Court records provide glimpse into Twin Cities ICE operation

Since Operation Metro Surge started on Dec. 1, federal officials have given broad arrest numbers with little verification, provided terse written answers to specific questions and made sensational claims on social media.

But the Trump administration has been most forthcoming in court, where federal prosecutors work to prevent a judge from releasing immigrants taken into detention.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reviewed 37 habeas petitions filed in Minnesota’s federal court system between Dec.1 and Dec. 19 to better understand the government’s rationale for how they determine who they’re detaining and deporting. Many immigrants have filed the petitions to secure a hearing that could put them on track to be released from custody.

The petitions provide a small glimpse into the enforcement action as it approaches the end of its first month. The filings do not shed much light on the most pressing questions surrounding the operation: the end goal of Operation Metro Surge, how long it may last or whether an influx of agents is coming. Few of the government’s responses even mention the operation by name, making it difficult to distinguish whether a person was detained in connection with Metro Surge or routine immigration sweeps.

But there is a common pattern.

The government argues that detention is mandatory and the person is not eligible for release throughout the duration of their immigration case. Those arguments align with the Trump administration’s goal of boosting the number of immigrants in detention.

“For more than a century, this country’s immigration laws have authorized immigration officials to charge noncitizens as removable from the country, arrest those subject to removal, and detain them during removal proceedings,” an assistant U.S. attorney wrote in response to an Ethiopian national’s petition to have a bond hearing in immigration court. It’s a repeated refrain in many of the filings.

Many of the detainees asked the courts to temporarily block the feds from moving them to out-of-state immigration holding facilities while their case plays out. According to the documents and defense attorneys who handle these cases, attorneys for the federal government have typically not protested against these requests. However, some immigrants were still moved to facilities in Texas or Missouri shortly after their habeas case was filed.

In six instances, judges quickly released the petitioner before the government could respond. More than a dozen of the cases are in their infancy and await a reply by the U.S. government.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions for this story.

Since President Trump took office in January and increased efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, habeas corpus petitions have frequently been filed in Minnesota’s federal district court.

Last spring, a number of students at Minnesota universities and colleges filed similar petitions when they were detained or suddenly saw their student statuses revoked as a way to fight their potential deportations. Most of the students were successful, including a University of Minnesota graduate student from Turkey and a Minnesota State University, Mankato, student from Bangladesh. After increasing scrutiny from the judiciary, the Trump administration in April abruptly reversed course and restored student visa registrations.

Filing habeas petitions remains “the only tool available anymore” to secure release for immigrants taken into custody, Sandison said.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s letting up right now,” Sandison said, referring to the operation. “We kind of expect an increase and anticipate a surge [of arrests] around the holidays.”