The path to a pardon in Minnesota starts with the Clemency Review Commission. On Friday, it is scheduled to hear from 27 people who are seeking pardons. At least one of the applicants is in immigration detention outside the state. Immigration status is a driving force behind several of the applications.

Legal experts say that pardons can be an effective tool for immigrants who had permanent status in the U.S. but lost it due to a criminal conviction. In some cases, it may be the only tool left.

St. Paul-based lawyer Nico Ratkowski said he used this strategy when representing a woman on probation for welfare fraud.

“That was causing her to be at extreme risk of deportation, to be ineligible for a green card,” he said. “I just gave it a shot.”

It worked. In 2021, the State Board of Pardons granted his client the first “full and absolute pardon” in 35 years.

“I don’t think that would have occurred without the immigration angle,” Ratkowski said.

The case taught him that pardons can be a powerful tool for immigrants in specific circumstances. Since then, he’s trained other lawyers in this approach. He said growing awareness, plus heightened stress over immigration status, is leading more people to try it, but he said it’s not an option for everyone.

‘An extraordinary act’

Those in charge of recommending or granting pardons consider a range of factors, such as the severity of a crime, how old an individual was when they were convicted, the time that has passed and evidence that they’ve turned their lives around. Crimes like theft, for example, make for easier cases than violent crimes. Experts say the process can also be political and slow.

“If someone is facing immediate deportation, they're never going to have enough time to finish the pardon process,” Ratkowski said.

The Clemency Review Commission is a relatively new board, created by the legislature in 2023, that investigates and hears applications. It does not have the power to grant pardons, but it makes recommendations to the Board of Pardons, which does have that authority. That board is made up of Minnesota’s governor, attorney general and chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time. It meets twice a year.

Once an individual has a pardon certificate, they can bring it to their immigration case, Ratkowski said.

Former immigration judge Ryan Wood saw a few pardon cases, but he said he can count them on one hand.

“It was relatively rare when I was on the bench, because it's an extraordinary act, and they only apply to certain crimes and for certain individuals,” he said.

It only works for people who once had permanent resident cards or entered the U.S. with lawful status. And for crimes involving domestic violence or firearms, for example, Wood said a pardon has no effect on a deportation order.

Still, in a subset of cases in Minnesota, a pardon could make a difference.

‘A unique situation’

Tina Huynh-Chandee and approximately 20 of her husband’s friends and family are planning to show up in person for his hearing Friday. Her husband is At “Ricky” Chandee. He was expected to join the meeting from ICE detention in El Paso, Texas, but Huynh-Chandee said he was transferred Thursday night to a new facility. She and her husband’s lawyer said he will not be able to appear before the commission.

His loved ones hope “to show the committee, and show Ricky himself, that we're all there still behind him, fighting for him,” Huynh-Chandee said. With his transfer, they will also make his case in his stead.

Chandee faces deportation over a second-degree assault conviction from 1993. The couple considered the pardon route years ago, but a lawyer told them it would not work. They took different advice this year and applied before Chandee was arrested by ICE. Huynh-Chandee believes there is a chance he could avoid deportation.

“I honestly don't know,” Huynh-Chandee said. “It's 50-50. Like with everything else we're going through. So we're just hoping for the best result.”

Three other people with hearings have final deportation orders that relate to past convictions. MPR News has not been able to reach them or their lawyers, but their applications have some things in common — with each other and with Chandee’s story.

All four men came to the U.S. as refugees from Laos when they were children. Nearly all of their criminal convictions, for crimes including receiving stolen property, committing a crime for the benefit of a gang and kidnapping, are more than 20 years old.

The applications cite hardships like trauma, addiction and gang violence that lawyers, supporters and the applicants say contributed to their crimes. They detail the men’s roles in their families as caregivers for parents and children. Two of the applications mention relatives who fought in the U.S. Secret War in Laos.

Between Dec. 1 and mid-March, about 90 people who were born in Laos and arrested in Minnesota were detained by ICE. That’s according to statistics the Deportation Data Project obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The data is likely incomplete, as MPR News has reported. Of those 90 people, it showed 59 had criminal convictions that were more than 20 years old.

Ryan Wood, the former immigration judge, said pardons may apply to more cases in Minnesota than some other states because it has a large refugee population. For refugees with convictions, changing federal and international policies have increased their risk deportation.

“We’ve seen the government exercise power that we've never seen before with specific countries like Laos, Vietnam, even Cuba,” he said.

In the past, several countries refused to accept many deportees from the U.S. But some, including Laos, have shifted their stance under pressure from the Trump administration. Wood said the federal government is also using less discretion in cases where deportation orders are many years old. All of this, he said, could lead more people to try to resolve those orders through pardons.

Wood said Congress could provide a different remedy, by creating a statute of limitations for deportation orders, where they could no longer count after a certain number of years.

“It’s an enormous burden on the system where we're not letting bygones be bygones,” he said.

For its part, the Department of Homeland Security has celebrated the arrests of people with criminal records, arguing the Trump administration’s approach is making communities safer. It condemned the state of California’s recent pardon of an immigrant with a 1997 conviction for attempted murder. DHS called that move “insanity.”

Whatever Minnesota’s Clemency Review Commission determines Friday, decisions will be up to the Board of Pardons, which next meets in June.

May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, has long been a global movement for labor organizing, protest and solidarity. In Minneapolis this year, that tradition continues — but organizers say the stakes feel higher than usual.

People across Minnesota are preparing to rally, march and speak out this May Day, reflecting both on the historical roots of the day and the challenges workers face right now.

A rally and march are scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. Friday along Lake Street in Minneapolis. Organizers emphasize that this event is separate from the annual May Day parade and community arts celebration, which will take place Sunday.

A day rooted in labor history

May 1 traces back to the 1886 strike for the eight-hour workday, when hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States walked off their jobs in protest.

For many organizers in Minnesota, that history remains deeply relevant, but this year’s observance is also shaped by current concerns, especially around immigration enforcement.

“For the last 20 years, we have been continuing this tradition of standing up in solidarity with immigrant rights, with worker rights, but also just fighting back against the constant attacks which this year have been very brutal,” said Erika Zurawski, co-founder of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee or MIRAC.

Organizers say increased immigration enforcement has created fear and uncertainty for many workers, affecting not only their jobs but their willingness to gather in public or participate in events like May Day.

That impact is visible at Mercado Central on Lake Street, a longtime hub for Latino-owned businesses and community activity.

The marketplace is typically bustling. But in recent months, foot traffic has fluctuated.

Jose Alvillar with Unidos Minnesota describes what the place looked like during the height of the ICE surge, remembering how every door was locked during business hours.

“It was completely closed. There was no way anybody could have entered. A lot of the businesses saw a lot of loss in revenue.”

Alvillar recalled how, during periods of heightened enforcement, the atmosphere changed dramatically.

Now, conditions are improving. Doors are open again, and customers are slowly returning.

“It’s a little bit liberating,” Alvillar said. “There's still a sense of surveillance, like from our community, where we're looking after each other, but it also feels nice to not constantly have to look over your shoulder. When I come to Mercado Central, as soon as I walk through that door, I feel at home.”

Still, uncertainty remains.

“People deserve to go to work without fearing whether they’ll make it back home,” he added.

A different kind of May Day

Labor leaders say the impact extends beyond immigrant communities, affecting workplaces across sectors.

Nicole Juan, political council chair for the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, said this year feels markedly different.

“I think this year is different. We're missing our union siblings who have been murdered or taken away by ICE,” she said. “We're also seeing a difference because workers are responding differently and afraid to go to their workplaces.”

That shift is shaping how people engage with May Day. While many will march, others may choose different forms of participation.

Organizers say supporting local businesses, especially those affected by recent disruptions, is one meaningful way to show solidarity.

Community, solidarity and looking ahead

In the lead-up to the march, community members gathered at sign-making events across Minneapolis, painting messages, sewing flags and preparing to take to the streets.

For many, the act of coming together is itself powerful.

“There’s just so much need for people to band together right now,” Zurawski said. “Not just here in Minneapolis, but across the country.”

Find a list of scheduled May Day events here.

The surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in St. Cloud earlier this year created a climate of intense fear and anxiety in the Somali American community that lasted for months, and left some still feeling the effects on their mental health.

The news of ICE’s presence in St. Cloud rattled a Somali American man, A.H., who has lived in the city for 12 years. MPR News agreed to use A.H.’s initials instead of his real name to protect his identity.

A.H. came to the U.S. legally and has a green card. Still, reports of federal agents forcibly detaining immigrants shocked and worried him. He stopped leaving his house to avoid encountering ICE.

“I used to go to the shops. I used to go see people out in public,” he said. “When ICE came, it ended up with me locking myself in my home, and I wouldn’t go out anywhere.”

But being stuck at home left him feeling depressed, A.H. said.

“It feels like you’re someone who’s in jail when you’re just sitting at home,” he said. “Even if someone said to you, ‘We’ll bring you food,’ but then they say, ‘Just sit in your house, don’t go out that door,’ it’s like you’re someone in jail.”

A.H. said it brought back recollections of his early years in Somalia. His father was killed in that country's civil war. As a child, he suffered an injury that left him disabled.

“It feels like the troubles in Somalia when I was young, when I’m being told that my father had died, other people in my family were hurt or injured,” he said. “When you see the police, you remember those memories.”

‘Reliving that trauma’

A.H. said he has found some release from his fear and stress by talking to a licensed mental health therapist, Ali Aden.

Aden opened the Bridge Healing Center in St. Cloud about four years ago. It provides culturally specific mental health services mainly for the East African community.

Aden said many of his clients are experiencing mental health symptoms as a result of the ICE surge, including anxiety, depression and chronic stress.

"They tend to go through a lot of trauma before they get here,” he said. “So this is not a new wave of trauma. They are just reliving that trauma."

Many of Aden’s clients are first-generation immigrants from East Africa, where there's a deeply rooted stigma against talking about mental health. But he and other providers have been working to overcome that taboo, and they encourage people to seek help.

The Center for Victims of Torture, an international nonprofit headquartered in St. Paul, opened an office in St. Cloud in 2015. It provides psychotherapy for people who've experienced significant physical and mental trauma. Some are new immigrants and asylum seekers. Others have lived in St. Cloud for years.

Amal Hassan is the center’s community development and education coordinator. She said the recent ICE action caused some people to re-experience past memories of hiding, fleeing or living in constant fear for their safety.

"A lot of people that came here were like, ‘We thought we were safe,’” she said. “And then seeing people in America getting gunned down, that they had to relive that.”

One client described the fear like a lion that shows up in their room every night, Hassan said.

"Even when you're going through therapy, you're seeing providers and you're taking care of it, it takes a long time to heal from that kind of trauma,” she said.

Strategies that help

Hassan said during the ICE action, people were afraid to come to the Center for Victims of Torture’s office for appointments. Telehealth visits don't always work, she said, because some people share a home with others and don't have privacy.

Hassan met some clients in their cars. She even bought a window shield to help them feel safer.

"A lot of the clients that right now are describing feelings of like, 'I feel like I still have to hide, closing all the windows. I am afraid to even let the sunlight come in, because what if they're outside?’” she said.

Hassan said she tries to help people develop strategies to manage stress and anxiety. Dialectical behavior therapy – a kind of talk therapy – can help people regulate their emotions and increase their stress tolerance, she said.

"Everything passes,” Hassan said. “So how do you take care of yourself? How do you prioritize your mental health? And then what do you have control over and what don't you have control over?"

Recognizing the signs

CentraCare, the St. Cloud region's largest health care provider, also reports seeing an increase in people with mental health symptoms since the ICE surge.

Hani Jacobson, a community health nurse with CentraCare and a Somali American, said because of her community's stigma surrounding mental health, people often describe the effects in a different way.

"It's a lot of physical symptoms – ‘I have increased headaches and my body hurts and my stomach hurts,’” Jacobson said.

Getting people to recognize the connection between those physical symptoms and the mental stresses they're facing is a key to healing, she said.

One of the phrases trauma-informed providers use is “the body remembers,” said Dr. Kim Tjaden, a family physician with CentraCare and part of its community health improvement team.

“Sometimes saying that to people will make them understand that my physical body remembers the trauma that I went through 20 or 30 years ago,” Tjaden said. “So I have physical pain or physical feelings based on some of this re-traumatization."

But some strategies that Tjaden would typically recommend to people struggling with mental health, such as getting outside and moving their bodies, don't work for those who are afraid to leave their homes.

"If you're living in a militarized community – or that's your perception – you're not going to want to go for a walk,” she said. “You're not going to want to breathe that fresh air and be out in the community."

Lasting impacts

What does help, providers say, is keying in on people's strengths and reminding them of their resilience.

Informing people of their rights as a U.S. resident and what resources are available can be empowering, Hassan said.

The close-knit nature of the Somali community also has been an asset, according to providers. During the surge, people shared information, drove others to appointments and delivered food to those stuck at home.

Still, Tjaden said she’s concerned about the long-term impacts of the immigration enforcement, especially children who watched loved ones being stopped or detained.

“There's a lot of trauma there to unpack,” she said. “And if the parents are in a place where they are being re-traumatized, it's going to be awfully hard for them to help that child build the resilience to not to not have some long-standing mental issues with that.”

Jacobson said the enforcement surge affected the entire Somali American community. Even those who didn't have a direct encounter with ICE watched what was happening on social media, she said.

"So even if you personally did not experience that trauma, you saw it, and it was in your neighborhood,” Jacobson said.

Now that most ICE agents have left St. Cloud, A.H. said he's feeling more hopeful, and is venturing out into the community again.

He encourages people feeling afraid and anxious to reach out to those around them to get the support they need.

“If you face fear, don’t give up, but come back from it by being in community,” he said.

This story is part of Call to Mind, American Public Media and MPR's initiative to foster new conversations about mental health.

What's next for DEI?

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders to reverse federal policies around diversity, equity and inclusion. The most recent order signed last month prohibits DEI activities in private companies that contract with the federal government. Some states have also passed anti-DEI legislation and many private companies have pulled back on diversity initiatives.

So, where does this leave efforts to create workplaces that are more inclusive and fair?

MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about how DEI is evolving and what it takes to create workplaces that work for everyone.

Guests:

• Stacey Gordon is the founder of Rework Work, a leadership strategy and consulting firm, and author of “UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work.” They are based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

• Lily Zheng is a consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area who works with leaders to create inclusive workplaces. They are also the author of several books, including "DEI Deconstructed," "Reconstructing DEI" and "Fixing Fairness."

• Milton Dodd is the executive director of the Forum on Workplace Inclusion, a Minneapolis conference on May 27-28 for organization leaders, human resource managers, Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders and others working on issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Dodd is also president of Infinity Systems, a Minneapolis consulting company specializing in organizational alignment and inclusive workplace cultures.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. 

Community leaders and state leaders gathered in the Capitol rotunda Monday morning for the third annual Somali Day. It comes in the wake of “Operation Metro Surge,” which the Trump administration initially described as an effort focused specifically on deporting some Somali Minnesotans.

Fartun Weli is the CEO and founder of Isuroon, one of the organizations supporting the event. Weli spoke to Minnesota Now host Nina Moini about the significance of the event this year.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

Potentially millions of Americans suddenly have a much easier path to Canadian citizenship, prompting a rush of people to explore their ancestry and file paperwork seeking dual citizenship.

For people like Zack Loud of Farmington, Minnesota, it was a surprise to learn that under a new law, Canada already considered him and his siblings citizens because their grandmother is Canadian.

“My wife and I were already talking about potentially looking at jobs outside the country, but citizenship pushed Canada way up on our list,” he said.

Since the new law took effect Dec. 15, immigration lawyers in the United States and Canada say they have been overwhelmed by clients seeking help submitting proof of citizenship applications. Driven by politics, family heritage, job opportunities and other factors, thousands of Americans are exploring whether the easier process makes now the right time to gain dual citizenship.

Nicholas Berning, an immigration attorney at Boundary Bay Law in Bellingham, Washington, said his practice is “pretty much flooded with this.”

“We’ve kind of shifted a lot of other work away in order to push these cases through,” he said.

And immigration attorney Amandeep Hayer said his Vancouver, British Columbia, area practice went from about 200 citizenship cases a year to more than 20 consults per day.

How the new law works

Canada has been changing its citizenship laws for decades, whether to update historic interpretations of law or to address discrimination issues.

Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only be passed down to one generation, from a parent to a child. That changed when Canadian bill C-3 took effect Dec. 15, and opened up citizenship to anyone born before that date who could prove they have a direct Canadian ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.

Those born on or after Dec. 15 need to show their parent met a residency requirement of 1,095 days.

Under the new law, descendants of Canadians already are considered citizens, but they must provide proof to obtain a certificate of citizenship. Hayer estimated that there are millions of Americans who are Canadian descendants.

“You are Canadian, and you’re considered to be one your whole life,” said Hayer, who advocated for the new law in the Parliament of Canada. “That’s really what you’re applying for, the recognition of a right you already have vested.”

“The best way I can put it is like, if a baby’s born tomorrow in Canada, the baby’s Canadian even though they don’t have the birth certificate,” he said.

Americans interested in dual citizenship

American applicants have different motivations, but many say President Donald Trump's efforts on immigration and other topics have led them to seek dual citizenship.

Michelle Cunha, of Bedford, Massachusetts, said she decided to move to Canada after reflecting on decades of political activism and deciding she had “nothing left to give.”

“I put in my best effort for 30 years. I have done everything that I possibly can to make the United States what it promises the world to be, a place of freedom, a place of equality,” Cunha said. “But clearly we’re not there and we’re not going to get there anytime soon.”

Troy Hicks, who had a great-grandfather born in Canada, said he was spurred by an international trip.

“I recently went to Australia and you know, first words out of the first person I talked to in Australia was basically an expletive about Trump and the U.S.,” said Hicks, of Pahrump, Nevada. “It was just like, whoa, I walked off a 20-hour flight and literally the first words of somebody’s mouth to me were that. ... So the idea of doing that with a Canadian passport just seemed easier, better, more palatable.”

Maureen Sullivan, of Naples, Florida, said she was motivated by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which hit home when her teenage nephew encountered federal officers near his high school in St. Paul. Sullivan, whose grandmother was Canadian, said she sees citizenship in Canada as an option in case things in the U.S. “really go south.”

“When I first heard about the bill, I couldn’t believe it. It was like this little gift that fell in my lap,” Sullivan said. “There was kind of this collective excitement amongst the (family) who just felt like, we wanted to feel like we were doing something to take care of our security in the future if needed.”

How much will Canadian citizenship cost?

For those with documentation ready at hand, the proof of citizenship application fee is a relatively inexpensive 75 Canadian dollars ($55).

But costs will climb for those seeking help from an attorney or genealogist.

Cunha said she used an attorney and estimates the cost will be about $6,500.

However, Mary Mangan, of Somerville, Massachusetts, filed her application in January using advice from online forums.

“There are some situations where a lawyer might be the right thing, but for many people, I would guess 90 percent of people can probably do this on their own,” Mangan said.

The website for the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada office, which processes applications, says processing times for a certificate is around 10 months, with more 56,000 people awaiting a decision.

The agency said that from Dec. 15 to Jan. 31, it confirmed citizenship by descent for 1,480 people, though not all were Americans. Last year, 24,500 Americans gained dual US-Canada citizenship.

What do Canadians think?

Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Canadians are generally a “welcoming people.”

“I think where people start looking askance is someone who’s never been to Canada, who has very thin ties. They can get a passport, becoming Canadians of convenience. People don’t like that,” he said.

Hampson said some also worry a surge of interest from Americans could delay efforts by refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing vulnerable situations.

“Canadians don’t like queue jumpers,” Hampson said.

An appeals court has blocked a California law passed in 2025 requiring federal immigration agents to wear a badge or some form of identification.

The Trump administration filed a lawsuit in November challenging the law, arguing that it would threaten the safety of officers who are facing harassment, doxing, and violence and that it violated the constitution because the state is directly regulating the federal government.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction pending appeal Wednesday. It had already granted a temporary administrative injunction to block the implementation of the law.

At a hearing March 3, Justice Department lawyers argued that the California law sought to regulate the federal government, violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The appeals court agreed, saying the law “attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” in an opinion written by Judge Mark J. Bennett.

California lawyers argued that the law applied equally to all law enforcement officers without discriminating against the U.S. government, and that states could apply “generally applicable” laws to federal agents. They also argued that the law was important to address public safety concerns.

The initial lawsuit also addressed another California measure signed into law last year that would have banned most law enforcement officers from wearing masks, neck gaiters, and other facial coverings. It was blocked by a federal judge in February.

The legislation did not apply to state law enforcement and made exceptions for undercover agents, protective equipment like N95 respirators or tactical gear, and other situations where not wearing a mask would jeopardize the operation.

This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.

By Frank Morris | Harvest Public Media

Farming’s a tough business. Most of the people doing it now, at scale, are driven survivors with a knack for innovation, like Thayne Larson.

Larson’s operation in north central Kansas narrowly survived the 1980s farm crisis. He grew hay for local cattle operations, but, in dry years, he couldn’t grow enough, and in wet ones, he grew too much, and the price tanked. So, Larson started a business buying, selling, and shipping hay nationwide, which spun into a diverse family of companies called Bestifor Farms, with thirty-some employees.

“Between the pet food company, and software, running the grain elevator mechanics, we have secretaries and staff and HR and accountants,” said Larson, sitting in the Bestifor board room. “It adds up before you know it.”

Larson’s also running a trucking business, while growing lots and lots of hay, corn and soybeans.

He could use more employees, but said that, where he is, in Bellville, Kansas, an hour from the nearest Walmart, no one looking for a job is willing to put in the long hours and hard work necessary to keep a farm running. Larson said he’s got little choice but to hire foreign guest workers through the H-2A visa program.

“You're not replacing workers here. They're just filling a void,” said Larson. “If you're going to be in this business, you got to find people.”

Larson has found good people through the guest worker program. Three of them spent a recent afternoon working diligently to get a precision corn planter ready to run hard this spring. Nobody stopped to check their phone.

“That’s what you get, just work, work, work,” Larson said of the guest workers.

But Larson said the H-2A visa program has grown more complex in that time, becoming a regulatory and bureaucratic minefield that keeps one of his employees tied up just handling the paperwork.

It’s also become more expensive. Larson estimates total labor costs — including transporting workers from their home countries and free housing — hit about $30 an hour.

So, he was delighted when the Trump Administration changed the way H-2A wages are calculated, cutting guest farm worker pay.

“Absolutely, it needed to happen, because you could not afford to pay,” Larson said.

The U.S. Department of Labor abruptly issued an “interim final rule” last fall, making the changes. It split H-2A workers into two different categories based on skill, allowed employers to start charging for housing, and threw out the old way of calculating H-2A wage rates.

The upshot was a big pay cut for many guest farm workers and pushback from organizations across the political spectrum.

H-2A changes draw fire from left and right

The H-2A program has exploded, from about 50,000 foreign farm workers two decades ago to nearly 400,000 last year. Cutting guest worker wages will make the program more attractive to farmers and likely drive more growth.

But a flood of guest workers raises issues for farm workers’ groups concerned with pay and for immigrant hardliners.

John Miano is legal counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for strict immigration limits. He backs much of Trump’s MAGA agenda but does not view the H-2A visa program as “America First.”

“It provides a subsidy for employers to bypass the free market,” said Miano. “I can go for a massive pool of cheap, cheaper foreign labor that undermines Americans.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has served as a blueprint for much of the president’s domestic agenda, calls for the H-2A visa program to be phased out over the next decade or two.

At the same time, the United Farm Workers union is suing to stop the Labor Department’s rule change. It argues that the department acted without first offering a public comment period, as required by law.

Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union, said while H-2A wage rates vary from state to state, some workers saw a cut amounting to about $5 an hour.

“What he's doing right now is transferring $2.4 billion a year from the farm workers' pockets to the employers,” Romero said of Trump.

That also could impact other workers, she said.

Congress set up the guest worker program with safeguards to protect domestic incomes. The wage rates are supposed to be set high enough that they could have no ‘adverse effect’ on the livelihoods of American workers or of job seekers.

The lower pay for guest workers means lower pay for domestic farm hands competing for the same jobs, according to Romero.

“We are not lowering the pay only of H-2A workers. We're lowering the pay of domestic workers. We're making these workers more vulnerable,” she said.

The most vulnerable are those working in the U.S. illegally.

A woman named Lourdes, who didn’t want to use her last name because she does not have legal immigration status, said she’s supported her children working in the fields and greenhouses of eastern Colorado. She said the work was hard, but fairly steady, until recently.

“Back when the tomato season was in full swing, they let a lot of people go, laid them off from their jobs in the tomato fields, because they started bringing in workers with work permits known as H-2A visas,” said Lourdes through an interpreter.

The pressure to expand the H-2A visa program is strong. Farm organizations have pushed lawmakers to allow more foreign workers into the country. Bills in both the House and the Senate, backed by both Democrats and Republicans, would make the H-2A visa system cheaper and easier for farmers to find legal, foreign guest workers willing to do the hard, dirty work of growing food in America.

The midterm elections are still months away, but voting is already a major focus.

President Donald Trump has claimed that non-citizens vote illegally in large numbers, though there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. Still, he has backed the SAVE Act, which would require in-person proof of citizenship to register. It passed the House, stalled in the Senate and some Republican-led states are moving ahead with similar requirements.

At the same time, the federal government is seeking access to state voter rolls, the president’s attacks on mail-in voting have ramped up and the Supreme Court may weigh in on mail-in ballot deadlines.

So how secure are elections in Minnesota and across the country? Are new laws needed — or not? MPR News host Angela Davis and her guests talk about how our election systems can balance security with access.

Guests:

• Steve Simon has been Minnesota’s Secretary of State since 2015. He oversees elections and partners with township, city and county officials to organize elections on behalf of Minnesota’s four million eligible voters. He previously served in the Minnesota House of Representatives representing St. Louis Park and Hopkins. He’s a past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

• Jennifer Morrell is the CEO and co-founder of The Elections Group, which works with election officials from across the country on how to conduct fair and secure elections. She is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in its graduate Certificate of Election Administration program. She’s also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and served as an election official in Utah and Colorado.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.    

The number of immigrants who have died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has reached an all-time high this fiscal year.

Twenty-nine people have died in ICE custody since October, the start of the federal government's fiscal year, already surpassing 2004's toll of 28, the previous record, according to government data.

The most recent death was of 27-year-old Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, a Cuban man held in ICE custody in Miami, Florida. According to an initial report released by ICE on the evening of April 16, Carbonell-Betancourt was found unresponsive in his cell on the morning of April 12. The report lists the cause of death as a "presumed suicide," but the official cause remains under investigation.

The report said Carbonell-Betancourt entered the United States in 2024 without valid documents and later released into the U.S. via a program known as parole, which allows noncitizens to enter the country without a formal visa, often for humanitarian reasons.

He was arrested for resisting an officer with violence in 2025, and then transferred into ICE custody earlier this year, according to the ICE release.

The rise in deaths comes as detention numbers have skyrocketed during the Trump administration. Detentions are up more than 70 percent under President Donald Trump compared to the first year of the Biden administration. The Trump administration has carried out an unprecedented crackdown on immigration. Immigration officers have arrested and detained criminals in the country illegally, as well as many people without a criminal record and some migrants who are in the country with temporary protections from deportation.

There are about 60,000 people currently in immigration detention.

In a statement to NPR, DHS denied there's been a spike in deaths and attributed the increase to the large number of people in detention. DHS said as of April 16, "death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009 percent of the detained population."

The agency added that ICE provides migrants with access to medical care.

"For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives," the statement said. The statement went on to encourage detainees to self-deport. "Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App," the statement said.

During a congressional hearing also on Thursday, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said there are a high number of deaths this fiscal year "because we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003." Lyons added that the agency spent "almost half a billion dollars last fiscal year … to ensure that people have proper care."

He reiterated details noted by other DHS officials: that detainees get a complete physical within 14 days and are seen by a medical professional within 24 hours of being admitted.

"No death is what we want. We don't want anyone to die in custody," Lyons, who handed in his resignation hours after testifying, said. "I hope that's a policy of anyone that has to be tasked with detaining someone."

When asked how many people were still working in the Office of Detention Oversight, he was not able to provide a number.

Lyons was also asked about the delay in public reporting and tracking detainee deaths. On April 13, Georgia Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock sent a letter to Lyons and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin raising concern over the rising number of detainee deaths and noted that of the 49 deaths in custody at the time since January 2025, "ICE has issued an interim death notice within 48 hours in only 15 cases" and argued that reports contained less details.

"We are reporting. We are working on that timeline," Lyons said during the House hearing, agreeing that the detainee death reports were considered essential work even during the agency's funding lapse.

Facilities in Texas and California are the deadliest

Adelanto ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, Calif., and Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas have each reported the deaths of three detainees, the most out of ICE's sprawling detention operation.

According to ICE's initial reports, the deaths of the six immigrant detainees were attributed to a number of causes, including suicide, alcohol withdrawal, liver failure and kidney failure. Other detainees displayed symptoms like shortness of breath.

One of the deaths at Camp East Montana was ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office.

Initially, DHS said that Geraldo Lunas Campos had died in Camp East Montana after experiencing "medical distress." It also claimed Lunas Campos had become "disruptive while in line for medication" and was placed in segregation. But later, the El Paso Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a homicide due to "asphyxia due to neck and torso compression." The FBI is now investigating the death.Chris Benoit, an attorney representing the family, told NPR Lunas Campos came to the U.S. in the mid-1990s as part of a wave of Cubans immigrants during the balsero crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union.

"For all sense and purposes he is an American," Benoit said. "He's lived here for decades and raised his family here and his kids love him and miss him."

According to DHS, Lunas Campos had been convicted of multiple crimes, including petty larceny, unlawful possession of a weapon during a robbery, and sexual contact with a child under 11.

In a court petition seeking eyewitness testimony, Lunas Campos' three children said they planned to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

Rahul Mukherjee contributed to this report.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Their backgrounds stand out. And not in a good way.

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75 billion windfall from Congress to enact President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.

The president put a premium on swift action, and for ICE that meant rapid-fire recruitment and hiring, which in turn led to new employees with questionable qualifications. Their backgrounds and training have come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents in which ICE agents used excessive force.

“If vetting is not done well and it’s done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don’t know what they are doing,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

The agency has said the majority of new hires are police and military veterans. But evidence is mounting that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted before they were brought on or were hired in spite of their past, an investigation by The Associated Press found.

ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications. “This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.

AP finds legal issues in new ICE hires’ backgrounds

Unlike many local law enforcement agencies, ICE said it shields the identity of employees to protect them from harassment, making a full accounting of the new hires impossible.

The AP focused on more than 40 officers who recently made public their new jobs as ICE officers on LinkedIn pages, using public records to check their backgrounds. All but one were male.

While most of them had conventional qualifications as former correctional officers, security guards, military veterans and police officers, it's unclear how many should have potentially been disqualified because AP did not have access to their full personnel files. But several had histories of unpaid debts that resulted in legal action, two had filed for bankruptcy and three others had faced lawsuits that alleged misconduct in prior law enforcement jobs, the AP found.

Marshall Jones, an expert on police recruiting at the Florida Institute of Technology, said it's hard to get a full picture of ICE's new employee pool without more data. But he said ICE has likely hired some “less than ideal candidates” who meet minimum requirements but would be passed over in a normal hiring cycle.

“If you’re hiring hundreds or thousands of people, even with the best of background processes, there are going to be outliers,” he said. “The question is, are these normal outliers from human beings doing things, or is there a systemic challenge in properly vetting folks if there are issues?”

DHS says ‘vetting is an ongoing process’

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. But it acknowledged some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.

“ICE is committed to ensuring its law enforcement personnel are held to the highest standards and rigorously vets them throughout the hiring process,” the department said. “Vetting is an ongoing process, not a one-time occurrence.”

The process includes reviewing their criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. But the deluge of hires has strained the agency, which promised signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and advertised that college degrees were not required.

An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.

Two bankruptcies, six jobs before ICE hired him

Among the new hires is Carmine Gurliacci, 46, who resigned as a police officer in Richmond Hill, Georgia, to join ICE in Atlanta in December, according to a resignation letter obtained by AP.

He filed for bankruptcy in 2022, saying he had no income and had been unemployed for two years after moving from New York to Georgia, court filings show. He said he was living with a friend and doing chores in exchange for housing, listing tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid loans, bills, child support and other debts. He also had filed for bankruptcy in 2013 in New York, when he listed $95,000 in liabilities, records show.

Serious financial problems are “a pretty big red flag” because they might make employees susceptible to bribes or extortion, which have been problems at ICE, Trickler-McNulty said.

After his 2022 bankruptcy petition was approved, Gurliacci rejoined the work force, hopping to six Georgia law enforcement agencies within three years, each time resigning before moving on, records obtained by AP show.

He left one campus security job in 2023, citing “unforeseen personal issues that render me unable to fulfill my duties,” a resignation letter shows. But he then began working for the Butts County Sheriff's Office soon after.

He lasted months there before moving to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, where he quit after two months on the job, records show. The federal government recently obtained his Chatham County personnel file as part of a background check, two months after he started at ICE.

Reached by phone, Gurliacci told a reporter he would call back. He never did and did not respond to follow-up messages.

Critic says new ICE hire ‘abuses his power’

Another new hire is Andrew Penland, 29, who joined ICE after resigning in December as a sheriff’s deputy in Greenwood County, Kansas.

Penland had spent most of his career as a deputy in Bourbon County, Kansas, but left last year after facing a lawsuit alleging he arrested a woman on false allegations in 2022. The county’s insurer paid $75,000 to settle the case, the agreement shows.

The woman, June Bench, recounted in an interview what happened. One of her neighbors, a county official, claimed Bench had purposely made a wide turn and nearly hit him with her car.

Penland responded to the property. Body camera video shows he urged the neighbor to press charges and told the man Bench would go to jail but he would not have to testify in court because it would get resolved through a plea.

Bench denied the allegation and said it was part of a personal dispute. But Penland arrested her on a felony assault charge, took her to jail and seized her car. Penland wrote in a report that he watched surveillance video showing her neighbor jumping out of the way of her speeding car.

It took a week for Bench to get out of jail and more than a year to defeat the charge, which was dismissed for lack of evidence. When she obtained the video Penland cited as proof, it showed her car appearing to make a routine turn and no near-collision with the neighbor.

Bench said she was outraged to learn Penland had been hired by ICE.

“That’s scary to me. He abuses his power,” she said.

After being reached for comment, Penland deactivated his LinkedIn account and alerted ICE to the inquiry but did not respond to AP.

New hire struggled at police academy

A third new ICE hire, Antonio Barrett, initially failed to graduate from a Colorado law enforcement academy in 2020, one of two students who did not “complete portions of the academy” and received “an incomplete grade,” an email obtained by AP shows.

He finished the program after a community college arranged a special one-day training and test for him, and landed a job at the police department in La Junta, Colorado, in July 2020. But he only worked three weeks before resigning and never worked in local policing again.

Previously, Barrett worked as a corrections officer at a Colorado prison.

He was accused in a lawsuit of excessive force for inflicting pain on a handcuffed inmate when he and another colleague forcibly removed the man from a wheelchair in 2017. But state officials argued their actions were not excessive and a court agreed, dismissing the case.

Barrett didn't respond to a message seeking comment.

Ex-ICE instructor says training is inadequate

ICE has denied removing any training requirements, saying new recruits receive 56 days of training and 28 days of on-the-job training. The agency said that most of the new officers have already completed law enforcement academies.

But former ICE academy instructor Ryan Schwank testified in February that agency leaders cut training on the use of force, firearms safety and the rights of protesters. He said the new recruits include some as young as 18 who lack college degrees and whose primary language is not English.

“We’re not giving them the training to know when they’re being asked to do something that they’re not supposed to do, something illegal or wrong,” he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, a key executor of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations agenda, will resign at the end of May, federal officials announced Thursday.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Lyons' departure, calling him a great leader of ICE who helped to make American communities safer. Mullin said Lyons' last day will be May 31.

“We wish him luck on his next opportunity in the private sector,” Mullin said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press asking why he is resigning.

Lyons, who was named acting director in March 2025, led the agency at the center of President Donald Trump’s plans to reshape immigration to the U.S.

Under his leadership, the agency was granted a massive infusion of cash through Congress, which it used to expand hiring and detention capabilities, and it ramped up arrests to meet demand from the administration.

ICE was also central to a series of high-profile immigration enforcement operations in American cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, a deployment that ended after backlash erupted over the deaths of two American protesters at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and the main architect of his immigration policy, called Lyons a "dedicated leader."

“His courageous work at ICE has saved countless thousands of American lives and helped deliver safety and tranquility to millions of Americans,” Miller said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson described Lyons in a post on X as “an American patriot who made our country safer.”

It’s not clear who might replace Lyons. But whoever does will take over an agency flush with cash while still a flashpoint for controversy. ICE is at the center of a battle in Congress, with Democratic lawmakers demanding restraints on immigration officers before agreeing to restore routine funding for DHS.

On Thursday, Lyons, along with two other top immigration officials, appeared before a House subcommittee to argue for his agency’s budget and faced continued scrutiny from lawmakers of ICE’s actions.

Lyons' departure also comes as DHS is under new leadership after Trump fired former Secretary Kristi Noem, who led the department through the administration’s major immigration policy changes.

Mullin, who took over as secretary last month, is likely to continue to advance the president’s agenda but has struck a softer tone on some of the administration’s most contentious policies.

Public perceptions of ICE during Lyons' tenure were low. In a February AP-NORC poll, most U.S. adults, including independents, said they have an unfavorable view of the agency.

Lyons faced questions in Congress over the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and was asked if he would apologize for the way some Trump administration officials characterized Good as an agitator. He declined to do so.

“I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private. But I’m not going to comment on any active investigation,” Lyons said.

Lyons said he had seen video that captured Pretti’s shooting but said he could not comment, citing an active investigation.

Lyons, who joined ICE in 2007 as an immigration enforcement agent in Texas, signed off on a memo, first obtained by The Associated Press, that granted federal immigration officers sweeping powers to forcibly enter homes and make arrests without a judge’s warrant.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan described Lyons as serving selflessly and “a highly respected and effective acting Director of ICE

Historically Black colleges and universities — known as HBCUs — are schools that were created to educate Black students at a time when most colleges would not admit them.

While “HBCU” might not be a household name in Minnesota, students and graduates of these 107 schools represent a thriving culture and network, especially in the southern United States.

And, their impact is significant. A recent report by Forbes magazine reveals that HBCUs have produced about 80 percent of Black judges, 70 percent of Black doctors and dentists, 50 percent of Black engineers, and 40 percent of Black lawyers. And about half of the nation’s Black teachers graduated from an HBCU.

MPR News host Angela Davis talks with several graduates of HBCUs and a leader from an organization that supports these schools. They’ll talk about the history of these institutions and why they still matter today.

Guests:

• Laverne McCartney Knighton is an area development director for the United Negro College Fund. She oversees fundraising and scholarship programs in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas.

• James Burroughs is the senior vice president of government and community relations and the chief equity and inclusion officer at Children’s Minnesota — Minnesota’s largest pediatric hospital. He also attended Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Ga.

• Zarina Sementelli is a recent law school graduate who grew up in Minnesota. She graduated from Spelman College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia, and California Western School of Law.

Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. 

The Minneapolis City Council held a public hearing Wednesday on a proposed ordinance that would limit how landlords screen tenants, including banning questions about immigration status, but did not take a vote.

The proposal would amend the city’s housing maintenance code to prohibit landlords from asking about a renter’s immigration status and add protections against retaliation based on a tenant’s real or perceived status. It would also bar landlords from denying applicants solely for using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

“This ordinance is really important,” said council member Jason Chavez. “Because since the height of the Operation Metro Surge, many of our neighbors have been impacted, including renters whose immigration status or perceived immigration status has been used to threaten and retaliate against renters who are struggling to pay rent.”

No members of the public testified during the hearing.

After the presentation, council member LaTrisha Vetaw asked to move the item forward without recommendation, saying she wanted more time to review the ordinance. Committee members were not opposed.

If adopted, the ordinance would allow for enforcement actions including fines and potential impacts to landlords’ rental licenses.

At this stage, the ordinance includes exceptions allowing landlords to comply with any legal obligations under state or federal law, such as requirements tied to government housing programs, or when responding to a subpoena, warrant, or other court order.

The proposal will continue through the council process and is likely to come back before members for a vote at an upcoming meeting.

In Minnesota, the final step to becoming a U.S. citizen is becoming harder to reach.

Oath ceremonies – once large, celebratory events – have dropped significantly in both size and frequency over the past year – as the federal government delays or cancels some of them.

For many applicants, that means waiting without a clear timeline after already being approved for citizenship.

Just over a year ago, Minnesota regularly held large, public naturalization ceremonies, often with hundreds of people at a time.

Amy Perna, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, says that has changed dramatically.

She says there used to be about four ceremonies each month, but now it’s down to just one – a drop the U.S. District Court of Minnesota has also confirmed.

The number of new citizens coming through those ceremonies has also fallen.

“In March of 2025 the League registered 1,037 new citizens to vote. The following month, in April of 2025, we were down to 214. This year, there are even less so. In January of this year, we registered 38 new citizens to vote. February was 40, March was 52,” Perna said.

That’s a steep decline from roughly 500 people per ceremony just a year ago to just a few dozen today.

Perna says the change has been noticeable and emotional.

“It's really, it's sad for us. It's sad to see the numbers dwindle so much, and to wonder why,” she said.

The League, which has registered new citizens to vote at ceremonies for decades, says it has not received a clear explanation for the shift.

A slowdown seen nationwide

The changes in Minnesota reflect a broader pattern.

Federal officials have canceled a growing number of naturalization interviews and oath ceremonies in the Twin Cities and across the country in recent months.

Immigration attorney David Wilson says the slowdown is showing up clearly in his caseload.

“Back in October, there was a series of oath ceremonies that were scheduled and then were suddenly canceled without any explanation,” he said. “And it wasn't just one or two. It felt like all of them.”

Since then, he says, very few of his clients have actually made it through – only two out of about 100 who haven't been scheduled for a ceremony.

"The number is growing every day. There is a large contingent of people out there in the cities who were expecting to become citizens in 2025 and are still waiting at this point in 2026 just to do the ceremony,” Wilson said.

And even earlier steps in the process appear to be slowing down.

Wilson points to increased scrutiny from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“There is a backlog building. The agency is doing some extra vetting. It's clear that they're asking different questions than they used to."

What’s behind the slowdown

In a statement to MPR News, USCIS says the agency is implementing “rigorous screening and vetting processes,” including expanded background checks, stricter English requirements, and efforts to ensure applicants demonstrate “good moral character.”

Nationally, some policy changes have included pauses or additional reviews for certain groups of applicants, contributing to delays.

Wilson says he’s seeing signs of that increased scrutiny in practice.

“The agency is doing some extra vetting. They're asking different questions than they used to,” he said.

Legal pressure may be building

As delays stretch on, some applicants are starting to push back in court.

Wilson says people who have already been interviewed may have legal options.

“The 120 day clock has run for most of these people,” he said, referring to a federal provision that allows applicants to seek judicial action if a decision isn’t made in time.

He expects to see more lawsuits in the coming months.

In some cases, federal judges can step in and complete the naturalization process themselves.

Stuck at the final step

The delays are especially significant because the oath ceremony is required to officially become a citizen.

“You are not a U.S. citizen until you take the Oath of Allegiance,” according to USCIS guidance.

For many applicants, reaching that point takes years.

Perna says the ceremony marks a major life milestone.

“It marks the end of a long journey and the beginning of another one.”

But when ceremonies are canceled or delayed, that moment is put on hold.

Wilson says that uncertainty can take a toll.

“They were told they were approved, they got a notice when they left the interview. You know, ‘you've been approved, everything looks great. We'll contact you for the ceremony.’ And subsequent to that, they're told ‘your ceremony is canceled,’ but they're not told why.”

An uncertain path forward

For now, ceremonies are still happening in Minnesota – but on a much smaller scale.

Advocates say the lack of transparency has made it difficult to understand whether the slowdown is temporary or part of a longer-term shift.

And for those waiting to take the oath, the finish line remains just out of reach.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is reviewing a plan to transform warehouses across the U.S. into detention facilities for tens of thousands of immigrants.

So far immigration officials have spent a total of $1.074 billion for 11 warehouses. They've mostly faced fierce opposition. And days after Mullin was sworn in, the Department of Homeland Security paused the purchase of new warehouses intended to house immigrants. The department is scrutinizing all contracts signed under his predecessor, Kristi Noem.

A look at some of the locations:

Arizona

Local officials were told nothing before ICE purchased a 418,000-square-foot (38,833-square-meter) warehouse in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise for $70 million, the state’s top prosecutor, Kris Mayes, said in a letter to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Documents later provided by ICE said the Department of Homeland Security plans a processing site with an average daily capacity of 1,000 to 1,500, and a contract worth at least $313.4 million was awarded to transform it.

DHS is now planning something more modest, starting out with 250 people per week and capping occupied beds at 542, according to Surprise Mayor Kevin Sartor.

Florida

A TV reporter in Orlando spotted private contractors and federal officials in January touring a 439,945-square-foot (40,872-square-meter) industrial warehouse. ICE senior adviser David Venturella told a WFTV reporter the tour was “exploratory.”

As of April, the city still hadn't heard anything, a spokesperson said in an email.

Georgia

ICE bought a massive warehouse in Social Circle for $128.6 million. The city said the federal government informed it that the facility is expected to house from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees.

The city is so concerned about the strain on its water supply that it put a lock on the warehouse's water meter. DHS has suggested trucking in drinking water and trucking out waste, according to a letter from Georgia Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who said the plan was unworkable.

DHS also bought a 540,408-square-foot (50,205-square-meter) warehouse in Oakwood for $68.2 million, a deed shows. City Manager B.R. White said his first inkling that a deal was imminent came when a warehouse supervisor told a city inspector he’d been instructed to clear the job site to make way for the new owners — the federal government.

Indiana

After the town of Merrillville raised concerns about ICE touring a new 275,000-square-foot (25,548-square-meter) warehouse, owner Opus Holding LLC sent a letter stating it isn't negotiating with federal officials for the property. The letter said Opus was limited in what it could share because of legal issues.

Maryland

ICE purchased a warehouse about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Baltimore in Washington County for $102.4 million and signed a contract worth at least $113 million to renovate it. But work is on hold after Maryland's attorney general sued.

The warehouse has divided the community. County commissioners passed a resolution in support of ICE during a contentious meeting.

Michigan

After DHS paid $34.7 million for a 250,000-square-foot (23,225-square-meter) warehouse in Romulus, the state and city sued. The suit said the warehouse is in a flood plain, and that the sewage system couldn't keep up if 500 people are detained inside. It also faults DHS for not considering any of the state's empty prison facilities and for not talking to state or city officials.

Minnesota

The owners of warehouses in the Minneapolis suburbs of Woodbury and Shakopee pulled out of possible ICE deals after public outcry, according to local officials.

Mississippi

Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker posted that Noem agreed to look elsewhere after local elected and zoning officials opposed a possible detention center in the town of Byhalia.

Missouri

After weeks of public pressure, development company Platform Ventures announced it would not move forward with the sale of a massive warehouse in Kansas City.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in March that DHS would not move forward with a proposed ICE facility in the town of Merrimack.

Ayotte, a Republican, had sparred with federal officials after ICE disclosed plans to spend $158 million to convert a warehouse in the town into a 500-bed processing center.

The issue came to a head after an ICE official testified that DHS “has worked with Gov. Ayotte” and provided her with an economic impact summary. Ayotte said the summary was not sent until hours after that testimony.

The document erroneously refers to the “ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy” and revenue generated by state sales and income taxes, neither of which exist in New Hampshire.

New Jersey

After DHS bought a 470,044-square-foot (43,669-square-meter) warehouse in Roxbury for $129.3 million, the township and state sued, alleging that federal officials kept them in the dark.

“State and local officials might not have a veto over DHS’s decisions, but this utter lack of communication and consultation flies in the face of federal law,” the suit said.

New York

ICE said it made a mistake when it announced the purchase of a vacant warehouse in Chester. New York state Assemblyman Brian Maher later said ICE was no longer considering the facility.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt announced in January that property owners had informed him they are no longer engaged with DHS about a potential acquisition or lease of a warehouse.

Pennsylvania

DHS purchased a warehouse in Tremont Township for $119.5 million and one in Upper Bern Township for $87.4 million. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has said his administration will fight DHS' plans. The state's Department of Environmental Protection has barred water and sewage from being supplied to them for now.

Tennessee

ICE mistakenly announced it had completed the purchase of a warehouse in Lebanon, Tennessee.

The sheriff, Robert Bryan, wrote that a facility of the size and scope being discussed — 14,000 to 16,000 detainees — would “significantly impact local law enforcement resources.” And the mayor, Rick Bell, wrote that as a conservative Republican, he supports a secure border but that his town “is not the place.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn later announced that the deal was dead.

Texas

In the El Paso suburb of Socorro, ICE paid $122.8 million for a trio of warehouses that span 826,780 square feet (76,810 square meters). ICE also paid $66.1 million for a 639,595-square-foot (59,420-square-meter) warehouse in San Antonio. The mayors of both cities are opposed. Socorro officials — like others — have questioned water supplies. As of April, San Antonio still had heard nothing from DHS.

However, another deal in the state was scuttled following community backlash. In the Dallas suburb of Hutchins, a real estate company confirmed that it was contacted about one of its properties but wouldn't sell or lease any buildings to DHS for use as a detention facility. California-based Majestic Realty Co. provided no explanation in its statement.

Utah

DHS bought an 833,280-square-foot (77,414-square-meter) warehouse in Salt Lake City for $145.4 million without notifying the city’s Democratic leaders or the state’s Republican governor or congressional delegation. Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in a statement released in March that ICE officials later told her that the facility will house 7,500 to 10,000 people.

The city has moved to cap water use at just a fraction of what would be needed to operate the warehouse as a detention site.

The sale of the warehouse came two months after the owner of another Salt Lake City warehouse announced plans not to sell or lease to the federal government amid protests.

Virginia

Following boycott threats, Jim Pattison Developments announced in January that it would not proceed with a planned sale of a warehouse in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia. It said it was not aware of the intended use until after it agreed to the sale.

“Operation Metro Surge” has ended but many Minnesotans are still protesting the federal immigration operation, including one group of men in a Minneapolis coffee shop.

Four of these men wear yellow bands on their arms. They say in large black letters, “We are all immigrants.” They look like gear a soccer captain might wear on the field.

“The idea just emerged out of the horrible way that this current administration was dealing with people who they identified as immigrants,” Peter Kramer explained. “It just seemed totally unfair, given the fact that we all essentially came from somewhere else.”

These men haven’t let up on their own form of quiet resistance. The yellow armbands are intentional conversation-starters.

“People will stop me and say, you know, ‘What is that about?’” Kramer said.

An architect by trade, Kramer said he felt compelled to make some sort of statement as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other federal officers ramped up enforcement in Minnesota.

Kramer meets weekly with this group of friends. On this day, five mostly retired white men met at Sovereign Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis. They spoke in a common language of inside jokes and women’s basketball.

Kramer printed the first batch of armbands near the end of January. He has made and handed out around 500.

“I ran into a guy who said, ‘I'm not an immigrant. I was born here,’” Kramer recalls.

“And I said, ‘So was I, but my grandmother wasn't. She was born in Ireland, and if she hadn't come here as an immigrant, I wouldn't be here.’”

“My parents spoke Polish in the house when we were growing up, and especially when they didn't want us to understand what they were saying,” said Gerry Kaluzny, a retired legal aid attorney.

“But I was able to go on to school and become a lawyer, and I chose a path in law to represent disadvantaged people, many of whom are immigrants,” he added.

“We've never sat around this table and asked what do you think the best immigration policy should be, because I don't know that we would come to an agreement. But we do, I think, agree that there's humane ways that we ought to be enforcing the law well,” said Jay Wilkinson, another retired legal aid attorney.

Phillip Jacobson, another man at the table, said he finds the views of his friends to be a little simplistic.

“They're reacting emotionally to things. There's a lot of virtue signaling,” said Jacobson, who doesn’t wear the pro-immigration arm band. “They don't want to say anything negative about immigrants. It's just easier to say, ‘ICE out.’ Seems virtuous.”

Wilkinson said the virtue signaling is intentional.

“Well, there is no question about saying ‘ICE out’ as being virtuous. And, yeah, these are virtue signals. I just know that (federal agents) shouldn’t be dealing with anybody, whether they're a criminal or a or an innocent 5-year-old child … the way they did.”

Jacobson is insistent. He said the arm bands send a divisive message. “I think that doesn't move the needle at all. ‘We are all immigrants’ is obviously true. But what does it mean?”

This table is somewhat divided. It’s easy to imagine similar conversations playing out among groups of people like this at coffee shops across Minnesota.

And it’s easy to understand why this group tends to keep the conversation on women’s basketball.

“Probably everybody can agree that the immigration system has been broken for a long, long time,” said Howard Schneider, another man at the table.

This group might not all agree with each other, but their arguments stay civil. They jab at each other, continue with their inside jokes.

And they're going to continue wearing their armbands and having those conversations.

St. Cloud Mayor Jake Anderson reflected on a challenging first year in office during his State of the City address on Tuesday.

Anderson took the helm as mayor of St. Cloud in January 2025. He replaced longtime mayor Dave Kleis, who did not seek reelection after almost two decades in office.

“You left big shoes to fill, and they didn't fit quite right,” Anderson told Kleis, who was in the audience. “So I had a couple things I've had to pivot on.”

During his tenure so far, Anderson has had to navigate the challenges of a budget deficit and a federal immigration enforcement operation. In his speech at city hall, he acknowledged that it's been a year of transition, with a new mayor, several council members and staff.

And he said there have been some tough external pressures, including a $3.2 million budget shortfall due to inflation and the loss of grants.

The city raised property taxes for what Anderson calls "strategic investment." That includes catching up on deferred maintenance and replacing old equipment that had been delayed.

"So we had to make some tough decisions, and I got calls and emails from many of you about these tough decisions,” Anderson said. “But we had to, at the end, raise the tax rate for the sustainability of the organization."

But Anderson said the most difficult challenge he faced in the past year was the surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in St. Cloud beginning in January, mainly targeting the city's sizable Somali American population.

Anderson said he couldn't imagine having to carry his passport to prove his U.S. citizenship, as some residents did. He said he thinks the immigration response and its impact on the community “was much more damaging than people will recognize.”

"We talk all the time about, how do we integrate? How do we be a stronger community?” Anderson said. “One of the ways you don't do that is by singling out groups of people and targeting folks and making it not about seeking the worst of the worst, but simply targeting for political points."

Anderson said his top priorities for the coming year are public safety, infrastructure and quality of life. He said he also wants to make the city more attractive and improve its downtown, connecting it better to the St. Cloud State University campus.

One of the next tasks for the mayor will be developing a 2027 budget. He said so far it's not a rosy picture, but city officials will be looking for ways to make the best use of taxpayers’ money and avoid another tax increase.

Anderson also noted that he changed the name of the annual speech to “State of Our City,” saying the city includes everyone. He urged people to find ways to get involved.

"I hear a lot of negativity about St Cloud, and I read about it when you go on social media, which is why I avoid it. So often it's blaming someone else,” he said. “I challenge all of you, what can you do to make a better community?"

The Brainerd City Council will allow a homeless shelter to stay open year around, a year after denying a similar request.

For more than four years, the Bridge on 7th shelter has provided a warm place for adults experiencing homelessness to spend the night. The overnight shelter is open from September through April.

Last year, Brainerd City Council rejected a request to allow it to operate through the summer, sparking a community debate. City council members and the police chief voiced concerns that the shelter is a draw for people from outside of the community.

Without a shelter, some community members worried that people wouldn’t have a safe place to stay. The city adopted a ban on camping on public property in 2024.

Bridges of Hope, the nonprofit that operates the shelter, re-applied for a year-round permit this year after working to address city officials’ concerns. The city council unanimously approved the interim use permit Monday night.

Council members praised the collaborative effort to add safeguards and address concerns.

“We’re miles beyond where we were a year ago,” said Mike O’Day, council president. “We’re trying to take care of our community and the most vulnerable, but not every other community besides our own.”

Jana Shogren, executive director of Bridges of Hope, said the nonprofit has improved its collaboration with other community organizations that serve people in need.

That includes creating a program called Pathways, which connects shelter guests to community services. People who stay at the shelter will be required to agree to participate in a personalized plan within three to five days to address housing, employment, mental health, chemical dependency or other issues that might be barriers, Shogren said.

Bridges also worked with Brainerd Police Chief John Davis to develop a safety plan to guide how the shelter responds to behavior problems or potentially dangerous situations and set clear expectations for staffing, supervision and training.

“All of this reflects a more coordinated and accountable approach to operating the shelter safely, and it builds on everything we've learned over the past four and a half years,” Shogren said.

The permit allows the shelter to operate year round for one year, until April 30, 2027. The council can revoke the permit if the police department decides the shelter has been used in a “disorderly manner.”

A shift appears to be underway in how the federal government does immigration enforcement – away from the high-profile show of force seen during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minnesota and toward a less visible approach, relying more on local police.

"Partnership is vitally important," Markwayne Mullin, the new secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress at his confirmation hearing last month. "I would love to see ICE become a transport more than the front line. If we can get back into just simply working with law enforcement, we're going to them, we're picking up these criminals from their jail."

In a statement to NPR this week, a DHS spokesperson echoed Mullin's line of thinking: "ICE has supercharged efforts with state and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration officers in our efforts to make America safe again."

Here's what to know about how that shift is taking place – and what it might look like in communities around the country.

Why is this shift happening?

The enforcement operation in Minnesota was aggressive and highly visible: federal immigration officers slammed protesters to the ground, deployed tear gas in neighborhoods and outside schools, dragged people from their cars, and ultimately killed two U.S. citizens.

These tactics were also very politically unpopular. In February, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that two thirds of Americans said ICE had gone too far.

How do ICE officers work with local and state police?

Mullin's comments point to increased emphasis on the federal 287(g) program, which allows state and local law enforcement officers to take on some of the duties of ICE officers.

Though the program has existed for decades, the number of police and sheriff's departments signing up for the program during President Trump's second term has grown exponentially. During his first term in 2019, there were only 45 agreements. In 2025 alone, there were more than 1,100 agreements, a previous NPR analysis showed. Now, there are more than 1,600 agreements across 39 states, according to ICE.

About a third of the entire U.S. population now lives in a county where a local law enforcement agency has signed a 287(g) agreement, according to an ACLU report released in February.

The most intensive version of the program, called the Task Force Model, deputizes local police to enforce immigration law, including arresting people on ICE's behalf during regular law enforcement work, like traffic stops. On its website, ICE refers to this model as a "force multiplier."

That model, discontinued during the Obama administration, was revived when Trump took office again, and now makes up the majority of 287(g) agreements. More than 13,000 police officers around the country are taking part in that model, according to an analysis released earlier this year from FWD.us, an organization that advocates for immigration and criminal justice reform.

How does it affect communities when local police work with ICE?

It's not uncommon for U.S. law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities, even without a signed agreement. What has changed in recent years are mandates in states like Florida and Texas, where state officials required some or all law enforcement agencies to join a 287(g) program. In those two states alone, the ACLU report estimates that more than 40 million people live in a place where their local law enforcement signed one of these agreements.

Florida has among the most 287(g) agreements in the nation, along with Texas, according to the latest ICE data.

Coinciding with new enthusiasm from ICE for local partners, Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration ramped up pressure on all Florida law enforcement agencies to sign up, despite only sheriffs being required. There were carrots in the form of bonuses for officers that received 287(g) training, and sticks in the form of threats to remove elected officials from office who didn't sign on.

The campaign was successful. Agencies from the Florida Highway Patrol, to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to university campus police departments have all signed up to work with ICE.

On the ground, the seemingly ubiquitous partnerships have created a sea change in local policing.

At least 1,800 state troopers on Florida highways are trained to enforce immigration law alongside their regular police duties. That has created situations where traffic stops for minor offenses — like tinted windows or failing to use a turn signal — turn into inquiries into a person's immigration status, an occurrence happening in Texas as well.

Arrests have risen sharply, with the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement reporting at least 10,000 immigration arrests by local agencies alone, not ICE, since last August. The majority of those arrests are made by Florida Highway Patrol troopers.

One county particularly affected is Palm Beach County and the majority-Hispanic city of Lake Worth Beach, where advocates with the Guatemalan-Maya Center have said Florida state troopers are profiling residents.

" They've been the most aggressive in our cities," Mariana Blanco, director of operations for the center, said at an event earlier this year. "They're the ones that are targeting, racially profiling our people."

Additionally, when local police work with ICE, it makes it harder for the community to be aware of immigration enforcement happening near them, says Kristin Etter, director of policy and legal services at the Texas Immigration Law Council.

She says that's been the case in Texas for years, where local police cooperation with federal authorities represents a much quieter approach than the tactics seen in Minnesota – where observers would track ICE and use whistles to alert neighbors to their presence.

"Your whistle doesn't work in Texas. You're not going to need a whistle in Texas because you're never going to have that Minneapolis moment. They're going to try to keep this hidden as much as possible," Etter says.

The fear, she says, is this more hidden form of enforcement will ramp up elsewhere in the country.

How do state and local police feel about working with ICE?

Some agencies that sign up for 287(g) agreements have been offered incentives from the federal government, including reimbursements for salaries, benefits and overtime pay for each officer trained for the Task Force Model, as well as thousands of dollars for new equipment and vehicles.

But beyond the monetary benefits, some sheriffs are also staunch ideological supporters of the Trump administration's immigration approach.

"They came here to the United States illegally. A crime was committed every minute, every day and every year that that person is still here, they're still committing the crime. They did not come here the right way," Sheriff Billy Woods, of Marion County, Fla., said of undocumented immigrants.

Some police leaders across the country have expressed concerns that cooperating with federal immigration authorities erodes community trust – and could make undocumented immigrants and others afraid to call 911 when they are victims of a crime or to participate as witnesses in criminal investigations. Some states, like Maryland, have banned 287(g) agreements.

In Florida, the large number of people arrested by local police has also made some of DeSantis' most fervent supporters uncomfortable.

"There are those here that are working hard. They have their kids in college or in school. They're going to church on Sunday. They're not violating the law. They are living the American dream," Sheriff Grady Judd, of Polk County, Fla., said at a state immigration board meeting last month.

Judd stressed that he still felt strongly about detaining those who have committed crimes, but said "maybe there needs to be a path" for immigrants who are law-abiding and add to society, though it's unclear what the sheriff meant specifically.

It's also unclear if the recent pushback in Florida from several conservative sheriffs will change how immigration enforcement is conducted in the state. So far, immigrant advocates say not much has changed.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Two female ICE agents posed as motorists with car troubles outside the home of mechanic Jesus Flores Aguilar on Feb. 12, according to the man’s attorney. When Flores Aguilar went outside to help, he was arrested by immigration agents.

Four days later, he walked across the border to his native Mexico, what federal authorities refer to as “self-deporting.”

“His six kids are now without their father,” Attorney John Hayden earlier told MPR News.

Flores Aguilar is one of nearly 1,700 people arrested in Minnesota by federal agents this winter who have already been deported.

That total accounts for almost half the people who were arrested during the federal operations in the state, according to recent data released through a federal lawsuit. The data shows that the Trump Administration has been shuttling many of the people it arrests out of the country at a rapid clip — leaving them little time to challenge their detentions or make a case for why they should be allowed to stay.

ICE did not immediately respond to questions for this story.

The numbers come from data secured by a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project and includes documentation of more than 3,700 arrests in the state between Dec. 1 and March 10. The previously unreleased data details for the first time the number of people the federal government arrested, detained and deported in recent months.

Minnesota’s numbers seem in line with what’s happening in the rest of the country, said Raha Wala, vice president at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for low-income immigrants. He said his organization has struggled to get factual information from the Department of Homeland Security.

“The bottom line is this administration is pushing for a maximum amount of deportations with a minimum amount of due process,” Wala said.

Arrests peaked in the state after Renee Good’s killing in the first week of January. Deportations of those arrested rose to their highest levels in mid-February. By early March, deportations of people arrested in Minnesota appear to have returned to about the same levels they were at in December, when the immigration enforcement surge began.

Many deportees sent to Latin American countries

Most of those deported from the United States were returned to Latin American countries, including almost 600 people returned to Mexico and about 520 deported to Ecuador. At least 17 minors were also deported, almost half of whom were from Ecuador.

A typical person from Mexico spent just nine days in detention before their deportation, while people from Colombia typically spent 45 days in detention.

The Trump administration’s rhetoric used to justify the federal surge centered on claims that Somali-Americans committed fraud. However, just over 100 Somalis were arrested during the operation. The data shows only four were deported to Somalia during this time, where the U.S. Department of State has issued a travel advisory citing terrorism and civil unrest.

Groups such as the American Immigration Council have expressed concerns that immigrants have been deported to places other than their countries of origin, which sometimes happened when immigrants had proven they faced persecution if returned to their home countries. But only eight people arrested in Minnesota were deported to third countries, including Cubans, Spaniards and Venezuelans who were deported to Mexico.

Wala said the speed with which deportations take place varies from country to country. Mexico, for instance, is willing to accept deported immigrants while countries with more strained relationships to the U.S. may simply refuse.

Of those who were deported, about 45 percent were collateral arrests, meaning federal agents encountered them in a public place or during an operation targeting another person, rather than targeting them explicitly.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials have said in public statements that “Operation Metro Surge” targeted the “worst of the worst,” citing immigrants who were convicted of crimes. But the data shows that just 1 in 3 of those deported from Minnesota had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

Jesus Flores Aguilar’s habeas corpus petition, which challenged the legality of his detention, said he had been a law-abiding resident while in Minnesota. However, his attorney John Hayden said Flores Aguilar had returned to the U.S. after previously being removed, which is a felony. Hayden told MPR News he withdrew that challenge, knowing that efforts to keep his client in the country would not be successful.

Many immigrants chose to leave rather than face ‘prolonged detention’

About 43 percent of the people deported from Minnesota “self-deported,” which is a term that federal officials have used to describe immigrants who chose to leave voluntarily rather than wait in detention centers while challenging their arrests in court. People who were deported were typically detained for about 17 days, while people who were later released by the government were detained for nearly 60 days.

Wala of the National Immigration Law Center said there appear to be more people voluntarily deporting themselves across the country, but that it’s partly due to pressure the administration is putting on detainees.

“They want to make life as miserable as possible for immigrants or migrants, more generally, with the hope that they will choose at times even the risk of persecution,” Wala said, “rather than facing prolonged detention in the United States or persistent harassment by ICE and other law enforcement officials here within the United States.”

More than half of people detained by federal authorities after Dec. 1 still had active cases that were working through the immigration court system as of March 10, the most recent data available. That’s because they likely haven’t been in custody long enough for their cases to resolve.

Wala said he hopes increased transparency about the federal government’s immigration practices will allow more immigrants access to due process and ensure the public knows what’s happening to them.

The Deportation Data Project said the arrest data is incomplete and includes a number of duplicates, which MPR News and APM Reports accounted for in its analysis. Still, the data provides the clearest picture yet of the federal government’s actions this winter.

Correction (April 3, 2026): This story has been updated with the correct name of the Deportation Data Project.

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order that would undo birthright citizenship. That long-established legal principle was enshrined in the 14th Amendment. In part, it says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens."

In her new book, professor and writer Daisy Hernandez says that legal definition is just one layer of a complicated idea. Citizenship is really about who gets to belong.

“We are citizens of the stories we tell,” she writes. “We belong to the stories we scribe about democracy and authoritarianism, about borders and neighbors, about love and grief and one another.”

Hernandez joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a remarkably relevant discussion about her book, “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth.” She uses her own family’s immigration story as a starting point to examine how class, race, sexism and nationalism all impact who gets to claim U.S. citizenship. She and Miller also talk about how citizenship has evolved over the course of American history, often becoming a proxy for race.

Guest:

• Daisy Hernandez is a writer and a professor at Northwestern University. Her new book is “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth.” Her previous books include “The Kissing Bug” and a memoir, “A Cup of Water Under My Bed.”

Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations.

Subscribe to Big Books and Bold Ideas with Kerri Miller on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, RSS or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Justices heard arguments Wednesday in a case that almost certainly will result in a historic ruling. At issue: President Trump's challenge to a constitutional provision that has long been interpreted to guarantee American citizenship to every child born in the United States.

Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship. So, on Day 1 of his second term, he issued an executive order barring automatic citizenship for any baby born in the U.S. whose parents entered the country illegally or who were here legally, but on a temporary, or even a long-term visa.

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“We are the only country in the world that does this with birthright,” Trump said as he signed the executive order. “And it's absolutely ridiculous.”

That actually is not true. There are nearly 33 countries, mainly in North and South America, that have birthright citizenship — including, among others, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Among those at the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning is Trump, making him the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation's highest court.

D-Day for Trump's attack on birthright citizenship

But Trump has long been determined to rid this country of its longstanding protection for birthright citizenship. Wednesday is D-Day in that effort, and to understand the issues, it's worth taking a stroll through American history.

While citizenship was not defined at the nation's founding, the colonists were largely pro-immigrant, according to University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost, author of “American Birthright: How the Citizenship Clause made America American,” due out in September.

The founders “wanted to populate this mostly empty continent,” she observes, adding that, in fact, one of the complaints against the British king in the Declaration of Independence was that the British “were discouraging immigration.”

Indeed, she notes, after the Revolutionary War, even those who had been loyal to the king but wanted to stay in America were granted U.S. citizenship.

Trump's view of the 14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship didn't make it into the Constitution, though, until after the Civil War, when the nation enacted the 14th Amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision — a ruling that in 1857 declared that Black people, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States.

To undo that decision, the post-Civil War Congress passed a constitutional amendment that defines citizenship in broad terms. It says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Can't see the video above? Watch it here.

President Trump, however, maintains that the constitutional amendment was intended to be more limited than it has been in practice. “This was meant for the slaves … for the children of slaves,” Trump said last January. “I'm in favor of that. But it wasn't meant for the entire world to occupy the United States.”

But as the University of Virginia's Frost notes, the framers of the 14th Amendment had more than one explicit purpose. They wanted a clear, bright line definition of citizenship; they wanted the former slaves and their children to be citizens, and they wanted to include immigrants, many of whom were the targets of great hostility.

“I like to remind my students that between 1845 and 1855, approximately 2 million people from Ireland fled to the United States,” Frost observes. They were fleeing from famine and harsh British rule. And while “there certainly was some prejudice and discrimination and xenophobia,” she says, “their children soon would automatically become American citizens” when born on U.S. soil after enactment of the 14th Amendment.

Trump's interpretation of the 14th Amendment is avowedly far more restricted. What's more, it has not been embraced by the courts or the legal norms of the country for 160 years.

The counterargument

“The president's executive order is attempting a radical rewriting of that 14th Amendment guarantee to all of us,” says Cecillia Wang, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Indeed, even as both Republican and Democratic administrations have sought in modern times to deport large numbers of individuals who have entered the country illegally, the notion of birthright citizenship has remained so entrenched that during World War II when Japanese citizens were held as enemy aliens in U.S. detention camps, their newborn children were automatically granted American citizenship because they were born on U.S. soil. And Congress later codified that understanding in the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the justices are likely to focus on some of the key court decisions that have protected birthright citizenship during the past century and a half. Perhaps most important among these is the case of Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrants who ran a small business in the city. Back then, immigrants like Wong's parents were largely free to enter the U.S. without any documentation, but his parents eventually returned to China. And after their son visited them in 1895, officers at the port in San Francisco refused to allow him back into the United States, contending that he was not a qualified citizen.

Wong challenged the denial and, in 1898, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor. By a 6-2 vote, the justices interpreted the words "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to mean that all children born in the U.S. were automatically granted citizenship. The court noted that only three exceptions were specified in the amendment: The children of diplomats were not deemed to be U.S. citizens because their allegiance was to another country; the children of occupying armies were similarly excepted, as were the children of Native American tribes. Of these three exceptions, the only one that still applies is to the children of diplomats, as there are no invading armies, and Native Americans were granted automatic citizenship in 1924.

The Trump administration, however, argues that Wong Kim Ark's situation was very different from many of the children who become automatic American citizens today, because Wong's parents, though undocumented, were here legally, by virtue of having a permanent residence in the U.S. And the Trump administration points to language in the 1898 Supreme Court opinion that assumes the parents had legal status in the country because they had a permanent residence in San Francisco.

The Trump administration makes an even broader argument. “An individual who is naturally born in the United States is only considered a citizen if their parents have allegiance to the nation,” says Daniel Epstein, vice president of America First Legal, the organization founded by the architect of Trump's immigration policies, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff. “It is a misdemeanor to come into the United States without authorization. That is a crime,” he says. “That is strong evidence that you don't kind of meet the traditional notion of allegiance.”

‘We do not punish children for the sins of their parents’

Countering that argument, the ACLU's Wang will tell the Supreme Court that the men who wrote the 14th Amendment deliberately chose to confer automatic citizenship on the child, not the parent.

"And the idea — that actually goes back to the founding — is that in America we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean. When you're born in this country, we're all Americans, all the same," Wang says.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is supporting the president's position, along with 11 other GOP senators, and 16 House members, who signed on to the America First brief.

"As a policy matter, birthright citizenship is stupid," Cruz says, "because it incentivizes illegal immigration. It makes absolutely no sense that someone breaks the law and they get rewarded with a very, very, precious gift, which is American citizenship."

Can an executive order trump a constitutional amendment?

The ACLU's Wang counters that Trump is trying, by executive order, to change the meaning of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, a measure that was approved overwhelmingly by the Congress in 1866 and, after a great public debate, ratified by more than three-quarters of the states. She argues that the consequences of such a dramatic change by executive fiat would have untold consequences.

"What will immediately happen is that every month, tens of thousands of U.S.-born babies will be stripped of their citizenship. They may be stateless because their parents' country of nationality may not consider them to be citizens. And so you'll see a permanent underclass of people who have no nationality, who are living in the United States, who can't pass on their nationality to their children born in the U.S.

In a separate brief, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops stresses the problems that would be created by generation after generation of children who are stateless, with no country to call home, and no citizenship to pass on to their children.

"The children … would be the ones to bear the brunt of this," says Bishop Daniel Flores, vice president of the bishops conference. "I have people asking this now in my diocese. 'Bishop, am I going to get into trouble if I give food to somebody that I'm not sure of their documentation? … Can we help these people? Because we think we need to, because they're people and they were born here."

The Trump administration counters that birthright citizenship raises two other problems: a generic potential threat to national security and the problem of so-called "birth tourism."

In fact, even birthright defenders concede that a cottage industry has long existed in which women pay money to come to the U.S. and have their children here. But the numbers are consistently very small. Even the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors limited immigration, estimates only 20,000 to 26,000 birth tourism children are born in the U.S. each year, compared to the overall birth count of 3.6 million babies born each year.

Daniel Epstein of America First Legal contends that numbers are not important. "I view just one illegal act as illegal, and birth tourism is illegal and it's against the law, and the law matters."

Population experts say that if automatic birthright citizenship were to be voided, the consequences would be profound — and counterintuitive. The Population Research Institute at Penn State, for instance, estimates that a repeal of birthright citizenship would result in 2.7 million more people living here illegally by 2045, people who previously would have been entitled to birthright citizenship, but now have no such citizenship for themselves or to pass on to their children or the generations thereafter.

Also likely to come up at today's Supreme Court argument are practical questions, like those raised by Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year in a related case. How would a hospital know that the parents of a child are illegally in the country? What would hospitals do with a newborn? What would states do? The answer from Trump's solicitor general, D. John Sauer, was "Federal officials will have to figure that out."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Federal agents arrested more than 3,700 Minnesota residents during the federal government’s surge into the state this winter, according to new data released through a federal lawsuit.

It’s the most nuanced data the federal government has released since the surge and includes the location where at least 3,789 people were arrested, their countries of origin and whether they have a criminal history. The data was released by the Deportation Data Project via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The data itself is likely incomplete. It included a number of duplicate arrests, which MPR News and APM Reports accounted for in its analysis. But because federal officials often failed to provide all the information for each arrest, it’s likely an undercount.

Federal officials said in public statements during the surge that they targeted the “worst of the worst.” Agency officials in early February reported agents had made more than 4,000 arrests during what they called Operation Metro Surge, including “murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members and terrorists.”

But the new data shows fewer than one-quarter of those arrested had a criminal conviction on their record. A little more than 13 percent of those arrested had pending criminal charges.

The vast majority were arrested in Minnesota for civil immigration violations. Some of those arrested with criminal histories or pending criminal charges were taken directly from jails, rather than through targeted enforcement actions, according to the data.

Although the released data doesn’t identify the exact charges against each individual, federal agencies did engage in high-profile arrests of defendants who had not yet been convicted during the surge, including those charged with drug crimes.

During Operation Metro Surge, federal agents arrested an average of about 49 people a day, according to an initial MPR News and APM Reports analysis. About 30 of those arrested were 16 or younger. One arrest involved a child who was just 2 or 3 years old. A handful were over 70 years old.

Arrests surged in the first few days after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Macklin Good on Jan. 7 in south Minneapolis, according to the data. Administration officials, including then-U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, vowed to send hundreds more federal agents to the region after Good’s killing.

But then — despite more agents on the ground — arrests in the region appeared to decline in mid-January, according to the data. After federal agents killed Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, arrests dipped, briefly rose, then largely declined until federal officials announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in mid-February. By then, arrests on most days dwindled to fewer than a dozen.

Most of those arrested between Dec. 1 and March 10 came from Latin American countries. More than one-quarter of the arrestees came from Ecuador. Many of those arrested also came from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Although President Donald Trump publicly castigated Somali Americans, calling them “garbage,” the vast majority of Somali Americans in Minnesota are American citizens. Just 106 people from Somalia were arrested during the operation.

Federal agents were plagued with accusations of racial discrimination while in the Twin Cities.

The data shows about 35 percent of federal arrests during this period were "collateral" rather than targeted. That fits with anecdotal accounts of residents swept up by roving groups of federal agents at bus stops or on public sidewalks throughout the surge.

Correction (March 31, 2026): This story has been updated with the correct average number of ICE arrests per day during the surge.

U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-Minn., is back in Washington, D.C., after an unannounced oversight visit to the Camp East Montana immigration detention facility in El Paso, Texas. A number of Minnesotans detained by ICE have been sent there.

Morrison, a doctor, joined Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to describe the conditions and her stance on funding the Department of Homeland Security, which is shut down as lawmakers spar over funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The following has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above.

You had trouble getting access to the Whipple federal building in Minnesota. Was it different in El Paso?

It was actually pretty similar to my experience at Whipple. I arrived to the Camp East Montana Detention Center — which is the largest in the nation, it can hold 5,000 human beings — and I was met by security that had been subcontracted out to a private firm. They stalled and delayed, and I just persisted and insisted that, as a member of Congress, it is the law that I'm able to perform oversight at taxpayer-funded detention facilities. And eventually, they let me in about an hour after I got there. So it was an unannounced visit, but like at Whipple, they stalled long enough so they had time to prepare.

Unlike Whipple, these are tent structures?

What I saw there was really horrifying. They are massive tent structures that, if you look at the aerial photos of them, look like a commercial livestock building. So I was allowed into one of these huge tent facilities. They would not let me speak with any detainee, would not let me speak with my constituents, but they let me into one of the buildings that was empty. So it's this endless hallway when you enter it with locked doors on either side that lead into what they call pods. And these pods hold between 64 and 72 human beings. They have metal bunk beds crammed together on either side of this room. There are metal tables with metal stools in the middle. There's a bank of showers with doors that kind of cover your midsection. There are toilets and there are about six sinks.

And this is where 64 human beings spend all day and all night. Their meals are brought to them in these facilities in “satellite feeding,” which also is reminiscent of a livestock building to me. There are no windows. I'm haunted by imagining what it would be like to be a detainee in this facility. The fear, the isolation and also the zero privacy at any time, the lack of access to the outside world and the unknown of what will become of you.

Is this the same place as the measles outbreak?

They have reported measles outbreaks. They've also had tuberculosis in this facility. They told me they currently have one measles case that is being isolated, and they were testing another detainee and didn't have the results yet.

And as a physician, what do you think of this?

Well, one of the reasons I wanted to see it — because I think it's incredibly important that we shine a light on what is happening in our country, in our name, using our taxpayer dollars — is to understand what the health conditions are in this facility. And there have been reports coming out of Camp East Montana of people being unable to access the medications they need.

I have a constituent who's being held there who has diabetes, who's reporting to his family that he's not able to get the medication he needs. I was told by one of the medical people in the facility that they had pill lines where people were allowed to line up twice a day. He said they were working on getting to three times a day, which doesn't make any sense, because some medications have to be taken three times a day.

It's just chaotic, it's inhumane, and I think it's so important that people consider that this is just the beginning. There are plans to spend almost $40 billion to build camps and detention centers just like this all across the country, with a goal to hold almost 100,000 people at a time.

Since you couldn't talk to your constituents, could you at least pass them a note?

I asked four times to see them. I was very insistent that I had traveled from Minnesota to see my constituents. I'm a member of Congress, I should be able to talk to my constituents. They wouldn't allow that, and so I said, “Can I leave them a note so that they know I was here inquiring about them, and so that they know who their member of Congress is? And then can sign a privacy release form if they want to be in contact with me.” They would not let me leave them a note because they told me it would be too hard to find them.

They currently said they had 900 detainees, and when people arrive at Camp East Montana, they're given a wristband with a QR code on it to track them. So I know that wasn't true. But if it is true, that's even more alarming, if they don't even know where the people that they are detaining are within the facility.

Are the conditions playing into your decision to withhold money from ICE that's leading to the big standoff in Washington?

Absolutely, after what happened to us in Minnesota, we cannot let this go unanswered. This entire operation needs to be paused. We cannot give ICE any more money until this stops.

The U.S. State Department recommends caution when traveling to Ecuador, citing kidnappings and murders in the country. Tourists have been robbed at gunpoint on beaches and on hiking trails, according to the travel advisory.

That’s exactly why Liam Conejo Ramos’ father doesn’t want his family to have to go back to Ecuador. He said crime is rampant in Quito, the capital.

“It would be a struggle,” said Adrian Conejo Arias, in an interview with MPR News conducted in Spanish. “You’d also be afraid to even step out onto the streets because of all the insecurity.”

The family’s immigration lawyer said they would be targeted because of their perceived wealth if they are removed from the U.S. and sent back to their home country — which is exactly what a judge ordered in February.

They are appealing the decision, but according to their lawyer, the Board of Immigration Appeals affirms previous judges’ orders about 90 percent of the time.

U.S. Immigration Judge John Burns — the judge who denied their asylum claim — denied 96 percent of 1,128 asylum claims between fiscal year 2020 and the first 11 months of 2025, according to a Syracuse University analysis.

Conejo Arias said violent crime in his home country is why they left the country and applied for asylum in the United States.

“We wouldn’t have the same resources that we have here. There wouldn’t be the same opportunities for our children,” Conejo Arias said. “We want something better for them, a better future.”

They were following the legal immigration process when 5-year-old Liam and his father were detained by ICE in Columbia Heights and sent to a detention center in Texas.

The family’s immigration lawyer, Danielle Molliver with Nwokocha & Operana Law Offices in Minneapolis, told MPR News last week that the firm will appeal the decision by the April 7 deadline. The government must file its argument against the appeal by April 28.

An appeals process can take months or years, but the Trump administration has pushed for expedited deportation proceedings against Liam’s family and other families who have sought asylum claims. President Donald Trump shut down the app shortly after his second inauguration in 2025.

Conejo Arias said he wasn’t surprised by the judge’s decision because the hearing dates were fast and “extremely close together.”

“We weren’t given the opportunity to mount a proper defense and now they are rushing things though,” he said.

Molliver said the level of harm suffered by the Conejo family in Ecuador “would meet the definition of persecution.” She said they were persecuted for being Indigenous.

Conejo Arias “was harmed and threatened by particular people,” Molliver said referring to his time in Ecuador. “The police were of no help. The government is complicit.”

“If they were to go back there, they would probably be tortured or harmed again,” Molliver said.

Molliver also said she fears the family would have a target on its back if they were to be deported to Ecuador.

“The notoriety is an issue,” she said. “Americans are targeted all the time, but so are, unfortunately, deportees that get sent back to their countries are often misperceived as having money.”

“So we’re pretty confident that they cannot safely return to Ecuador,” Molliver said.

The notoriety she refers to goes back to the day Liam and his father were taken outside their former home in Columbia Heights. They were detained Jan. 20 and the image of him wearing a sky-blue bunny hat and a Spiderman backpack went viral. Father and son were sent to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

Liam came to represent the children caught up in Minnesota’s immigration enforcement surge. In the Columbia Heights school district alone, ICE detained at least four students. A second grader and a fifth grader at Liam’s school were detained with their mother in January.

A federal judge ordered Liam and his father’s release on Jan. 31.

Conejo Arias said Liam still wears the hat, but only in his home. He doesn’t wear it out because he doesn’t want to be recognized.

Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Liam once attended, issued a statement, calling the judge’s decision “heartbreaking,” but officials “remain hopeful for a positive outcome.” It said their thoughts are with Liam and the family.

The Conejos’ detention, the statement said, “shed light on the harm caused by Operation Metro Surge.”

“While we respect the legal process, we cannot ignore the profound human impact — especially on children — of this federal action, which has disrupted the lives of so many of our community members who entered this country through legal means,” the statement read.

Conejo Arias knows exactly what he’d say if he had the chance to speak with Trump.

“I would speak to him about the children — about how they are being separated from their parents and suffering so much,” he said. “I would ask him to show more feeling, more heart and to stop doing what he has been doing and continues to do: taking away people’s ability to defend themselves.”

Minnesota is suing the federal government for evidence related to three shootings during “Operation Metro Surge.” Two of those shootings resulted in the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti. The third shooting injured Minneapolis resident Julio Sosa-Celis.

The state claims in the lawsuit that federal officials have repeatedly declined to share evidence in these shootings and ignored their requests.

It said federal immigration officials physically blocked Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators from accessing the scene of the third shooting, when federal officials shot and killed Alex Pretti.

The state says it has the “authority and responsibility to protect against and address violence within its borders.”

At a press conference announcing the lawsuit, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the legal action is aimed at forcing federal agencies to turn over evidence in the three cases.

“The lawsuit seeks to force the federal government to provide access to evidence in three cases, the killing of Renee Good, the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis and the killing of Alex Pretti,” Moriarty said.

Moriarty said the federal government has adopted a new and troubling approach. “The federal government has adopted a policy of categorically withholding evidence from us related to shootings involving federal agents during Operation Metro surge,” she said.

She added that the lawsuit is unprecedented. “The lawsuit today challenging the categorical withholding of all evidence from a state for criminal investigation is unprecedented in American history.”

The shootings happened during a large-scale federal immigration enforcement effort launched in late 2025. The operation, described by federal officials as the largest in the department’s history, deployed thousands of agents across Minnesota and led to multiple violent encounters.

Moriarty said cooperation between federal and state investigators initially appeared to follow standard practice, but quickly broke down. “Later that same day, the federal government abruptly decided to stop all collaboration in information sharing,” she said, referring to the shooting of Macklin Good.

She described similar patterns in the other cases, including the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis. “The investigation began as a joint effort… however, the cooperation again abruptly ended,” Moriarty said.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the situation “extraordinary” and emphasized the state’s responsibility to investigate potential crimes within its borders.

“We argue in this lawsuit that we share jurisdiction with the federal government,” Ellison said. “These incidents happen in Minnesota and fall under Minnesota state law.”

Ellison also described the fatal shooting of Renee Macklin Good, saying she was “peacefully exercising her constitutional right to observe a federal operation” when she was killed. He said federal agents removed key evidence before state investigators could examine it.

In the case of Julio Sosa-Celis, Ellison said federal agents initially claimed self-defense but later acknowledged inaccuracies. “The federal government has since acknowledged that those agents lied,” he said.

Regarding the shooting of Alex Pretti, Ellison said federal agents blocked state investigators even after a warrant was obtained. “Federal agents continued to block the BCA access to the site,” he said.

The lawsuit alleges that federal agencies not only refused to share evidence but also ignored formal requests made through established legal procedures.

Moriarty said the state will continue its own investigation regardless of federal cooperation. “We will not sit by and let that happen. We are prepared to fight for transparency and accountability,” she said.

Officials say they are seeking a court order requiring federal agencies to turn over evidence so the state can determine whether any criminal charges are warranted.

Armed federal immigration officers in tactical gear moved through terminals at some of the busiest U.S. airports Monday, standing near security lines and checkpoints after President Donald Trump ordered their deployment during a partial government shutdown that has disrupted air travel nationwide.

The Trump administration said they would supplement Transportation Security Administration staffing at certain airports but provided few details about exactly what they would be doing. Still, after intensified immigration enforcement and protests in cities across the country over the past year, their presence has unsettled some travelers and raised new questions.

On Monday, Associated Press journalists observed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents patrolling terminals and lingering near long lines of passengers at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International, John F. Kennedy International in New York, Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, George Bush Intercontinental in Houston and Louis Armstrong International outside New Orleans. A handful of other airports — including Phoenix's Sky Harbor International — also confirmed ICE would be on-site. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said his office was monitoring the deployment of federal officers at O’Hare International.

Federal law enforcement officers are a routine presence at international airports. Customs and Border Protection officers screen arriving passengers, and Homeland Security Investigations agents conduct criminal inquiries tied to cross-border activity. But immigration agents are rarely visible at TSA checkpoints, the front line of domestic air travel.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport spokesperson John Welbes on Sunday referred questions about whether ICE agents would assist TSA to Homeland Security. The Metropolitan Airports Commission said in a Monday statement they were unaware of any security staffing changes.

Homeland Security told MPR News the president and his administration are focused on what’s happening at the nation’s airports, but refused to say whether ICE would increase its presence at MSP.

ICE deployments arrive amid ongoing Washington impasse

Monday’s deployments came as hundreds of thousands of Homeland Security workers, including from the TSA, have worked without pay since Congress failed to renew DHS funding last month.

Funding for the department lapsed Feb. 14, when Democrats refused to fund ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection without changes to their operations after federal officers shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. But, while routine funding used to pay TSA agents has lapsed, ICE and other immigration enforcement personnel are still receiving paychecks amid the shutdown — a result of Trump’s big tax cuts bill that became law last year.

Meanwhile, the budget stalemate impacting TSA only deepened as Trump rejected the latest offer, this one from his own Republican Party, after a weekend of negotiations.

White House staff pitched Trump on the idea of funding DHS, except for immigration operations that have been central to the dispute, according to a person a familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. Still, Trump rejected that plan and later escalated his demands that senators also approve the so-called SAVE America Act, a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill that has essentially no chance in the Congress.

On Monday, the White House also turned down a request from top Democratic negotiator, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, to meet and continue talks, according to another person granted anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

Democrats are continuing to demand major changes to federal immigration operations — including policy changes that would require ICE officers to get a warrant from a judge before forcefully entering homes, to no longer allow officers to wear masks and to require that they provide clear identifying information on uniforms.

Unlike many recent immigration operations in U.S. cities, where federal agents have often worn face coverings, ICE officers at airports appeared to be largely not masked Monday, following an earlier direction by Trump.

Fears that the deployments will heighten tension

Some fear that positioning federal immigration officers at security checkpoints will only escalate tensions. Union leaders representing aviation workers stressed that ICE officers don’t have the same training and expertise as TSA workers.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees — which represents TSA officers — said in a statement that his members “deserve to be paid, not replaced by untrained, armed agents who have shown how dangerous they can be.”

Whether ICE will have a more sweeping role beyond watching long lines and patrolling terminals has yet to be seen. On Sunday, Trump said federal immigration officers could guard exit lanes or check passenger IDs. The president has since suggested he could deploy the National Guard at airports too.

ICE and TSA have been “working together so far very well,” Trump said at Monday in Memphis. Still, he said he would “bring out the National Guard” if more personnel is needed.

Long wait times persisted at some major hubs Monday.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Jackson, for example, is still urging passengers to allow at least four hours for both domestic and international screenings. The check-in line for departing passengers was so long Monday that it snaked from the TSA screening area to the atrium, through the baggage claim and out the entrance doors with people in back of the line waiting outside. ICE officers were patrolling the terminal area, but not seen checking IDs or otherwise interacting with passengers.

Donna Troupe, who was flying from Atlanta to Miami, said she didn’t take issue with ICE’s presence at the airport — but also wasn’t sure how much they were needed. “When I’ve seen them, they’ve just been standing around talking,” she said.

Meanwhile, Daniela Dominguez, another traveler in Atlanta who was headed to Miami, said she was concerned that for some seeing ICE would be unnerving.

“I bet a lot of people have a lot of anxiety coming to the airport,” Dominguez said.

In New Orleans, John Hoffman arrived to the airport five hours before his flight to Spokane, Washington, after missing his trip the day before. He said security lines seemed to be moving quicker Monday as federal officers monitored lines — still, he questioned whether was worth the travel and lodging expenses to deploy ICE officers to various airports.

Beyond TSA operations, many travelers on the East Coast faced additional disruptions after a Sunday night collision that killed two people and injured dozens of others on the runway of New York’s LaGuardia Airport. LaGuardia was temporarily shut down as air traffic was diverted.

TSA workers have been going without pay

After weeks of missed paychecks, many TSA agents have called in sick — or even quit their jobs — as financial strains pile up. The staffing shortages have forced some airports to close checkpoints at times, with wait times swinging dramatically for travelers.

TSA call-out rates climbed over the weekend. Nationwide on Sunday, 11.8 percent of TSA agents missed work — the highest rate of the shutdown so far — with over 3,450 officers calling out, according to DHS. More than 400 officers have quit during the shutdown, the department said.

Some have accused the government of using TSA workers as pawns in the ongoing budget fight. And aviation unions have raised additional safety concerns in light of the Trump administration’s deployment of ICE officers.

“This latest threat of ICE invasion at the airports is another distraction from solutions that protect Americans,” a coalition of unions representing aviation workers — including the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers — said Sunday. TSA work “can’t simply be replaced” by federal immigration officers, they noted, adding that ICE’s presence and potential attempts to question passengers about immigration status may also “distract them from ensuring airport security.”

The unions called for TSA workers to be paid immediately.

The Trump administration's unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum, as the administration moves to scale up its detention footprint to fuel its campaign to arrest, detain and deport the largest number of immigrants in modern U.S. history.

Flush with new cash — $85 billion in new funding, with around $45 billion specifically to expand immigration detention over four years — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving fast to lease and acquire warehouses and buildings across the United States with the aim of retrofitting them into detention spaces. ICE is also expanding contracts with local jails and private prison facilities as it builds out its sprawling detention footprint. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation.

ICE detainees have been held at more than 220 detention sites around the country, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by NPR. These sites range from dedicated ICE facilities and private prisons to county jails, military bases and newly converted warehouses. Detainees are also being held temporarily in staging areas, hospitals and holding sites. The number of sites continues to grow.

ICE's biggest detention operations are largely clustered in the southern United States. Just five states — Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and Georgia — account for just over 60% of the nation's more than 750,000 ICE detention book-ins. (In the Deportation Data Project's dataset, these book-ins are referred to as "stints." Most individuals have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple detention centers.) Texas had more than 200,000 book-ins across 115 facilities between President Trump taking office in January 2025 and mid-October 2025, the most book-ins of any state in the country.

A year ago, around 37,000 people were being held in immigration detention across the nation, according to ICE data. That number had jumped to more than 72,000 by the end of January 2026. The administration's goal is to keep expanding detention space to keep up with arrests. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aims to build bed space for 100,000 immigrants alleged to be in the country illegally. On average, detention facilities daily now hold nearly 70,000 immigrants, a scale of mass detention not seen since the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and nationals during World War II.

And most detained noncitizens are clustered at a handful of centers. Of the more than 60,000 book-ins across Arizona, nearly half were at the Florence Staging Facility. Forty-five percent of the 93,105 book-ins across Louisiana were at the Alexandria Staging Facility.

DHS documents reveal ambitious growth plans scaled up around a "Hub and Spoke Model" in which eight large detention centers holding between 7,500 and 10,000 people each are fed by 16 smaller regional processing centers holding 500 to 1,500 immigrants each. The proposed facility in Social Circle, Ga., for example, is one of the eight proposed "mega centers" positioned strategically across the nation. The new center would effectively double the town's population of roughly 5,000.

Growing frustration, local backlash

But there's growing grassroots opposition — across political and geographic lines — to ICE's detention expansion. And communities are winning. From Georgia to Texas to Arizona and in scores of towns across the U.S., residents are pushing back, citing costs and infrastructure worries, as well as zoning, political and even moral concerns.

"They're getting the wrong people," says Donnie Dagenhart, who lives not far from a proposed ICE detention center near Williamsport, Md. Dagenhart, who owns a local construction company, says he supported Trump for years but has now soured on the president largely over how immigration is being enforced. "Let's get the bad ones out. That's what we should be doing, but we're not. I just think we're living in a police state and it's getting worse," he says. "Did you see the building?" he asks of the new detention site. "It's huge."

Polling shows that the public has largely turned against Trump's aggressive mass deportation agenda. Sixty-five percent of Americans said ICE has "gone too far" in enforcing immigration laws, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That's an 11-point increase since last summer.

In New Hampshire, a "purple"' swing state that holds the nation's first presidential primary, community uproar recently forced the halt of a planned ICE detention facility in the town of Merrimack.

New Hampshire state Rep. Bill Boyd, a Republican from Merrimack who had previously reached out to DHS voicing his opposition to the facility, called it a big win.

"This community has fought giants and has come out victorious," he told NPR member station NHPR. "And it's just a testament to my neighbors and local leadership and the state leaders for taking a stand.

Backlash erupted, too, in Oklahoma City in deep-red Oklahoma when local residents learned of plans to convert a vacant warehouse into a facility to process and temporarily house immigrants. Faced with strong opposition, DHS and ICE backed away from that proposed detention site too.

Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, has strongly opposed a proposed immigration detention center near Byhalia, Miss. "I am all for immigration enforcement, but this site was meant for economic development and job creation. We cannot suddenly flood Byhalia with an influx of up to 10,000 detainees," Wicker wrote on X last month.

Public outcry also stopped a planned detention facility in conservative Texas. The federal government planned to buy a 1 million-square-foot warehouse from Majestic Realty in Hutchins, Texas, and turn it into a holding center. But following weeks of pushback from community members and city leaders, the company decided not to sell or lease the facility to DHS.

"We're grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the City of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth," a Majestic Realty spokesperson told Texas Public Radio in a statement.

The largest detention facilities in the country are run by two for-profit, private companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic. Both companies reported more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025, an 8% and 18% increase, respectively, in growth year over year. A handful of other companies also have big DHS and ICE contracts to help guard, run and support ICE detention operations, including Akima Global Services and its sister company Akima Infrastructure Protection. The Project on Government Oversight reports that CoreCivic's ICE awards have increased 45% since Trump took office for his second term.

‘A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue’

In Surprise, Ariz., where DHS recently purchased a 400,000-square-foot warehouse for $70 million, NPR member station KJZZ reported that the move sparked frequent protests and community pushback. Hundreds of people swarmed Surprise's City Council meetings demanding that the city pass a resolution to make DHS and ICE publicly disclose operational plans.

These concerns are heightened as reports of overcrowding and lack of food in detention centers across the nation have proliferated. ICE is investigating numerous detainee deaths. Since October, 26 people have died in ICE custody, putting immigration detention on track for its deadliest fiscal year since the agency was founded.

Advocates say reduced oversight and record numbers of detainees are a recipe for more sickness and death in custody. "The abhorrent and worsening conditions in detention centers, gross negligence and a complete lack of oversight have contributed to yet another grim record for deaths in ICE custody," said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights defense organization.

While there have been few to no oversight moves on the federal level, local leaders are taking action. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 mayors of cities with populations over 30,000, recently passed two emergency resolutions calling for the administration to rein in ICE tactics, expand transparency and put guardrails on detention expansion.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter," the Republican mayor of Columbia, S.C., Daniel Rickenmann, told NPR. The conference called for federal immigration agencies to "assure all those detained have access to legal assistance required by law; require all buildings where people are detained to meet local health and safety standards; [and] obtain appropriate local zoning and building permit approvals to convert warehouses and other buildings to detention or deportation facilities."

Rickenmann says he and fellow mayors have grave concerns about the rapidly expanding ICE detention system: "Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?"

In a statement to NPR, ICE said new facilities would bring jobs, additional tax revenue and security to communities. On recently purchased warehouses in Roxbury, N.J., and Hagerstown, Md., the agency wrote: "These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. These sites have undergone community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase."

Local officials NPR spoke with dispute the existence of any rigorous community impact studies for new ICE facilities.

DHS secrecy leaves local officials in the dark

A through-line complaint across communities is lack of transparency. Representatives at all levels of government, from city councils to the U.S. Congress, complain they have been largely kept in the dark about DHS' plans. Local representatives in Oakwood, Ga., Baytown, Texas, and Highland Park, Mich., told NPR that they received no response from DHS when they inquired about facilities slated to be built in their communities.

In Social Circle, Ga., local frustrations rose so high that city leaders barred water use by ICE's planned facility until the agency provides more clarity on its plans.

"There is a lock on the meter," Eric Taylor, the city manager for Social Circle, said in a statement to NPR member station Georgia Public Broadcasting. "The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity."

In Merrillville, Ind., reports that ICE intended to convert a vacant 275,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention facility caught local officials completely off guard. The town quickly passed a forceful resolution opposing the conversion and publicly criticized ICE for failing to inform local officials of the move.

"We want to be clear that we've received no communication from any federal agency regarding the use of this property as a processing or detention facility, and the town has not approved or authorized any such use," Merrillville Town Council President Rick Bella said in an emailed statement to NPR.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said that the lack of communication from ICE, as well as from the private-sector companies, is especially concerning when coupled with reports of mistreatment and abuse.

"Here in San Diego, our members of Congress are not permitted to access these facilities," Gloria said. "Our local public health officials have also been turned away. And so when you look at what's happening in public with these detention efforts, they often become extremely chaotic. It makes you wonder what's happening behind closed doors and without, you know, transparency and accountability."

In Oakwood, Ga., the mayor and City Council posted that while they support ICE's mission, they were concerned that the local government was not involved in the process of green-lighting the detention center or selecting its location. The sale was recently finalized, and Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that ICE paid $68 million for the space, which had an assessed value of around $7.2 million.

Oakwood City Manager B.R. White strongly criticized the detention center's placement next to two residential areas, an established subdivision and a building under construction, and warned that taxpayers would likely have to foot the bill, including an estimated $2.6 million in added sewer expenses alone.

"I would have liked to see [ICE representatives] come in, sit down, tell us what their plans are and discuss with us how to resolve the issues and the tax losses to the community," White told NPR.

He says the city has not received any communication from the federal government, so the city is left to deal with these issues on their own. "It was an egregious overstep by the federal government," White said. "'Get the ox and the cart out of the ditch service' is what we're having to do right now."

Some places that aren't slated to have a facility have preemptively taken action. After reports that DHS was scoping out locations for new facilities in Missouri, the Jackson County Legislature approved a plan to ban immigration detention facilities. Legislator Manny Abarca told NPR member station KCUR that it puts the county on the record as being against "the caging of people" even if the county doesn't legally have the authority to stop DHS.

A handful of communities have embraced new facilities, however warily, with an eye on the economic boost and local jobs that these detention centers bring.

In Georgia, Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull says the county will make about $230,000 this year from the detention center contract between GEO Group and the federal government — enough to pay the salaries of 20% of the county's employees.

Hull says GEO Group has been a "great partner," providing about a dozen college scholarships and funding for holiday festivals and events, even as he acknowledges the ethical and moral costs of profiting from people being forcefully separated from their loved ones, locked away and deported.

"I hate to say it, but if not here, then somewhere else," Hull admits. "So you take advantage of what you have on your table. I hate to simplify it like that 'cause these are lives and families, but that's the reality of it."

To determine where people detained by ICE were held, NPR analyzed data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request by the Deportation Data Project. In the Deportation Data Project's original dataset, a book-in is referred to as a "stint." Most noncitizens have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple facilities. Each transfer to a new facility counts as a separate book-in, as does a return to a facility where the person had previously been booked. Facilities range from dedicated ICE centers to local jails and hospitals.

Sergio Martinez-Beltran, Jasmine Garsd, Ximena Bustillo, Alyson Hurt, and Preeti Aroon contributed to this story.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Federal immigration agents newly ordered to U.S. airports by President Donald Trump to help relieve security line congestion may guard exit lanes or check passenger IDs as a budget impasse has air travelers frustrated over hours-long waits and screeners angry about missed paychecks.

Trump made clear on Sunday, a day after saying he would use immigration officers for airport security starting Monday unless Democrats agreed on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, that he was going ahead with the plan to assist the Transportation Security Administration.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport spokesperson John Welbes referred questions about whether ICE agents would assist TSA to Homeland Security. The Metropolitan Airports Commission said in a Monday statement they were unaware of any security staffing changes.

Homeland Security told MPR News the president and his administration are focused on what’s happening at the nation’s airports, but refused to say whether ICE would increase its presence at MSP.

Hundreds of thousands of homeland security workers, including from the TSA, U.S. Secret Service and Coast Guard, have worked without pay since Congress failed to renew DHS funding last month. Democrats are demanding major changes in the conduct of federal immigration agents and showing no sign of backing down.

White House border czar Tom Homan, named by Trump to lead this effort, has also been meeting with a bipartisan group of senators in recent days over the partial shutdown and while he characterized those sessions as “good conversations,” he said they were “not at a point yet where we’re in total agreement.”

The Senate, convening in a rare weekend session, was expected to advance the nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., to be Trump’s next homeland security secretary. A vote on the confirmation could come as early as late Monday as Mullin has tried to make the case that he would be a steady hand after the tumultuous tenure of Kristi Noem, Trump’s first DHS secretary.

Meantime, Homan said in Sunday news show interviews that the increased role of U.S. Customs and Immigrations Enforcement at airports — specific duties and numbers — was subject to discussions with the leadership of TSA and ICE “to find out where we can fit in."

He pledged to have "a plan by the end of today, where we’re sending — what airports we’re starting with and where we’re sending them. ... So it’s a work in progress.” The priority, Homan said, was “the large airports where there’s a long wait, like three hours.”

Immigration officers, as an example, could cover exits currently monitored by TSA agents, freeing them to work screening lines.

“ICE agents are assigned at many airports across the country already. They do a lot of investigation, criminal investigation on smuggling at airports,” Homan said, adding that “certainly, a highly trained ICE law enforcement officer can cover an exit and makes sure people don’t go through those exits, entering the airport through the exits. And stuff like that relieves that TSA officer to go to screening and to reduce those lines.”

Another option, he said, was having ICE agents check identification before people enter screenings areas.

"We’re going to be a force multiplier,” Homan said.

While saying to help “wherever we can provide extra security,” Homan said there were limits. “I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine, because we’re not trained in that,” he said.

Trump said in a social media post that on Monday, “ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA Agents who have stayed on the job" despite the partial government shutdown. He further criticized Democrats.

Travelers at some airports worried about reaching their gates Sunday.

At Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, lines wrapped from one end of the airport to the other.

“Everyone just seems to be accepting it for what it is,” said 43-year-old Blake Wilbanks, who showed up two and a half hours early for his morning flight to Salt Lake City after reading about the shutdown.

“Hopeful I’m gonna make it,” he said as he waited in a winding security line.

The scene appeared more chaotic at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Large big crowds of anxious travelers piled toward security checkpoints, and TSA staff shouted through megaphones to tell people not to push one another.

For Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, one concern is the uncertainty that passengers are facing over possible wait times at any airport on any given day.

“Do I have to come an hour and a half early? Do I have to come four hours early? They don’t know until the day of or the afternoon of their flight,” he said. “So if we can alleviate that, again, the president wants to take away that leverage point for Democrats and make travel easier for the American people.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said “the last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country” after criticism about their conduct as part of Trump's immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Homan appeared on CNN's “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday,” while Duffy was interviewed on ABC's “This Week” and Jeffries spoke on CNN.