WASHINGTON — Ruth Jones was incensed when she learned Cottage Grove had leased its city-owned shooting range to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Jones and about a dozen other members of an immigrant advocacy group at All Saints Lutheran Church demanded — unsuccessfully — that their southeast Twin Cities suburb end its relationship with the federal agency.
“We all support law enforcement, but we don’t see ICE as law enforcement,” Jones said. “Those guys wear masks, don’t identify themselves and just grab people.”
The contract Cottage Grove signed with ICE for the rental of the HERO Training Center, jointly owned and operated with the neighboring city of Woodbury, is among dozens of Minnesota entities that have recently entered into contracts with ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Related: ICE eyes shuttered Appleton prison as it plans massive expansion of immigrant detention centers
Minnesota isn’t anywhere near the top of the list of states when it comes to ICE and CBP contracts, although those agencies purchase a variety of goods and services in the state that range from ammunition sales to translation services.
According to USASpending.gov, Minnesota has $2.1 million worth of contracts in force since the beginning of the year, while Texas has more than $414 million, Arizona has more than $478 million and California has about $329 million.
As the Trump administration and its allies in Congress seek budget cuts for most federal agencies, ICE and CBP are notable exceptions. In fact, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Donald Trump’s major legislative win to date, has provided $175 billion for immigration and border enforcement, nearly six times the latest annual budget of CBP and ICE combined.
Trump has boosted those budgets to meet his deportation goals. Mobile Pathways, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that provides legal aid to immigrants, determined there were 4,573 deportations in Minnesota in 2024 and 2,846 just in the first six months of this year. That indicates the removals are increasing in the state.
ICE and CBP spending will now increase exponentially, mainly on new recruits for the agency and new detention centers, but also for goods and services as these immigration enforcement agencies grow.
‘Not the Minnesota way’
An analysis of federal contracts shows that in Minnesota, ICE and CBP have spent the most money on the purchase of ammunition, mainly from Anoka-based Vista Outdoor Sales. That company signed about $60 million in contracts with those agencies in the past decade.
But there are other notable contracts. The Personnel Decisions Research Institute in Minneapolis signed one valued at more than $1 million with CBP to implement license exams.
Prisma International has a three-year contract worth $698,600 to provide translation services to ICE. And ICE purchased $39,000 of “breaching tools” from J&N Tactical in South Haven last year.
Like Cottage Grove, the University of Minnesota also signed an agreement with ICE to use a firing range that’s on school-owned property. But that $18,867 one-year agreement ended in May of last year and was a tiny part of the nearly $673 million in contracts with other federal agencies the university entered into last year.
“The University of Minnesota Police Department manages an outdoor training range located on university property in Rosemount, which has been in operation for more than 40 years,” said university spokesperson Andria Waclawski.
She also said the facility was made available for rent to other local and federal law enforcement agencies and that the school is no longer accepting reservations for the shooting range from outside groups.
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}})}();The HERO center has been leased to many law enforcement organizations besides ICE, including neighboring police and fire departments, the FBI and the U.S. Treasury Department. Even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has used the facility, said Cottage Grove Mayor Myron Bailey.
Cottage Grove has entered into $749,000 worth of contracts with ICE since the HERO Center was inaugurated in 2020. Bailey said there was no blowback about the arrangement until a few months ago, when members of the All Saints Lutheran Church demanded an end to the relationship.
He also said he’s unaware of how ICE uses the facility. “I don’t exactly know what they are doing,” Bailey said.
Still, the HERO center has become a lightning rod for Jones and other members of her church who show up at immigration hearings to support migrants and make backpacks “so when they get deported they have some stuff.”
Jones, a retired 4th-grader teacher, said her community did not know of ICE’s yearslong use of the HERO center until she attended a pro-immigration rally at the Minnesota Capitol in May. An advocate with a group from another town asked her, “Do you know ICE is training people there?” Jones said.
Related: Minnesota sheriff’s departments seek to cooperate with ICE
“We just don’t want ICE in our city,” she said. “We thought that if we talked to (city officials) before they renewed the contract, they’d understand.”
But the contract was renewed for another year, with a renewal date of Aug. 1 and a value of $74,600.
Peggy Nelson, another member of the church’s immigrant advocacy group, said she was also unaware of ICE’s use of the center until very recently. “I just didn’t know we were training ICE agents in our own backyard,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Rev. Jules Erickson, pastor of All Saints Lutheran Church, said there is a “protocol” to try to protect immigrants if ICE enters the church.
“This has created a calm place for them,” he said.
Members of his congregation in Cottage Grove, and some who live in Woodbury, are determined to continue their protests, saying their cities should be welcoming places for immigrants.
“It’s not the Minnesota way,” Jones said of her city’s accommodation to ICE.
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