Photo: Alamy
Border Czar Tom Homan announced the proposed end of the weeks-long immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota on Thursday, highlighting state and local officials’ cooperation in successfully bringing the surge to a close.
“With that success that has been made arresting public safety threats and other priorities since this surge operation began, as well as the unprecedented levels of coordination we have obtained from state officials and local law enforcement, I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude,” Homan said during a briefing early Thursday morning.
Homan said that the pullback on federal resources in Minnesota had already begun.
“A significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue to the next week,” he noted. “We have a lot of work to do across this country to remove public safety risk, who shouldn’t even be in this country.”
Homan noted that federal law enforcement agents in Minnesota will either return to their duty stations or be assigned elsewhere.
He also hit back at critics who claim that this drawdown of federal enforcement in Minnesota represents a diminishment of federal immigration operations or mass deportations.
“For those that say that we are backing down from immigration enforcement or the promise of mass deportations, you are simply wrong,” he stated. “Look at the data. Record number of arrests and deportations under President Trump’s first year, and we’ll continue that effort. Prioritizing public threats and national security threats doesn’t mean we’re forgetting about everybody else…that’s just a stone-cold fact.”
Homan’s announcement on the Minnesota surge operation comes just a handful of weeks after he took the reins on ICE operations on the ground, following significant unrest in the urban area of Minneapolis in response to the large federal presence.
At that time, Homan said that there needed to be significant cooperation from state and local officials on immigration enforcement operations if a drawdown was going to happen. As reported by RSBN, the Trump administration requested that ICE be allowed to gain access to illegal aliens being held in jails, rather than having to go after criminals on the street.
It appears Homan has received the cooperation he was looking for.
This newest development also comes amid the withdrawal of federal troops from Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. President Trump confirmed this coming pullback on National Guardsmen in late December, noting, “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”