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immigration
'Not an Anomaly... A Blueprint': Homan Says Minnesota ICE Surge Ending—But Mass Deportations Aren't
"Just as Minnesotans fought back, Congress must now follow suit and refuse to fund DHS agencies that enable such reckless and dangerous acts that, in some cases, have killed people in broad daylight," said one watchdog leader.
Feb 12, 2026
While people across Minnesota and beyond welcomed "border czar" Tom Homan's Thursday announcement that "Operation Metro Surge is ending," he also made clear that the administration's deadly immigration operations still threaten other US communities, declaring that President Donald Trump "made a promise of mass deportation, and that's what this country's gonna get."
Homan said last week that 700 agents were leaving the state, but around 2,000 would remain. However, as outrage from the public and local officials persisted, he announced Thursday that "I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude. A significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through the next week."
The administration's "tactical withdrawal" came just a day after a car crash involving federal agents led Democratic Saint Paul Mayor Kaohly Her to renew her call for an immediate end to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation, which has involved officers with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorizing Twin Cities residents for over two months—and even fatally shooting Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
"Today's announcement reflects what happens when communities organize, speak out, and refuse to accept fear as public policy," said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Minnesota chapter. "This is a hard-fought community victory. But it comes after real trauma, real harm, and the loss of life. That cannot be ignored."
"This moment belongs to the community," Hussein added. "Faith leaders, organizers, tenants, youth, and everyday residents stood together and demanded dignity. That collective action forced change. And we will remain vigilant."
After ICE officer Jonathan Ross killed Good, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told the agency to "get the fuck out" of his city. After Homan confirmed the operation is ending, the Democrat acknowledged the strong local pushback to the invasion, saying on social media that "they thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation."
"These patriots of Minneapolis are showing that it's not just about resistance—standing with our neighbors is deeply American," Frey said. "This operation has been catastrophic for our neighbors and businesses, and now it's time for a great comeback. We will show the same commitment to our immigrant residents and endurance in this reopening, and I'm hopeful the whole country will stand with us as we move forward."
Outgoing Democratic Gov. Tim Walz similarly said that "the long road to recovery starts now. The impact on our economy, our schools, and people's lives won't be reversed overnight. That work starts today."
Minneapolis Community Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Congresswoman Angie Craig (D-Minn.), and US Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) were also among the Minnesotans welcoming the development. The senator, who is running to replace Walz, said that "Minnesotans stood together, stared down ICE, and never blinked."
Not everyone critical of the operation has been satisfied by local Democrats' response. Progressive organizer and lawyer Aaron Regunberg said Thursday that it is "important to remember that this victory belongs 100%—literally one hundred percent—to the people of Minneapolis. Elected Dems did essentially nothing to bring this about. Our political leadership is dogshit. Everyday Americans, on the other hand, can really do amazing things."
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said that "Minneapolis residents' heroic resistance has resulted in this retreat. We hope the people of Minneapolis can start to heal from the monthslong siege of their city, the murder of their neighbors, and the tragedy of families ripped apart by the Trump administration."
Mitchell pointed out that the end of the Minnesota operation comes on the eve of a likely DHS shutdown due to a funding fight in Congress, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. Because of their slim margins and Senate rules, most bills need some Democratic support to get through the upper chamber to Trump's desk.
"Donald Trump is trying to distract us and turn our attention away from the growing resistance in Congress to funding his campaign of cruelty and retribution," Mitchell said, taking aim at not only the president but also his deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, "and their cronies" who "refuse to make this agency and its criminal activities accountable to anyone."
"Democrats are using their power by voting NO as a bloc and pledging not one dollar more in DHS funding until demands for accountability are met," he highlighted. Various Democratic leaders have made demands for reforming the department, and specifically its immigration operations, and growing shares of the party's caucus and the public have even called for abolishing ICE.
Progressive Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, said on social media that "ending this operation is not enough. We need justice and accountability. That starts with independent investigations into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, economic restitution for businesses impacted, abolishing ICE, and the impeachment of Kristi Noem."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "the people of Minnesota set the example of bravery, compassion, and strength against masked, lawless federal agents who vastly underestimated the power of community and peaceful protest."
While calling Homan's announcement "a crucial win," Gilbert also noted that congressional Republicans and the president gave ICE an extra $75 billion in their so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. She stressed that Trump's federal government "is still stripping families from their homes and throwing them into unlivable conditions in detention centers across the country in a militarized mass detention campaign. And there is no sign from the Trump administration that it plans on doing anything—including arresting and persecuting small children—differently."
Recent reporting—including by Wired, which obtained related federal records—has revealed ICE's ongoing expansion efforts across the country. As Wired executive editor Brian Barrett wrote Wednesday:
Its occupation of Minneapolis is not an anomaly; it's a blueprint. Communities deserve to know that they might be next. People have a right to know who their neighbors are, especially when they amount to an invading force.
What we've reported so far fills in only part of the puzzle. It shows what ICE had planned as of January, not beyond. More than 100 addresses remain unknown, some of them in high-concentration states like New York and New Jersey. The specific nature of the work being done in some of these offices remains unclear, as is how long ICE plans to be there.
The need to resolve these questions is urgent as ICE continues to metastasize. At the same time, the Department of Justice has become increasingly aggressive in its dealings with journalists, and has repeatedly claimed that revealing any identifying information about ICE agents or their activities is "doxing." In Minnesota and beyond, ICE and CBP agents have treated observers as enemies, arresting and reportedly harassing them with increased frequency. The DOJ has been quick to label any perceived interference with ICE activity as a crime.
While Barrett pledged that Wired "will continue to report on this story until we have the answers," Gilbert argued to the public that "the victory in Minnesota should galvanize our efforts to fight these atrocities."
"Just as Minnesotans fought back, Congress must now follow suit and refuse to fund DHS agencies that enable such reckless and dangerous acts that, in some cases, have killed people in broad daylight," Gilbert added. "We need drastic reforms now."
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Trump's ICE Goons Are Targeting Hard Workers, Our Friends, Neighbors, and Families—Not the 'Worst of the Worst'
Showing that only 14% of 400,000 people arrested by federal agents have violent criminal records, leaked figures from the Department of Homeland Security have not received the news coverage they deserve.
Feb 12, 2026
Trump is lying about ICE arrests. He said his deportation machine would go after only the “worst of the worst.”
According to newly leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year have either been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.
The vast majority of immigrants jailed by ICE have no criminal record at all. A few have previously been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as overstaying their visas or permission to be in the country.
(In the past, alleged violations of U.S.immigration laws were normally adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.)
A large proportion of the people ICE has arrested are now in jail — some 73,000 — and being held without bail. They’re in what the Department of Homeland Security calls “detention facilities.”
Many lack adequate medical attention.
The Times reported this morning that a New Jersey woman, Leqaa Kordia, who has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, for nearly a year, suffered a seizure after she fell and hit her head. She was involved in an pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University in 2024 and detained for overstaying her visa, but has never been charged with a crime. A judge has twice ruled that she is not a threat to the United States.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered an external monitor to oversee California’s largest immigration detention center, California City Detention Facility, citing “shockingly deficient” medical care, including cases where detainees were denied medication for serious conditions.
A 2025 U.S. Senate investigation uncovered dozens of cases of medical neglect, with instances of detainees left without care for days and others being forced to compete for clean water.
Reports from early 2026 indicate that even children in family detention centers face poor conditions, including being returned to custody after hospitalization for severe illness without receiving necessary medication.
People held in detention facilities are deprived of the most basic means of communication to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email. Some have been split off from the rest of their families, held hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Some of them are children.
Many are in the United States legally, awaiting determinations about their status as refugees fleeing violence or retribution in their home countries. Or they have green cards that would normally allow them to remain in the United States. Others have been in the United States for decades as law-abiding members of their communities.
They are hardly the “worst of the worst.” Many are like our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who came to the United States seeking better lives. We are a nation of immigrants. While this doesn’t excuse being here without proper documentation, it doesn’t justify the draconian and inhumane measures being utilized by the Trump regime.
These leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security have not received the news coverage they deserve.
Moreover, these data pertain only to ICE. They don’t include arrests by Border Patrol agents deployed by the Trump administration to places far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people — including U.S. citizens — to question them about their immigration status.
This is a moral blight on America, a crime against humanity. As Americans, we are complicit.
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Sharing of IRS Data With DHS for Trump's Mass Deportations Has Gone as Horribly as Expected
"Sharing this private taxpayer data creates chaos, and as we’ve seen this past year, if federal agents use this private information to track down individuals, it can endanger lives.”
Feb 11, 2026
Privacy officials at the Internal Revenue Service were sidelined in discussions last year about the Department of Homeland Security's demand for taxpayer data about people the Trump administration believed were not authorized to be in the US, and a court filing by the IRS Wednesday may have illustrated some of the officials' worst fears about the plan.
According to a sworn declaration by Dottie Romo, the chief risk and control officer at the IRS, the agency improperly shared private taxpayer data on thousands of people with immigration enforcement officers.
The data was shared, the Washington Post reported, even in cases in which DHS officials could not provide data needed to positively identify a specific individual.
Two federal courts have preliminarily found that the IRS and DHS acted unlawfully when they moved forward with the plan to share taxpayer addresses and have blocked the agencies from continuing the arrangement. A third case filed by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Alan Morrison, and Raise the Floor Alliance is on appeal in the DC Circuit.
But before the agreement was enjoined by the courts, DHS requested the addresses of 1.2 million people from the IRS, and the tax agency sent data on 47,000 people in response.
Thousands of people's confidential data was erroneously included in the release, sources who were familiar with the matter told the Post.
Despite Romo's sworm statement saying an error had been made by the agencies, a DHS spokesperson continued to defend the data sharing agreement, telling the Post that “the government is finally doing what it should have all along.”
“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, and identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense,” the spokesperson told the newspaper. “With the IRS information specifically, DHS plans to focus on enforcing long-neglected criminal laws that apply to illegal aliens."
Records have shown that a large majority of people who have been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents since President Donald Trump began his mass deportation and detention campaign have not had criminal records, despite the administration's persistent claims that officers are arresting "the worst of the worst" violent criminals.
Undocumented immigrants are also statistically less likely than citizens to commit crimes, and have not been found to attempt to participate in US elections illegally.
When DHS initially asked for taxpayer data last year, IRS employees denounced the request as "Nixonian" and warned that a data sharing arrangement would be illegal. Providing taxpayer information to third parties is punishable by civil and criminal penalties, and an IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty in 2023 to leaking the tax returns of Trump and other wealthy people.
Trump has sued the IRS for $10 billion in damages due to the leak.
Romo on Wednesday did not state whether the IRS would inform individuals whose confidential data was sent to immigration officials; they could be entitled to financial compensation.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted that judging from Trump's lawsuit against the IRS, "thousands of trillions of dollars" should be paid to those affected by the data breach.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said the "breach of confidential information was part of the reason we filed our lawsuit in the first place."
"Sharing this private taxpayer data creates chaos," she said, "and as we’ve seen this past year, if federal agents use this private information to track down individuals, it can endanger lives.”
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