Border czar says he is pulling 700 immigration agents out of Minneapolis

By MADELEINE NGO

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said Wednesday that the federal government would immediately withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, scaling down the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the area.

The change came after the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers and agents to Minnesota, a deployment that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said was the agency’s “largest operation to date.” About 2,000 officers and agents would be left in the state, Homan said.

Homan said that federal officials in Minnesota had made significant progress working with state and local officials, despite some differences. An “unprecedented number of counties” were cooperating with federal officials and allowing ICE to take custody of unauthorized immigrants before they are released from jails, he added, though it was unclear what policy changes might have been agreed to by the counties.

The cooperation, Homan said, had provided a “safer environment” for immigration officers to conduct arrests, allowing for fewer officers in the region.

“This is smart law enforcement, not less law enforcement,” he added.

State and local officials said the drawdown was welcome but did not go far enough. Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, a Democrat, said in a statement that the reduction in officers was “a step in the right direction” but that 2,000 federal officers in the region was still “not de-escalation.”

“My message to the White House has been consistent — Operation Metro Surge has been catastrophic for our businesses and residents,” he said, referring to the name of the federal crackdown in the city. “It needs to end immediately.”

The message was echoed by Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, also a Democrat, in a statement.

“Today’s announcement is a step in the right direction, but we need a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and an end to this campaign of retribution,” Walz said, referring to two protesters who were killed in encounters with federal immigration officers.

President Donald Trump tasked Homan with taking over the enforcement operation in Minnesota last week, days after Pretti, a U.S. citizen and an intensive care nurse, was fatally shot by officers with Customs and Border Protection. Pretti’s killing worsened tensions in the region and prompted some Republicans to criticize the Trump administration’s operations. His death came more than two weeks after Good was shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

Shortly after the shootings, Department of Homeland Security officials said that federal officers acted in self-defense in both cases, and that Pretti and Good intended to harm law enforcement officials. Those accounts have conflicted with local officials and witness videos.

As snow began to fall outside the B.H. Whipple Federal Building just outside Minneapolis on Wednesday, a small contingent of protesters, who have maintained a daily presence outside the building for weeks, listened to Homan’s remarks on radios.

James Woehrle, 78, said he was not impressed by the number included in the drawdown. “We’re already overwhelmed,” he said. “Seven hundred? I don’t know if you’d even know the difference.”

Homan emphasized that immigration officers would focus on more targeted enforcement operations that prioritized arresting criminals who posed public safety threats. Last week, Homan said that was “the way we’ve always done it,” but that “we got away from it a little bit.”

Still, he said that any immigrants residing in the country illegally would not be exempt from enforcement operations and that Trump was still committed to his mass deportation agenda.

“If you are in the country illegally, you are not off the table,” Homan said.

The administration also decided last week to move Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official whose enforcement tactics have drawn controversy, out of the Minneapolis region.

Homan said Wednesday that there would also be a reorganization of law enforcement officers on the ground. Agents from CBP and ICE would now be under “one unified chain of command.”

Homan did not provide a timeline for the full drawdown of the operation, saying that it was dependent on the continued cooperation of local and state officials, along with a decrease in the violence and rhetoric aimed at immigration officers.

“I’ve been saying this for almost a year now: Hateful or extreme rhetoric against ICE personnel is completely unacceptable,” Homan said. “If the hateful rhetoric didn’t stop, I was afraid there would be bloodshed, and there has been.”