The Trump administration is ending the “surge” of thousands of immigration and law enforcement agents to Minnesota that sparked months of protests and led to the shooting deaths of two American citizens who were protesting the federal presence there.
White House Border Czar Tom Homan told reporters in Minneapolis on Thursday that there has been a “big change” in state and local officials’ willingness to assist in providing some support for federal operations in the state and said there has been less of a need to deploy “quick reaction forces” to protect agents from protesters.
“With that and [the] success that has been made arresting public safety threats and other priorities since this search operation began, as well as the unprecedented levels of coordination we have obtained from state officials and local law enforcement, I have proposed — and President Trump has concurred — that this surge operation conclude a significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through the next week,” Homan said.
He added that “a small footprint of personnel” would remain in the area to supervise the transfer of “full command and control” of immigration enforcement in the state back to the ICE field office that has been in Minneapolis for decades.
Homan also said he would remain in Minneapolis “for a little longer” to “oversee the drawdown of this operation” while stressing that the massive deployment of agents that had been dubbed “Operation Metro Surge” by administration officials was in fact “ending.”
The administration's decision to withdraw the thousands of agents whose roving patrols and aggressive tactics roiled Twin Cities streets in what appeared to be a deliberate effort to punish Minnesotans for having voted against President Donald Trump in the 2024, 2020 and 2016 elections comes weeks after the White House dispatched Homan there in the wake of the shooting death of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti at the hands of a Border Patrol agent.
Federal officials announced the deployment in early December, ostensibly to combat what the administration claimed was a wave of public benefits fraud by Somali immigrants after a viral video by a right-wing YouTube creator alleging that Minneapolis was filled with fake child care centers and medical businesses run by Somalis gained attention in conservative media circles.
Administration officials say the months-long effort has led to more than 4,000 arrests of what they allege to be “dangerous criminal illegal aliens” but that number has also included numerous American citizens and people without criminal records.
The White House had justified the outsized presence and roving patrols as necessary because Minnesota does not allow state and local law enforcement to conduct civil immigration enforcement, though Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have maintained that ICE officers have always been permitted to take custody of people who are being released from jails and prisons at the end of a court-imposed sentence.
At one recent White House press briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed there are “thousands” of “criminal illegal aliens” held in Minnesota facilities and being released back into the community without notifying federal officials. One Department of Homeland Security press release recent alleged that there were “more than 1,360 active detainers for criminals in Minnesota jails” as well.
But the administration’s claims and purported justifications have also been undermined by Minnesota officials who have pointed out that only as many as 380 non-citizens were being held in state prisons — and of those, only 270 were subject to “detainers” filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections also said there are roughly 100 non-citizens with “detainers” filed against them in county and local jails as well.
And while the administration has repeatedly claimed the aggressive operations in Minnesota were justified by the state government’s refusal to cooperate with federal enforcement efforts, Attorney General Pam Bondi further undermined those arguments last month when she sent a letter to state officials demanding access to the state’s voter database in exchange for removing agents from Minneapolis streets.
President Donald Trump has in recent months repeatedly lied about his electoral history in the Gopher State by claiming to have won it three times even though he has never carried the state’s electoral votes and no Republican has done so since the 1972 presidential election.
Walz had said earlier in the week that he expected the federal deployment to end in “days, not weeks and months” based on his own talks with administration officials, including Homan and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
And in the wake of Homan’s announcement, Walz said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the “surge of untrained, aggressive federal agents are going to leave Minnesota.”
“I guess they’ll go wherever they’re going to go. but the fact of the matter is, they left us with deep damage, generational trauma, they left us with economic ruin. in some cases, they left us with many unanswered questions,” he said. “Where are our children? Where and what is the process of the investigations into those that were responsible for the deaths of Rene [Good] and Alex [Pretti]? “
“So while the federal government may move on to whatever next thing they want to do, the state of Minnesota and our administration is unwaveringly focused on the recovery of what they did. and there will be many steps in this process,” Walz added.
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