Homan: Local authorities’ cooperation with federal forces ‘a win’ in Minnesota as surge winds down

More than 1,000 federal immigration agents have left Minnesota, White House border czar Tom Homan said Sunday, as he applauded what he called additional coordination with Minnesota authorities as “a win.”

As of Monday and Tuesday, hundreds more federal officers are expected to leave Minnesota. Homan appeared Sunday morning on CBS’ “Face the Nation" and reflected on federal authorities’ massive immigration crackdown in the state over recent months.

Last week, Homan announced the phasing down of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigration enforcement wave that started in December.

“I think things are going in the right direction, and I got faith they’ll continue that way,” Homan said.

As most of the thousands of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers that are currently working in Minnesota begin to depart, small teams of agents will still stay on the ground for a variety of continued initiatives, he said.

“We’ll get back to the original footprint with the exception of the agents there to do the fraud investigation, … the agents investigating the church issue where the people went into the church, they’ll stay and get that work done," Homan said, referring to a demonstration held at Cities Church in St. Paul last month.

There will also be “a small force, a security force” that will respond to scenes when federal agents are confronted by “agitators.”

Homan cited cooperation with local authorities as “a win we had in Minnesota … because now we have agreements and coordination with jails."

However, a large subset of Minnesota sheriffs who responded to the Minnesota Star Tribune last week said they hadn’t changed their immigration enforcement policies or signed a new agreement with federal officials.

In particular, Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said her office had not made changes in its policies. The Hennepin County jail regularly receives “detainers” from ICE to hold people for up to two days longer than their normal release so immigration agents can pick them up for deportation proceedings. But, the sheriff’s policy is to not comply with those requests because it has been found unconstitutional to do so, sheriff officials have said.

The Minneapolis Police Department said its policies were also unchanged.

In a response to Homan’s interview on Sunday, a spokesperson from the office of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, “We have been clear there was no capitulation or deal made, and have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“We took a lot of bad people off the streets, so I think Minnesota, Minneapolis is safer because of it,” he said.

Homan also alluded to agreements with improved federal access to jails and prisons.

“I’ve gotten agreements in Minnesota I never thought we would be able to get,” Homan said.

The Minnesota Department of Corrections, which has launched a separate webpage to combat DHS “misinformation,” said it honors ICE detainers.

During the “Face the Nation” interview, Homan addressed several criticisms by Democrats who have argued federal agents should be identifiable when out enforcing and should not engage in racial profiling.

Homan said threats against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were up almost 1,500%. Homan said officers aren’t racially profiling people they stop.

“That’s just not occurring,” he said. “ICE will detain, briefly detain and question, but question somebody based on reasonable suspicion. It has nothing to do with racial profiling.”

When pressed about if surges of similar size -- there were about 3,000 federal officers in Minnesota -- could happen in other cities and states in the future, Homan said it depended on the situation but that he has said federal authorities need to “flood the zone” in sanctuary cities.

“We know we have a problem [in] sanctuary cities because we know they’re releasing public safety threats,” Homan said.

As far as the investigations into the deadly shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the nonfatal shooting of a man in north Minneapolis, Homan said that he would see where the internal investigations lead.