Trump to end deportation surge in Minnesota, local officials remain cautious

U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to end the immigration-enforcement surge in Minnesota, White House "border czar" Tom Homan announced on Thursday, promising a significant drawdown of federal immigration officers will return to their original posts over the coming week. Local officials in Minnesota remain cautious.

Under Operation Metro Surge, Trump, a Republican, had deployed about 3,000 armed immigration agents by late January to deport migrants in Minnesota. He has touted it as the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, and it came over the objections and condemnations of Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, and local people who filled the streets of the state's biggest cities in protest, sometimes by the thousands.

Trump's immigration crackdown in Minnesota became one of the most protested decisions in his presidency, after immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens during their deployment in Minneapolis in January. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman, was shot and killed with a gun wound in her head by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on January 7. About two weeks later, on January 24, Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked at a veteran hospital in Minneapolis, was shot and killed after being pinned down by a group of federal officers.

Although Homan claimed ICE would be back if needed, and promised the mass deportation would continue during a Fox News interview on Thursday night, his earlier remarks showed a rare retreat on immigration enforcement by the Trump administration.

"I have proposed, and President Trump has concurred, that this surge operation conclude," Homan told reporters at a news conference at a federal field office outside Minneapolis on Tuesday. "Operation Metro Surge is ending."

Promises of mass deportations had fueled Trump's 2024 campaign, but Reuters/Ipsos polls in January found support for Trump's immigration agenda fell to the lowest point in his presidency as immigration officers were deployed in military-style gear in cities across the country, prompting massive protests.

Some Minnesota officials remain skeptical of the federal drawdown. "We receive the news of the alleged end of Operation Metro Surge with some skepticism," said Mary Moriarty, the attorney for Hennepin County.

Walz said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the federal drawdown. "The fact of the matter is, they left us with deep damage, generational trauma. They left us with economic ruin in some cases," said Walz on Tuesday.

"The long road to recovery starts now," Walz said. "The impact on our economy, our schools, and people's lives won't be reversed overnight. That work starts today."

A week ago, Homan announced that about 700 out of 3,000 immigration agents would be withdrawn. Without providing specific numbers, he said on Thursday that many of the remaining agents deployed from other states would be sent home in the coming week, citing, in part, what he called "unprecedented levels of coordination" with Minnesota law enforcement. Before January's surge, about 150 immigration agents worked in Minnesota, according to the Trump administration.

Trump has said the surge was in the interest of public safety, describing many migrants, in sweeping terms, as violent criminals or fraudsters. Walz and other Minnesotans said the sometimes-violent federal surge has only degraded public safety and violated the constitutional rights of both immigrants and Americans.

(With inputs from Reuters)