Tom Homan announces that Trump’s immigration operation in Minnesota has ended

Tom Homan, dubbed the “border czar” by President Donald Trump, announced Thursday that the brutal anti-immigration operation launched in early December in Minnesota by the White House “has concluded.” “I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude,” Homan said at a press conference held in Minneapolis early in the morning. The Trump administration ordered the withdrawal of 700 federal agents from the Democratic city last week, and Homan said “a significant drawdown” of personnel would continue into next week.

For more than two months — 72 days, to be exact — a detachment of up to 3,000 federal agents, including members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, have been deployed in the city and the state, both of which are governed by Democrats.

During this time, Trump’s immigration police have carried out illegal detentions, arrested children, such as five-year-old Ecuadorian Liam Conejo Ramos, and members of these federal agencies have killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Homan spoke of “unprecedented levels of coordination” since his arrival to take command on the ground. He did so as a replacement for Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who was the face of the operation until the image crisis over Pretti’s death forced the U.S. president to dismiss him.

Cooperation

In his speech, Homan tried to sell the deployment as a “success,” and claimed that local and state authorities had cooperated after refusing to do so for weeks. However, it is clear to everyone that the White House is retreating after losing the battle for public opinion. Homan did not provide details about this supposed cooperation and it is evident that neighborhood resistance, especially in the city of Minneapolis, has twisted the arm of U.S. immigration authorities, who are committed to fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to launch “the largest deportation in history.”

The border czar said Thursday that “Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals” and spoke of “some 4,000 arrests” made in the last 72 days, although he did not give details on which of those arrests were of people with criminal records. The Trump administration promised that this operation would focus on “the worst of the worst” (undocumented immigrants with convictions for rape or murder), but the data belies the claim that these were the only targets of immigration police in Minnesota.

The announcement of the withdrawal comes as both parties negotiate a funding package for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Congress. If no agreement is reached to limit ICE’s powers, it could force a partial government shutdown, the second in two weeks, after the last one, which was technical, was resolved in a matter of days.

Since the start of Operation Metro Surge, residents across the state have organized to repel what they considered an occupation, given that the 3,000 agents sent by Trump far exceed the number of Minneapolis police officers.

They set up chat groups on the encrypted messaging network Signal, where they exchanged information about sightings of ICE agents, who were circulating in masks, armed to the teeth, and in unmarked cars. When they discovered an operation in progress, they would go to the location to record it and disrupt it with the sound of their whistles, which became the symbol of resistance in recent weeks. It was during two of these encounters that agents killed Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a Minneapolis veterans’ hospital, and Good, a poet and mother of three. Both were 37 years old.

Neither of these two deaths has led to the arrest of those responsible. In both cases, the Trump administration defended the officers by portraying the victims as “domestic terrorists.”

The Minneapolis City Council reacted to Homan’s announcement with “cautious optimism.” “They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation,” Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement sent to the media. “These patriots of Minneapolis are showing that it’s not just about resistance — standing with our neighbors is deeply American. This operation has been catastrophic for our businesses, and now is the time for a major recovery. We will demonstrate the same commitment to our immigrant residents and the same perseverance in this reopening, and I hope that the entire country will support us so that we can move forward together.”

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