White House border czar Tom Homan announced that President Donald Trump has approved the conclusion of a surge of federal immigration authorities into Minnesota following a two-and-a-half-month enforcement operation.
“With that … success that has been made arrest and public safety threats and other priorities, since this surge 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 concludes,” Homan said in a press conference in Minneapolis on Thursday morning.
Homan said his work since arriving in the state two and a half weeks ago to take it over from a Border Patrol official has been “successful” based on the cooperation the federal government has been able to negotiate with local and state authorities.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers now “have the ability” to work with county jails in Minnesota and transfer illegal immigrants in custody into their own custody — something that the state had not allowed to happen before the negotiations.
The change will allow federal immigration officers to apprehend wanted individuals in a secure setting rather than require larger groups of federal police to go out on the street to find and arrest people once they are released from jail.
Homan said federal police will be deployed to certain parts of the state near county jails so that they are close to facilities when illegal immigrants are ready to be released from jail. ICE may ask jails to hold a person 48 hours beyond their release date, but historically, sanctuary zones, such as Minneapolis, have refused to turn over most illegal immigrants in jail to ICE.
Homan said he has continued to meet with local and state officials, including Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN); Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat; Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat; judicial leaders; county sheriff’s departments and local police departments, as well as organizations that advocate immigrant rights.
“Overall, we made a lot of progress through extensive engagement meetings with them and other key stakeholders, and it is expected that those engagements and discussions will continue going forward in order to enhance exchange of information and more coordination,” Homan said in his third press conference in the city since late January.
Ellison testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday morning as Homan spoke in Minneapolis. Ellison said there were no conversations or meetings with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem or Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol official who had overseen Border Patrol agents in the city prior to Homan’s arrival several weeks ago.
“Perhaps now, with somebody who has experience of their own in law enforcement, we can make some progress. I’m hopeful,” Ellison said.
The surge of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and agents from the Justice Department began in early December 2025. It was the largest federal surge of police to a city since Noem permitted Bovino to lead Border Patrol agents to cities nationwide to help ICE find and arrest illegal immigrants.
More than 3,000 federal police blanketed the city after the revelation last December that billions of dollars of state funding had been paid out to fraudulent individuals, including Somali illegal immigrants in the state. Police arrested more than 4,000 illegal immigrants during that period.
More than 200 people were arrested on charges of interfering with federal immigration operations or assaulting officers, Homan said. Two people — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed in separate shootings by federal law enforcement as they were making arrests in South Minneapolis.
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Ellison maintained that focusing this surge of immigration officers on his home state was a misdirected effort on the Trump administration’s part.
“The government has said the purpose of the surge is to fight unauthorized immigration. Yet, Minnesota ranks 28th among all states in the percentage of undocumented immigrants,” Ellison said. “Florida and Texas alone have nearly as many undocumented people as the entire population of the state of Minnesota.”
