The Trump administration said it would reduce the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota after weeks of unrest in Minneapolis, where two people have been killed in altercations with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” told reporters that 700 of roughly 3,000 federal officers deployed around the upper Midwest state would be withdrawn “immediately.” He said state and local officials agreed to cooperate with ICE by handing over arrested immigrants, a shift he called an “increase in unprecedented collaboration” that would require fewer “public safety officers” in a “safer environment.”
Homan added that officers would take custody of criminal aliens directly from jails rather than detaining people on the streets — an idea he had proposed last week in exchange for drawing down ICE forces in Minnesota.
ICE raids in Minneapolis neighborhoods, said to target illegal immigrants marked for deportation, prompted major public outcry and protests confronting federal agents. The unrest escalated after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good while she sat in her car. Weeks later, another protester, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, also 37, was beaten and shot multiple times by federal agents as he tried to aid a woman being pushed to the ground during a protest.
The White House and Trump’s Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem depicted both victims as “terrorists” who threatened ICE officers, despite extensive video evidence suggesting otherwise. Those depictions, and broader government accounts of events that critics call inaccurate, drew widespread condemnation and increased pressure on the administration.
The deaths also prompted scrutiny of ICE training and recruitment. New ICE agents undergo an eight-week (47-day) training program, far shorter than the 10 to 11 months required for Minneapolis police recruits. Critics noted that ICE recruitment websites have used far-right, white nationalist slogans to encourage enlistment.
In response to the outcry, Trump withdrew Customs and Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino and replaced him with Homan, who said he would scale back ICE operations if local officials met certain conditions.
Homan described the Minnesota operation as successful. He said many people were removed from the streets of the Twin Cities and defended the unified chain of command put in place to ensure rules were followed. “Was it a perfect operation? No,” he said, but he maintained that no one “purposely” failed to do what they should have done.
Even with the drawdown, roughly 2,000 ICE officers will remain in Minnesota. Homan has said he will not leave Minneapolis “until we get it all done.”
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez