WASHINGTON – The Trump administration declared victory Thursday as border czar Tom Homan said an “unprecedented amount of cooperation” from state and local officials and the detention of about 4,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota allowed for an end to the massive immigration crackdown in the state.
“Operation Metro Surge is ending,” Homan said.
But what has Minnesota done to make it less of a “sanctuary” state in the eyes of Homan and President Donald Trump, whom Homan said “concurred” that the aggressive enforcement immigration in the state should end?
The Trump administration had characterized Minnesota as a lawless “sanctuary” state in large part over the issue of detainers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sends to jails seeking them to detain inmates after their release dates.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has issued a legal opinion that says Minnesota law barred county jails from holding an inmate past their release date.
Related: ‘Sanctuary’ label obscures actual levels of ICE cooperation across Minnesota
Yet Homan said he appreciated something Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told him – that nothing in Minnesota law prevented county jails from alerting ICE when an inmate the agency seeks to take into custody is being released.
“We now have the ability to arrest criminal aliens in the safety of a jail at the time they are being released like we’ve done in other states,” Homan said.
Yet many county jails in the state have already been doing this, and some have said ICE had not appeared to pick up the person they sought.
The Winona County Sheriff’s Office recently complied with an ICE request to inform federal agents about an inmate’s release date. This type of cooperation is part of a longstanding policy, Sheriff Ron Ganrude said.
The policy has been in place “as long as I’ve been sheriff,” and likely well before then, said Ganrude, first elected in 2014.
Ganrude estimated ICE has historically been interested in about one inmate per month. The jail doesn’t keep people in custody beyond what local charges allow, and the frequency of ICE response varies.
“Sometimes they’d come, sometimes they wouldn’t come,” he said.
Homan also said he has “directed the strategic placement of officers in certain areas of the state” to facilitate transfers. But he did not provide details.
Hennepin County jail, which a MinnPost analysis found to have one of the lowest compliance rates when it comes to the transfer of inmates to ICE, once had an office for ICE agents on jail property, according to former Hennepin County Sheriff Rick Stanek. That office closed after he left, Stanek said.
Related: Is Minnesota a ‘sanctuary state’? Clarifying law vs. language from immigration hearing in Congress
It’s not clear what steps Hennepin County jail will adopt to cooperate more fully with ICE. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for information.
Even so, Homan was optimistic about ICE cooperation with county jails.
“I have not met with one county jail that says ‘no’ to us,” he said. “They want to work with us.”
Homan also said there was another reason the Trump administration had accomplished its goal in Minnesota. He said the number of “Quick Reaction Forces,” or QRFs, which have been responding to what he characterized as dangerous clashes between protesters and federal immigration agents, had declined in recent days.
“The QRF deployments have dropped dramatically,” Homan said. “Because we have less of the agitators that cross the line.”
Homan also said that help from local law enforcement agencies which was “once sporadic” has increased.
“They have come to assist us to make sure our officers and the person we have arrested leave the scene safely,” Homan said.
‘An albatross around the neck’
Gov. Tim Walz said Minnesota is addressing immigration in exactly the same way today as it was three weeks ago, or three months ago, or three years ago”
The MinnPost analysis of compliance with detainer requests showed that state prisons consistently transferred inmates to ICE.
To Walz, the end of the surge was a result of better communication – and politics. He said the deaths of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti resulted in the loss of public support for Operation Metro Surge, which the governor said became for the administration “an albatross around their neck.”
“My take was: They knew they needed to get out of here, but in very Trumpian fashion they needed to save face,” Walz said.
Polls show the public increasingly said ICE and Border Patrol have used excessive force in Minnesota. A poll released by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on Thursday showed Republicans now hold a narrow 4-percentage-point edge over Democrats on which party Americans trust to handle immigration, down from a 13-percentage-point advantage in October.
Walz also said Homan’s willingness to meet with Minnesota officials opened the door to ending Operation Metro Surge.
“I think, probably, what changed was that when Tom Homan came here, I could get a conversation with someone,” Walz said. “Not a single interaction (with Department of Homeland Security Secretary) Kristi Noem, (Border Patrol officer Greg) Bovino, or any of the rest of them, and an arrogance that it didn’t matter.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor, credited the people of Minnesota for the end of Operation Metro Surge.
“Minnesotans stood together, stared down ICE, and never blinked,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “Our state has shown the world how to protect our democracy and take care of our neighbors.”
Like Walz and other Democrats, Klobuchar said a thorough investigation of the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti is needed, as is “a complete overhaul” of ICE.
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-7th District, however, praised Homan for “a job well done.”
“Local law enforcement is now cooperating with federal law enforcement in Tim Walz’s Minnesota thanks to President Trump’s leadership,” Emmer said. “We are hopeful that this partnership will continue — without local or state interference — to ensure the worst of the worst are being removed from our communities.”
While Homan said Operation Metro Surge is over, and the state would return to the “normal footprint” of ICE agents, which is about 300 officers, the border czar said an unspecified number of Quick Reaction Force units will remain “until we are assured the agitators have diminished.”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is running for U.S. Senate, said she is skeptical about the end of the immigration crackdown.
“I’m relieved that this violent paramilitary force will be removed from our streets, but I won’t believe it until they’re actually gone,” she said in a statement.
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