when we talk about our favorite numbers from the news. |
| 0:22.5 | That's right, everyone. |
| 0:24.2 | It is indicators of the week. |
| 0:28.7 | So on today's episode, how Minnesota workers were affected by the administration's immigration crackdown. |
| 0:34.0 | How coffee is getting very hot price-wise. And how basically a sci-fi blog piece jolted the stock market. |
| 0:47.3 | Indicators of the week, um, Whalen, do you want to go first? |
| 0:54.6 | My indicator is $106 million. |
| 0:58.1 | That is the estimated amount of wages that workers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area lost during Operation Metro Surge. |
| 1:05.7 | This $106 million figure was published this week by a Minnesota Research Institute called North Star Policy Action. |
| 1:12.9 | And Aaron Sojour helped crunch the numbers. He's a labor economist that we've had on the show before. |
| 1:17.8 | So the Department of Homeland Security, they say they're ending this operation, right? |
| 1:24.2 | Yeah. DHS says it's withdrawing agents, although it is keeping a presence in the state. |
| 1:29.5 | And we have seen a devastating human toll from Operation Metro Surge. |
| 1:34.4 | Federal agents shot and killed two people, Renee Good and Alex Preti. |
| 1:38.7 | And fear of detention or violence kept people home. |
| 1:42.2 | That means they missed school and work and they couldn't go out |
| 1:45.6 | to get groceries or to access health care. So this crackdown caused a lot of ripple effects |
... |
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