Trump administration to end immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis
The ramped-up immigration enforcement operation that killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and prompted statewide protests and school shutdowns over a span of two months is now over, the Trump administration said on Thursday.
In a press conference in Minneapolis, border czar Tom Homan said the drawdown of thousands of federal agents is already in effect.
"I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude," he said.
"A significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue to the next week."
Homan credited improved cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration agencies, which will now allow for immigrants who have been locally arrested for criminal acts to be taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from police custody for later deportation.
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Videos shared online have at times shown excesses by ICE agents, as well as their partner agents from Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations, with people suspected of being non-citizens who allegedly broke the law being hauled away from their children outside a school, or from atop a roof as they work a construction job with colleagues.
Some of those arrested were US citizens and were released within hours or days. It is illegal for immigration agents to detain Americans.
On X, Minnesota officials responded with relief and defiance.
"The long road to recovery starts now," Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat who ran for the vice presidency alongside Kamala Harris in 2024, wrote on Thursday.
"The impact on our economy, our schools, and people's lives won't be reversed overnight. That work starts today."
He later told reporters that his phone call with Trump last month, and Trump's deployment of Homan to Minneapolis over the past week, kick-started the necessary discussions.
At the same time, Walz said that the delay of action from the White House after two Americans were killed by ICE was because "in very Trumpian fashion, they needed to save face".
Optics
Trump's approval ratings have taken a significant hit because of viral videos of violent ICE arrests from around the country.
Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who famously told ICE to "get the fuck out" last month, wrote on X that the Trump administration's immigration agents "thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation".
Minnesota has emerged as the focal point of Trump's crackdown.
Two US citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, were killed in the state by ICE agents as they were observing and documenting the agents' activities - actions that are protected by law, the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons, acknowledged at a Senate hearing on Thursday.
But he added that he would not comment further on the specific killings while internal investigations are ongoing.
"In regards to every law enforcement operation, of course, we go back, we look at lessons learned," Lyons told lawmakers as he was grilled on the behaviour of ICE agents.
"At the end, the ownership of that is mine. So I have to go ahead and look at evaluations of what we did, what worked, what didn't work."
He said while he has no issue with "agitators and the coordination on the protest side", it's activists that try to protect their neighbours by body-blocking agents that are "a problem".
Half a million people detained
Activists have said that it is because the immigrants being rounded up are, most of the time, not criminals.
Overstaying a visa or being undocumented is a civil offence and not a criminal one.
Internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week revealed that only 14 percent of all immigrants arrested had a record of violent crime.
DHS says it has so far detained or already deported half a million people since Trump took office 13 months ago.
As has been the case with ICE arrests across the US, the crackdown in Minnesota has meant that both documented and undocumented immigrants have been dragged out of their homes and cars and put into a local detention facility before being shipped off to sites in Texas and Louisiana, where conservative judges are more likely to be in line with Trump administration policies.
Critics say ICE’s tactics include frequently moving people in custody between far-flung detention facilities in ways that cut them off from their families and legal support, making it difficult for loved ones and lawyers to maintain contact or even know where a person is being held.
These transfers can disrupt legal processes, delay hearings and access to counsel, and isolate detainees from the support networks they need for months or years, eventually forcing detainees into accepting deportation, rather than chasing their rightful legal process.
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