Minneapolis, United States. The Trump administration is immediately withdrawing about 700 federal immigration enforcement agents from Minnesota, White House border czar Tom Homan said on Wednesday. About 2,000 agents will remain in the state.
Drawdown follows Minneapolis deployment and protests
U.S. President Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed immigration enforcement agents in and around Minneapolis this year to detain and deport migrants, leading to angry and sometimes violent confrontations with residents and street protests nationwide.
Homan said the deportation campaign was in the interest of public safety and said the administration was partially reducing the deployment due to what he described as “unprecedented” cooperation from Minnesota’s elected sheriffs who run county jails, without providing additional details.
Federal mission amid political backlash
Trump sent Homan to Minnesota in late January to address outrage in Minneapolis that intensified after immigration agents twice fatally shot U.S. citizens.
The surge has been opposed and denounced since January by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other Democrats, who have called for the withdrawal of a federal deployment they said was 20 times the normal level of immigration enforcement in the state and outnumbered local police forces.
Administration says enforcement will continue nationwide
“Let me be clear, President Trump fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country,” Homan said at a news conference. “President Trump made a promise. And we have not directed otherwise.”
Trump’s deportation efforts, part of a nationwide campaign, have triggered protests, drawn criticism from some Republicans, and prompted rebukes from federal judges asked to rule on the legality of migrants’ detentions, with judges saying their orders are being defied.
Operation Metro Surge and future staffing goals
The reduction announced on Wednesday still leaves an unusually high number of immigration agents in Minnesota, a figure Trump officials had described as unprecedented only weeks earlier.
In early January, the administration sent about 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota under Operation Metro Surge. Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, described it as the “largest immigration operation ever” on January 6, a day before Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by an ICE officer in her car. Hundreds more agents were deployed as January continued.
Homan said his goal was to return to the usual force of about 150 federal immigration agents in the state, but he did not say when that would be possible.
How do you think the reduced deployment will affect immigration enforcement and public tensions in Minnesota?
