Homeland Security presence in Minnesota dwarfs Twin Cities’ largest police forces

A thousand new federal agents could soon be operating in Minnesota, joining what the Department of Homeland Security has already called the largest immigration enforcement operation in history.

The new forces come as President Donald Trump vows “reckoning” and “retribution” against Minnesota in a Jan. 13 social media post.

The increased federal presence in the wake of the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good by immigration agent Jonathan Ross has amplified tensions with city residents and local officials who allege that DHS agents are indiscriminately detaining citizens, adopting increasingly aggressive tactics and straining resources.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Jan. 6 that her agency sent 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to the Twin Cities — a federal presence that far surpasses any single Minnesota police agency.

She later told Fox News “hundreds” more federal agents were headed to Minnesota — a number that jumped to a thousand incoming U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel by Monday. Noem has cited the safety of existing agents as one reason for the increase.

In a Monday news conference announcing a lawsuit against the DHS, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the scale of the enforcement surge “wildly disproportionate.”

A potential 3,000 federal agents from ICE and CBP is equivalent to five times the manpower of the Minneapolis Police Department.

It’s unclear how the number of ICE agents compares to high-profile actions in other large cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, the federal government sent more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to manage protests, but Trump pulled National Guard troops out of L.A. and Chicago at the end of last year after hitting legal roadblocks.

There were reports of 200 ICE agents stationed in New Orleans who have since been moved to Minneapolis.

The last time an armed government presence on this scale was deployed in the Twin Cities was in 2021, when about 3,000 Minnesota National Guard soldiers were activated during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Before that, the Guard activated about 7,100 soldiers in 2020 to quell unrest following Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd.

The lawsuit announced Monday alleges Minneapolis police responded to more than 80 emergency calls related to DHS immigration actions since Dec. 9, and that the department clocked more than 3,000 hours in overtime since Good’s death, costing the city about $2 million.

“Police resources are indeed stretched thin,” Frey said in the news conference about the lawsuit.

The Pew Research Center estimated in 2023 that Minnesota is home to 130,000 immigrants without legal status — less than 1% of the nation’s total.

About 9% of ICE’s 22,000 personnel are currently in Minnesota.

“There are countless more people who are undocumented in Florida and Texas and Utah,” Frey said Monday. “Why are they in these much smaller cities in the middle of the Midwest?”

The Minnesota Star Tribune has been unable to verify that number, and the agency has not released a list of those detained.