By Maria Tsvetkova and Jonathan Allen
Fort Snelling, Minnesota — The Trump administration is immediately withdrawing 700 federal immigration enforcement agents from Minnesota, though about 2,000 will remain in the state, White House border czar Tom Homan announced on Wednesday.
In an unprecedented surge, US President Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed immigration enforcement agents in and around Minneapolis this year to detain and deport migrants, resulting in angry and sometimes violent confrontations with residents and street protests across the nation.
Homan said the deportation campaign was in the interest of public safety, and that he was partially drawing down the deployment because he was seeing “unprecedented” co-operation from Minnesota’s elected sheriffs who run county jails.
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Grappling with one of the thorniest political crises of his tenure, Trump sent Homan to Minnesota in late January to temper the outrage seen in Minneapolis’ streets, which intensified after immigration agents twice fatally shot US citizens.
The surge has been opposed and denounced since its earliest days in January by Minnesota governor Tim Walz and other Democrats, who have demanded the withdrawal of a federal deployment that was 20 times the normal number working on immigration enforcement in the state and outnumbering local police forces.
“Let me be clear, President Trump fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country,” Homan said. “President Trump made a promise. And we have not directed otherwise.”
The president’s aggressive deportation efforts have triggered protests, drawn criticism even from some of his fellow Republicans and stern rebukes from some federal judges asked to rule on the legality of migrants’ detentions, who say their orders are being defied.
The reduction announced on Wednesday still leaves an extraordinary number of immigration agents in place, a figure Trump officials were calling unprecedented only a few weeks ago.
In early January, the administration sent about 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota, calling it Operation Metro Surge. It was described by Todd Lyons, acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as the “largest immigration operation ever” on January 6, a day before Renee Good, was fatally shot in her car by an ICE officer. As January continued, hundreds of more agents were deployed.
Homan said his goal was to return to the usual force of about 150 federal immigration agents in the state, but did not say when he thought that would be possible.
Trump and his senior officials have said that many migrants must be deported, and he blamed them, often in sweeping terms, for financial fraud and violent crimes.
Minnesota, which is governed by Democrats, has sued the Trump administration over the surge, which has sparked weeks of protests that only intensified after federal immigration agents in Minneapolis killed Good and Alex Pretti.
Homan wants more jails in Minnesota to allow immigration agents to transfer custody of detained migrants. Some already do, though only seven sheriffs out of Minnesota’s 87 counties have signed formal co-operation agreements with ICE.
Others, including the main jail in Minneapolis run by the Hennepin County sheriff, do not co-operate. Minneapolis and some other cities prohibit their employees, including police, from asking people about their citizenship or co-operating with federal immigration enforcement. City officials say it threatens public safety if migrants who are victims of or witnesses to crime are afraid to come forward.
Speaking at a federal field office outside Minneapolis, Homan said he recently had “useful” conversations with Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, among other elected Democrats.
“While we had our differences, one thing was clear — we are all committed to public safety,” Homan said.
Homan, a former ICE agent, also accused protesters of “impeding” immigration agents, whom he lauded as patriots upholding the law and doing a difficult job while being unfairly vilified.
Outside the federal building where Homan was speaking, more than a dozen protesters rallied against ICE in temperatures well below freezing.
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