The latest on ICE in Minnesota

The company operating an ICE detention facility in Appleton is holding a series of job fairs starting Wednesday.

CoreCivic, which recently sold the Prairie Correctional facility to the federal government, is hiring guards, medical and administrative staff.

The federal government announced the 1,600-bed facility will begin housing detainees this fall after being shuttered since 2010. Before it closed, the facility employed between 300 and 400 people.

The community has expressed a range of reactions to the sale and reopening of the former prison.

Supporters see reopening as a potential economic boon for the struggling town of Appleton. Opponents believe an ICE detention center is morally reprehensible and a drain on community resources.

A federal judge in St. Paul on Friday ordered the Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan to ensure that clergy are able to visit immigration detainees at the Whipple Federal Building. Judge Jerry Blackwell’s decision comes amid a lawsuit that a group of Minnesota religious leaders filed in February.

The plaintiffs include the United Church of Christ Minnesota Conference, the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Rev. Christopher Collins, a pastor at St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic Church in St. Paul. 

The clergy members allege that the Department of Homeland Security is violating their First Amendment right to practice their religion by blocking them from ministering to detainees in person. 

Blackwell granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. He ordered DHS to remove any blanket prohibition on clergy visits to the Whipple building and implement a “workable process for allowing access” that balances the government’s reasonable need to keep the building secure. 

“There’s a concern that the clergy access is ad hoc, that it’s arbitrary,“ Blackwell said. “And you’ve seen the Wizard of Oz. The wizard opens a little window and decides whether you’re allowed in or not. Getting access to Whipple feels like that, completely arbitrary. We don’t know what standards are applied, and it’s left up to the subjective determinations of whoever. How is that the best that the government can do?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fuller argued the issue is moot because Operation Metro Surge is over and DHS is no longer holding large numbers of detainees at Whipple. 

Fuller added that the clergy members failed to show concrete individualized harm. He noted that no clergy members have visited Whipple over the past few weeks, and one who did on March 6 was not turned away. 

But Erin Westbrook, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, countered that the point of their lawsuit is to establish a clear policy, and the government has failed to do that.

After the hearing, ELCA Bishop Jen Nagel said that she tried to visit detainees on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent, but Whipple guards turned her away.

Even though DHS is allowing clergy inside at the moment, Nagel said that she’s afraid the agency could change course without warning.

“We know that for years and years, most likely the Whipple Building will continue to be used as a federal detention center,” Nagel said. “So we want a system and a place that it’s not a willy-nilly kind of a thing. We want a place that we know that these folks can get what they need and we can be able to offer that.” 

“There must be a uniform, reasoned, and thoughtful approach that recognizes the humanity of everybody and their undeniable constitutional rights,” added plaintiffs’ attorney Irina Vaynerman with the nonprofit Groundwork Legal.

Blackwell gave the lawyers for the clergy and the government a week to come up with a written plan to ensure that clergy may visit people who are detained at the Whipple Building. 

A Guatemalan man faces vehicular homicide charges after he crashed into another car while allegedly fleeing immigration officers near Savannah, Ga. on Feb. 16. Police say Oscar Vasquez Lopez stopped for immigration agents, then drove off, causing them to pursue him. The crash, soon after, killed special education teacher Linda Davis, who was driving to work.

It's the deadliest in a string of recent crashes involving chases or aggressive driving tactics by immigration officers, and it has heightened concerns about risks to the general public. It comes as the Trump administration's broader crackdown on illegal immigration has alarmed many policing experts about agents' use of force, especially after they shot three people — two of them fatally — during the recent immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.

Ian Adams, who studies policing at the University of South Carolina, says American law enforcement agencies started reining in high-speed pursuits in the late 1980s.

"We've actually made a lot of progress here in the last 30 years," he says. Most departments now have some form of "pursuit policy," which calls on officers to weigh the risks of a chase against the value of the law enforcement objective.

"Unless stopping that person is important to prevent, like, immediate risk of death or risk of serious injury to someone else, we probably shouldn't be pursuing them," says Adams, who is also a former police officer. "And that's not a controversial statement within policing. That is the norm within policing."

Some departments set specific guidelines. For instance, St. Paul, Minn., police can't chase for anything less than a violent felony, or to stop an imminent, life-threatening danger.

But the SPPD policy does not apply to federal immigration agents operating in the city.

Brandon Reader witnessed a chase by immigration agents in St. Paul on February 11. He says an unmarked car with lights and siren chased a red Prius down the narrow streets of the historic Cathedral Hill neighborhood at "at least" 80 mph. The Prius ran a stop sign and hit another car.

"It was struck on the driver's side and spun, and did almost a full one-eighty," Reader says. 

Federal officials said the driver of the Prius is from Honduras, and he "tried to evade law enforcement." He was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Reader says he asked ICE agents at the scene if they had a pursuit policy, because he thought this chase wouldn't be allowed.

"The agent stepped forward and snapped at me and said that I was a [expletive] idiot and I needed to walk away," Reader says.

It's a legitimate question. While federal agencies have also adopted pursuit policies, immigration officers appear to have more discretion than many urban police.

A 2012 ICE "Emergency Driving Handbook" tells agents to consider public safety, but leaves it up to them to "choose" whether to chase a suspect.

Customs and Border Protection, a separate agency which has become a major part of recent enforcement surges in the interior of the country, had adopted a more restrictive pursuit policy in 2023, similar to that of some urban police departments. At the time, the officers' union, the National Border Patrol Council, criticized the update for making it "almost impossible" for agents and officers to do their jobs.

In a statement, the Council said "smugglers will be encouraged to drive recklessly" in the knowledge that officers wouldn't chase them.

That policy was rescinded soon after President Trump was sworn in last year, a move the union welcomed. 

A new policy was approved last fall. It's partially redacted for the public, but appears to place fewer specific restrictions on CBP officers and agents. It says they are, quote, "responsible for determining when the immediate danger created by emergency driving outweighs the law enforcement benefit."

Some activists who share the road with them say the bar for such "emergency driving" techniques is low.

"They violate traffic laws at will," says Kyle Dekker, one of the activists who follow and observe immigration agents operating in the Twin Cities.

Dekker says he's seen them stop at green lights, then race through intersections on a red as a means of shaking their followers. He also says one of the vehicles he was following came back around and tried to hit his car in what's called a "PIT maneuver."

"I have dash cams [videos], front and rear, where he tried to hit me in the rear panel, my vehicle, to spin me out," he says.

PIT maneuvers were banned by the CBP pursuit policy approved under Biden; that ban is no longer visible in the current, partially redacted policy.

The Department of Homeland Security didn't answer NPR's questions about its pursuit policies, but in an email it called the PIT maneuver a "specific tactic to defuse a dangerous pursuit situation."

It also pointed to reckless driving by "violent agitators." It included a list of "vehicular attacks" against its personnel, with photos of damaged cars.

"The brave men and women of DHS will not be deterred," the email said.

Immigration officers are also reacting to what they see as a growing number of people who refuse to stop for them, such as Christian Molina. In Minneapolis in January, he showed reporters the damage to his car after immigration agents chased him and crashed into him from behind. Molina said he's a U.S. citizen, and felt justified in ignoring their orders to stop.

"They didn't have a reason to stop me, I think," he said in Spanish. "They're not police."

While it's true that federal officers don't have the authority to do traffic stops to enforce state laws, most attorneys say you're still obliged to pull over. And border patrol officers, especially, may be more predisposed to chase someone who doesn't stop.

"Their mission is different," says Geoff Alpert, one of the most prominent experts on pursuit policies and a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.

He was hired to help update CBP's policy under President Biden, and he pushed for a rule that would bar pursuits for anything less than imminent violent crimes. But he says the agency pushed back, "educating" him on the fact that along the border, most of CBP's work focuses on immigration and smuggling.

"You can't preclude them from chasing a smuggler. If you know that someone has a bunch of drugs in the back of the car or in their car, it's a pretty serious offense," he says. "Now, are you going to chase him downtown Tucson? No. But are you going to chase them out on the dirt roads? Probably."

Alpert says the question now is whether ICE and CBP, as they're deployed to cities away from the borders, will get the right kind of training to know when it's better not to give chase.

Copyright 2026, NPR

Rep. Ilhan Omar's guest for the State of the Union address Tuesday night said she was arrested and hospitalized during President Donald Trump's speech.

Aliya Rahman told Democracy Now that she was escorted from the hall by Capitol police.

"The sergeant of arms told me it was because I was standing up silently — no buttons, no facial expressions, no gestures, no signs, not one sound. Standing up,” she said.

Rahman said she was injured in the process and taken to the emergency room. Afterward, she was arrested and charged with unlawful conduct, Omar said.

“Reports indicate she was aggressively handled until someone intervened to secure medical attention. She was taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment and later booked at the United States Capitol Police headquarters,” Omar said in a statement Wednesday.

“The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy. I am calling for a full explanation of why this arrest occurred.”

Rahman said she was released from police custody shortly before 4 a.m. Washington time.

In January, Rahman — a U.S. citizen — was pulled out of her car by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Video of the incident went viral.

Correction (Feb. 26, 2026): An earlier version of this story misspelled Aliya Rahman’s first name in the headline.

Federal officials say fewer than 1,000 immigration agents are left in Minnesota, amid the reported winding down of what the White House has called “Operation Metro Surge.”

According to court filings this week, that’s down from more than 4,000 combined U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and other personnel at the peak of the surge. But it’s still hundreds more than the typical federal footprint in the state.

The court filings were part of an ongoing lawsuit against federal officials, alleging that officers have engaged in widespread racial profiling and unlawful stops during the immigration enforcement surge.

One of the declarations filed this week was from Sam Olson, ICE’s St. Paul field office director. Olson wrote that the office is typically staffed with 190 Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers, covering not just Minnesota but also North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa. About 80 of those are in the Twin Cities.

During Operation Metro Surge, Olson wrote, “approximately 3,000 additional ERO officers and HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) agents were detailed to the St. Paul Field Office. These details have come at different times and for varying lengths of time.”

As of Monday, Olson reported that there were about 270 ERO officers and 700 HSI agents still assigned to the St. Paul Field Office. By Wednesday, he wrote, “approximately 107 ERO officers will remain on detail to the St. Paul Field Office. HSI anticipates that there will be approximately 300 agents on detail to the St. Paul Field Office by March 2026.”

He said ICE agents arrested more than 4,000 people in the country illegally during Operation Metro Surge.

Customs and Border Protection personnel

Another court filing Monday was from Marty Raybon Sr., director of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Field Office — and as of Feb. 3, the agency’s lead field coordinator for Operation Metro Surge.

Raybon wrote that when he began in that position, there were about 1,029 CBP employees assigned to the operation — including CBP officers, Border Patrol agents, support staff and other personnel.

The following day, Feb. 4 — the same day White House official Tom Homan first announced a drawdown of federal agents — Raybon said CBP in fact demobilized about 680 of its officers and agents assigned to the surge. That drawdown continued for the next two and a half weeks, Raybon wrote.

By Monday, the number of CBP personnel still assigned to the surge was 67 — and Raybon said they would be demobilized that day. Raybon’s declaration did not say how many CBP personnel are typically in Minnesota, separate from the surge.

Correction (Feb. 25, 2026): A previous version of this story incorrectly identified U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The story has been updated.

A federal judge Monday found the government in contempt and ordered it to reimburse a man who was detained by ICE agents and flown to Texas in defiance of a court order. 

The 46-year-old man, who is a citizen of Mexico and a resident of St. Louis Park, was detained near his home last month. The following day, Judge Eric Tostrud issued an order barring ICE from moving the man out of the state. According to the judge's order, ICE admitted to transferring the man to a facility in El Paso, Texas, even though they knew they weren't supposed to. 

After his release from the facility, the man and his attorneys paid for his airfare back to Minnesota, which cost $568.

Tostrud ordered the government to reimburse the cost of the flight. This is the second instance of a federal judge in Minnesota finding the government in contempt for defying a court order.

A former lawyer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who helped train new agents said the agency’s training academy is deficient and broken. Ryan Schwank became a whistleblower after he resigned earlier this month. He then went public during a forum held by congressional Democrats on Monday.

Schwank began working in a trainer role on a temporary basis in September. He said he was brought in because they needed more staff to handle the influx of recruits. The Department of Homeland Security rapidly scaled up the number of deportation officers and offered $50,000 sign-on bonuses.

In Schwank’s first interview with local news in Minnesota, he told MPR News that he was concerned about policies from day one, when he was shown a memo that instructs ICE officers to enter a home without a judicial warrant.

“A supervisor who made it very clear … that not teaching the memo or opposing the memo could cost me my job,” said Schwank.

Additionally, Schwank noticed use-of-force training was paired down into one lecture that focused mostly on policy; and that the number of days of training were cut down from 70 days to 42 days. DHS said in a statement that it “streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content.”

Schwank believes that ICE isn’t changing its training in a way that justifies a drop in training hours.

In his testimony to congress, Schwank said he witnessed a training scenario where they had a bystander filming and the trainee pepper sprayed the bystander. When he asked the trainee why he did it, he said it was because it was what he saw ICE agents doing in Minneapolis.

“Even when they take egregious violations of regulations, safety or policy, they still graduated.”

Schwank said the trainees themselves recognized they were not fully trained and some would come to him saying they didn’t feel ready. Instructors would also tell Schwank in confidence their concerns that training was insufficient. Those conversations, Schwank said, illustrated a “culture of fear” inside the academy.

Schwank said hundreds of officers were sent out into the field, and many ended up in Minnesota. “I'm certain there are officers in Minneapolis who don't have the comfort with the training they received to be confident when they're on the streets.”

Schwank stayed in his role for around six months with a hope that he could make a difference and help ensure trainees were getting a full understanding of the law, but that ultimately he felt he couldn’t keep trying to “patch a broken system.” He hopes that by speaking out, officers will get better training. But until then, Schwank says he’s worried that more tragic incidents will take place.

“What's going to come down the road is even worse than what's already happened,” said Schwank.

A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer who was responsible for training new deportation officers warned Monday that the agency's training program for new recruits is “deficient, defective and broken.”

Ryan Schwank's comments during a forum held by congressional Democrats come at a time of intense scrutiny of the officers tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. Critics, including rights groups and Democratic politicians, have accused deportation officers of using excessive force when arresting immigrants, attacking bystanders who record their conduct and failing to follow constitutional protections of people's rights.

The Department of Homeland Security is rapidly scaling up the number of deportation officers, raising concerns that it will sacrifice proper screening and training of applicants in a rush to get them into the field. The department denied it was cutting corners, saying new officers get trained on firearms, use-of-force policies and how to safely arrest people.

Schwank testified during a hearing hosted by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California. Blumenthal's office said Schwank resigned from the agency on Feb. 13.

“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken,” Schwank said.

He also accused the department of dismantling the training program for new deportation officers and lying about what they were doing.

“DHS told the public the new cadets receive all the training they need to perform their duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut," he said. "This is a lie. ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk.”

Monday's was the third public forum held by the two Democrats to examine how ICE is training thousands of new officers and the conduct of those officers once they’re on the streets. Both have been vocal critics of how ICE officers conduct themselves. At the beginning of the hearing, Blumenthal thanked the witnesses, including Schwank, for their “courage and strength.”

Blumenthal's office said Schwank was one of two anonymous whistleblowers who came forward earlier to disclose a new ICE policy authorizing deportation officers to forcibly enter an immigrant's home to remove them from the country even if they didn't have a warrant signed by a judge.

His office also released dozens of pages of documents related to the training of new deportation officers, noting the disclosure came from whistleblowers.

Blumenthal's office said the documents demonstrated “drastic cuts” to how new deportation officers are trained and tested. That includes changes to the number of exams new officers have to pass, the classes they have to take and the hours they train.

“The training has been truncated and reduced, both in numbers of courses and substantive policy,” the senator said at the start of the hearing.

Homeland Security strongly denied that it has removed any training requirements or lessened requirements for officers. ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and 28 days on average of on-the-job training, the department said Monday in response to an inquiry about the allegations made during the forum.

“Despite false claims from the media and sanctuary politicians, no training hours have been cut. Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive Fourth and Fifth Amendment comprehensive instruction," department spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in an e-mailed statement.

She also said ICE recruits are monitored on the job after graduating from the academy.

The department has “streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content,” Bis said.

The documents show that ICE is eliminating over a dozen “practical exams” that used to be necessary for deportation officers to pass, according to an analysis by Democratic Senate staff. ICE also appears to have cut a number of classes from the training, including “Use of Force Simulation Training.”

Deportation officers appear to be getting fewer hours of training overall, according to the documents.

A group of Minnesota religious leaders on Monday sued the Department of Homeland Security. They allege that DHS has repeatedly blocked them from visiting immigration detainees at the Whipple Federal Building near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The United Church of Christ (UCC) Minnesota Conference and the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) allege along with Christopher Collins, a Jesuit priest and pastor at St. Peter Claver Church in St. Paul, that DHS is violating the religious rights of people whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding in custody.

“To be able to receive pastoral care is incredibly important. For individuals to be treated with humanity instead of being treated like inventory,” Irina Vaynerman, the CEO of Groundwork Legal and one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said in an interview with MPR News. :The federal government is trying to treat a federal building that's being used as a processing and detention center as a black box and they cannot do that,” she added.

“Whipple, named for Minnesota’s first Episcopal bishop and a prominent 19th-century advocate for the rights of non-citizens, has become the epicenter of systematic deprivation of fundamental constitutional and legal rights by the federal government,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys write in the civil complaint.

The defendants named in the complaint include DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and David Easterwood, ICE’s acting field director in St. Paul. Easterwood is a pastor at Cities Church in St. Paul, where demonstrators disrupted a church service on Jan. 18. The Justice Department filed felony charges against nine people, including two journalists, in connection with the protest.

On Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the clergy allege that Collins attempted to enter Whipple to pray for a detained mother of a local student, “but when he arrived, he was blocked from even entering the parking lot to Whipple. He was prevented entirely from accessing the building and from ministering to those believed to be inside the building.”

A month later, UCC ministers Rev. Susan Hayward and Rev. Rebecca Voelkel say that they also attempted to enter the building but Homeland Security officials “barred the ministers from providing any spiritual guidance or care to detainees.”

Despite White House advisor Tom Homan’s Feb. 12 announcement that a majority of federal agents would be leaving Minnesota, the clergy members say that DHS continues to block them from providing spiritual care to detainees.

“The alleged drawdown of ICE agents has had no impact on the inability of faith leaders to provide pastoral care to detainees at Whipple,” the plaintiffs write.

As recently as Feb. 18, Rev. Melissa Gonzalez with the ELCA alleges that a DHS staff member directed her to a waiting room, but ultimately blocked her from visiting detainees on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for many Christian denominations.

“The individual representing Whipple informed Rev. Gonzalez that she would not be permitted access to detainees for ‘security’ and ‘safety’ reasons,” according to the complaint. “When Rev. Gonzalez asked for further explanation, the employee unfoundedly claimed that the detainees could become agitated. Rev. Gonzalez noted that for those who sought pastoral care, being provided with such care would likely make them less agitated.”

Following a similar lawsuit from a Roman Catholic group, a federal judge in Illinois ordered DHS to open its suburban Chicago detention center to clergy in time for Ash Wednesday.

In a statement provided to MPR News Monday, a DHS spokesperson said, “It is not within standard operating procedure for religious services to be provided in a field office, as detainees are continuously brought in, processed and transferred out.”

The clergy lawsuit follows class action litigation from The Advocates for Human Rights, which alleges that DHS has repeatedly blocked detainees from accessing legal counsel.

On Feb. 12, U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel issued a temporary restraining order that requires DHS to ensure that detainees may speak with attorneys privately. Brasel also mandated that DHS wait 72 hours before moving detainees out of Minnesota.

In a new order late Sunday, Brasel set a Wednesday deadline for DHS to produce evidence related to attorney access, including “where Defendants are detaining people, who they are detaining, whether detainees have been allowed phone calls or attorney visits, and where Defendants are transferring detainees.”

Last month, Colleen Fagan was observing an immigration enforcement operation at an apartment complex in Portland, Maine, when federal agents scanned her face with a smartphone and appeared to record her car license plate number.

In a social media video she recorded, Fagan can be heard asking why the agent was taking her information. What the agent said next made the video go viral.

"Cause we have a nice little database," the masked agent said. "And now you're considered a domestic terrorist."

Fagan, who is a social worker, has now joined a federal class action lawsuit that argues the Department of Homeland Security and a number of its sub-agencies are violating the First Amendment and are taking actions "designed to chill, suppress, and control speech that they do not like."

"A federal agent called me a domestic terrorist just because I recorded agents operating in public in my community. But I have a right to do that, and so do others," Fagan said in a statement. "I want people to know how important it is to use our First Amendment rights to observe and document what is happening. Peaceful dissent is not a crime."

Though Fagan's video went viral, her full name had not been widely publicized until this lawsuit.

The suit, filed by the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy and the law firms Dunn Isaacson Rhee and Drummond Woodsum, alleges federal agents are unconstitutionally retaliating against people who are lawfully observing and recording federal immigration enforcement operations by gathering their personal information and labeling them domestic terrorists.

"Plaintiffs must either abandon their constitutional rights or accept being cataloged and branded as 'domestic terrorists,'" reads the lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in Maine on Monday. "That is a choice the Constitution does not require Plaintiffs, or anyone, to make."

After the lawsuit was filed Monday, DHS told NPR in a statement: "There is NO database of 'domestic terrorists' run by DHS. We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime. Our law enforcement methods follow the U.S. Constitution."

After federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota last month, DHS officials labeled both of them domestic terrorists in the immediate aftermath.

Federal agents have access to facial recognition tools that can be used to identify people in the field, and the lawsuit also mentions the mobile app Mobile Companion by Motorola Solutions, which allows agents to use a smartphone to scan license plates.

These kinds of surveillance tools have allowed federal agents to intimidate observers and protesters by revealing they know their names and addresses, the lawsuit says. Several Minnesota observers who have followed federal agents in their cars have described the experience of agents leading them to their own homes to show they know where they live. The lawsuit names other Maine observers who have had the same experience.

It is legal for observers to film and follow federal agents at a safe distance, Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told NPR earlier this month. But dozens of people in Minnesota said in declarations collected by the ACLU that they were observing federal agents but were told they were impeding, interfering or acting illegally.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a press conference in July that violence against DHS agents "is anything that threatens them and their safety," and went on to say that included "doxing them" and "videotaping them where they're at when they're out on operations."

DHS has crafted a wide definition of doxing. The department's then-spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, told The American Prospect in September that "videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents."

A memo issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi in December lists "doxing" law enforcement as domestic terrorism.

Elinor Hilton, another resident of Portland, Maine, is also listed as a plaintiff in the new lawsuit. Federal agents captured her face and license plate with their phones on Jan. 21, after she began recording them conducting an immigration enforcement operation at a Home Depot, the lawsuit says.

She says one told her, "I hope you know that if you keep coming to things like this, you are going to be on a domestic terrorist watchlist. Then we're going to come to your house later tonight," according to the lawsuit.

Hilton did not stay at her home that night for fear the agent would make good on the threat, the lawsuit says. She has reduced how often she observes federal agents and no longer uses her own car when she observes. She now parks her car several blocks away from her home and those of family members "out of concern that federal agents might recognize her car and trace it to her home." She says on a recent trip she left her personal phone at home out of concern that if she was placed on a government list, federal agents might detain her and search her phone.

Fagan is concerned about being placed on a "no-fly" or similar list, the lawsuit says, and worries her current or future employment could be affected by any labels DHS gives her.

Less than a week before Hilton's interaction with federal agents, Tom Homan, President Trump's immigration adviser, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he wanted to create a "database" of people who impede ICE.

"These people who want to say follow ICE and film ICE, you know what, you can protest, they have that right." Then he added that for those who cross a legal line, "We're going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we're going to make them famous," Homan said. "We're going to put their face on TV. We're going to let their employers, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, know who these people are."

But in other public appearances, federal officials have denied a database of protesters exists.

At a congressional hearing earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) asked Todd Lyons, acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to respond to what the federal agent in Maine said about "a little database" in the video Fagan recorded.

"I can't speak for that individual, sir," Lyons said. "But I can assure you that there is no database that's tracking United States citizens."

The lawsuit says, "If Defendants' denials are true—and the actions captured on video simply involved federal agents pretending to add observers to a database—then they are deliberately lying about domestic terrorist watchlists or databases to unlawfully intimidate observers."

The lawsuit is asking a federal judge to stop DHS from collecting records on people and from "threatening, harassing, and otherwise retaliating against" them for exercising their protected first amendment rights, and to expunge records that have already been collected.

JoAnna Suriani, counsel at Protect Democracy, said the lawsuit will "ensure that the federal government can no longer use unconstitutional surveillance tactics to silence its critics and sideline the observers who protect our communities."

Copyright 2026, NPR

Marchers in south Minneapolis on Saturday marked four weeks since the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents.

The march started at Whittier Park, a few blocks from where Pretti was killed, and ended at the scene of the shooting on Nicollet Avenue. Organizers said they wanted to honor and remember Pretti, and the community brought together in the wake of his death.

They also said they’re staying vigilant, even after the White House said it’s winding down the surge of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

“There’s a lot of activity going on, especially in the suburbs. They’re doing a lot to try to keep it away from our eyes,” said Morgan Budiandri, a volunteer with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee. “A lot of restaurants are still getting their doors knocked on by federal agents asking to see a ... manifesto of their employees. So you know, we’re seeing less of these kidnappings off the streets, but it’s becoming more surgical.”

In addition to calling for an end to the federal immigration operation in Minnesota, Saturday’s march also pushed for:

• a halt to any cooperation between local and federal agencies on immigration enforcement

• accountability and justice for the deaths of Pretti, Renee Macklin Good and other people who have died in encounters with federal immigration agents

• an eviction moratorium to help people who’ve faced economic hardship and housing instability due to the federal operation

And there were calls from people at the march to halt funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as that debate continues in Washington.

“We’re not backing down, just because they pulled off a little bit,” said Wes, who asked that his last name not be used. “I think the position of most people, and not just progressives, is that ICE is not an institution that is working for the people, so we’re not going to stop until ICE is abolished. That’s our position.”

Rally and march in south Minneapolis

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Saturday’s march also remembered Good, who was fatally shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Victor Manuel Diaz, who was detained in Minneapolis in January and later died at a federal detention facility in Texas.

At a rally before marchers took to the street, Erik Jamison-Ekeling of St. Paul reflected on the community response in the four weeks since Pretti was killed, and since the federal operation started.

“I haven’t been more proud of the Twin Cities than I have been since the occupation started,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that this has been kind of the catalyst for as much community organizing as it has been. And I know that people of color and poor people have had to organize in this way and not get the same attention. So (I’m) a little bit frustrated that it’s just now getting the momentum that it has.”

Jamison-Ekeling said he remains skeptical that the federal operation is truly coming to an end. He said there’s still a need “to mobilize and resist what’s going on.”

Kaleo Crowson, an Air Force veteran from St. Paul, said that Pretti’s death “was horrific, everyone saw the video. But I’m proud of the community. Everyone showed up. There’s been even more people out with him and with Renee Good. I couldn’t be more proud of my state.”

Two Minnesota Congress members went to the Whipple Federal Building on Friday in Minneapolis for an oversight review of its detention facilities, but ICE detainees were nowhere to be found, they said. 

U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig said federal officials told them no one was detained at the facility. They'd given eight days advance notice that they'd be touring the building to check on conditions and speak with detainees.

"There was not a single detainee that we could see or talk to. Every cell, every inch of it, was completely empty. And when we'd asked, 'Why isn't there anyone here?' Because we obviously know they've been detaining people, they said the last people left at 11:30."

Their visit was scheduled for noon.

“It seems very convenient that they removed anyone who had been arrested today from the facility 30 minutes before we arrived at the facility,” Craig said. “What we saw today was an incredibly clean facility. It was a facility without a single individual being held in it."

Omar said federal officials later told the congress members there were five detainees in the building. 

“I said, ‘Can we go and see the five that are here, because we have privacy release forms?’ And they said, ‘No, we cannot permit you to go into the cell to see the detainees.’ And I said, ‘Well, we don't need to go into the cell,’” Omar said. 

She told them they would slide the forms underneath the cell’s door, and they’d look through the door’s glass opening to see observe their conditions, she said.

“Conveniently, as they were taking us towards the cell, someone said, there is not a single person left, and they took us into an empty cell,” Omar recalled in a press conference afterwards outside the Whipple building.

“So it's just the timeline and the stories seem very convenient for what they really were working very hard for us not to see and witness,” she said.

Federal law says congressional members can visit detention facilities unannounced or with little notice, but the Trump administration issued a new policy requiring seven days’ notice. A federal court reaffirmed the no-notification policy in a recent lawsuit, but the administration continues with its policy.

Craig and Omar said federal officials told them that fewer than 500 ICE agents remain in Minnesota, down from the approximately 3,000 officers deployed under “Operation Metro Surge.”

On Friday, border czar Tom Homan, who was brought in recently to oversee the federal immigration operation in the state, said about 2,000 federal agents have left the state.

“We were told that they are averaging now only 20 arrests per day, and that they are moving those individuals to the four county jails in order to hold them,” Craig said.

Omar said federal agents have not arrested any observers in recent days.

Craig said the clean, empty facility they saw Friday was “very, very different” than what the state has experienced during the surge.

“So certainly we observe the draw down is occurring. They are back to, on average, only two deportation flights per week from Minnesota, supposedly,” Craig said.

Still, she said, “we will take everything we're told with a grain of salt, and we will only believe things when we see them here as this operation winds down.”

Minnesota state senators took their first look Friday at a bill that would allow Minnesotans to sue someone who fails to provide medical aid after a shooting, an issue that gained public attention after two fatal shootings by federal immigration agents.

The bill seeks to expand upon current Minnesota law that makes it a crime to not assess the victim and provide aid after shooting someone or witnessing a shooting, as long as it is safe to do so.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, a registered nurse, is the chief sponsor of the bill. Four other DFL senators with medical backgrounds are signed on as well.

In pushing the bill, Murphy cited a second-by-second timeline of the aftermath of the shooting of Renee Macklin Good by MPR News and APM Reports that showed immigration agents denied Macklin Good medical care for more than six minutes. When Minneapolis firefighters assessed Macklin Good more than seven minutes after she was shot, they found she still had a pulse.

Murphy also cited an affidavit of a Minnesota pediatrician who performed CPR on Alex Pretti when immigration agents did not.

“I don't want to live in a place where authorities think their responsibilities include shooting people, but don't include helping the wounded or dying, even and especially if they're the ones who caused it,” Murphy said at a Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee meeting Friday.

If Murphy’s bill becomes law, it would be retroactive to Dec. 1, 2025 — coinciding with the ramped-up presence of federal immigration agents. 

“This allows for the cases in the Good and Pretti shootings to be filed immediately,” Murphy said.

Republican committee members expressed concern that the bill would open Minnesotans up to excessive lawsuits.

“Has any analysis been done on how often this could be added as a claim in civil shooting cases self defense or law enforcement related?” Republican Sen. Michael Holmstrom Jr. asked.

Murphy said only six people were convicted under the failure to render aid law in the last five years, so she doesn't anticipate a wave of lawsuits.

"This is a rarely used law because we follow the law," she said.

Federal officials are largely protected from lawsuits, but Murphy said she believes if her bill becomes law it would hold up in court because it doesn’t single out federal agents.

"We're not treating the federal agents differently than we're treating anybody else in the state of Minnesota,” she said. “That's an important and operative piece of the legislation." 

The bill is part of a package of bills introduced by DFL senators in response to the federal immigration surge in the state. The Senate Judiciary Committee has begun vetting the proposals but hasn’t yet voted on the bills.

A sharply worded Friday court filing on behalf of Hennepin County Sheriff Dawana Witt refutes federal government arguments about how the jail must handle holds of immigrants being targeted for deportation.

The filing is part of the county’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit over perceived sanctuary policies that limit local coordination with immigration enforcement. The 18-page document stresses that local entities aren’t obligated to honor civil immigration detainers, which are requests to hold people beyond a normal release date to facilitate a handover to federal agents.

“Congress did not require state and local governments to hold individuals without a judicial warrant,” Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Alan Martinson wrote in the filing on behalf of Witt, a named defendant in an ongoing Department of Justice lawsuit.

The Trump administration is challenging state and local laws that it says hinder immigration enforcement. The entities being sued argue that the 10th Amendment provides a separation from federal directives when it comes to immigration, allowing each locality to use discretion.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office previously offered a legal opinion telling counties that they risk civil liability if they hold people beyond their release date.

A declaration in early February from Samuel J. Olson, the field office director in St. Paul for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, contends that failure by Minnesota counties to honor detainers “have forced ICE to conduct more at-large arrests instead of secure transfers from local custody.” 

Olson also said in the sworn statement that the standoff has led to tense encounters across the Twin Cities between officers and demonstrators, and that it amounts to discrimination against immigration officers.

The new Hennepin County filing pushes back on that narrative.

It says “the Olson declaration merely shows the disastrous effects of the federal government’s own actions in sending masked, undertrained officers to Minnesota and openly condoning their lawless conduct. The federal government’s position is akin to storming out of a cafe because the owner refused to share the wifi password, punching a bystander on the sidewalk and blaming the cafe owner for the consequences.”

Lawyers for Minneapolis also moved Friday to dismiss the lawsuit in relation to the city because it doesn’t operate a jail and therefore has no role in the dispute.

Minnesota leaders are pushing the federal government for more access to evidence in the killing of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents during the federal surge last month. 

Democratic U.S. Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar sent a letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to allow state investigators to access evidence in the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti as he observed federal agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. 

In the letter, Klobuchar and Smith say there needs to be a “thorough, objective and impartial investigation” that includes local authorities and state investigators. 

“The administration’s decision raises serious questions about its objectivity, particularly after administration officials have made statements, including calling Mr. Pretti a ‘domestic terrorist,’ that prejudged the matter and conflicted with videos and other evidence that has already become public,” according to the letter. 

The senators urged Bondi to reverse her decision to exclude state investigators from the case. The FBI notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension this week that they had made a final decision to exclude the state. 

The federal government has also refused to collaborate with the BCA in the investigation into the killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Macklin Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7.  

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has also pressed the federal government for more access to evidence in Pretti’s killing as well as the wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in a separate incident. This week, her office accused the federal government of “attempts to hide evidence” and demanded they produce it by March 3. 

“We are prepared to take further legal action should the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice fail to meet our deadline and continue to obstruct our investigations,” Moriarty said in a statement. 

The BCA is conducting its own investigation of Pretti’s killing and urges anyone with information to contact the agency. The state of Minnesota also sued the federal government to get access to evidence. 

The push to get more evidence comes as during a federal government shutdown triggered by Senate Democrats’ refusal to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security without some reforms for ICE. 

“My view of this is that we need to take this department, ICE and Customs and Border Patrol, we need to tear it down to the studs and start over,” Smith said. “There is a rottenness to this agency that can't be solved by some simple guardrails around their behavior, but we have to start somewhere, and I’m looking to minimize the harm that can be done.”

Minnesota Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said they’ve been able to hold their caucus together on 10 demands to reform the agency, including limits on masking and a requirement that agents wear identification. 

“As Democrats, we are united in this effort to say that this agency ultimately is behaving in an unlawful way,” Omar said. “Without it being brought in, there is no way that we can, with any conscience, say it is okay for you to continue to have money.” 

The so-called “big, beautiful bill” passed this summer already allocated more than $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement over four years. 

The Department of Homeland Security admitted that its website featuring what it calls the “worst of the worst” arrested immigrants was rife with errors and changed the site this week after receiving questions from CNN about it.

According to the report from CNN, DHS conceded this week its website was filled with inaccuracies. After receiving questions about a CNN analysis of the website, a DHS spokesperson admitted on Tuesday that the charges against hundreds of immigrants listed on the website were described incorrectly by the agency.

The spokesperson attributed the inaccuracies to a “glitch” that they said DHS worked to remedy, CNN reports. The spokesperson said on Wednesday that the glitch had been “resolved.”

The number of ICE detainees flown out of state has dropped significantly since border czar Tom Homan announced a major drawdown of federal agents from Minnesota last Thursday — an indication that federal enforcement activity could be easing.

After peaking at 246 people boarding planes at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in a single day in early January, totals have been steadily declining with a rapid drop off in February. That’s according to Nick Benson, who along with his team, has been stationed at MSP daily, counting the number of people in shackles who board government flights. He shared his data with MPR News.

On Feb. 13, the day after Homan’s announcement, Benson said there wasn’t a single ICE chartered flight out of MSP for the first time since Jan. 4.

“I'm also, as many other people are, deeply skeptical of anything the federal government is telling us right now,” said Benson. “But it does appear that we have a promising trend that has developed here in the last week or so.”

Benson is an activist with MN50501 and works in commercial flight data analytics. He said more than 3,600 people have been flown out of the state on these flights since early November when he began documenting. Homan said federal agents have made more than 4,000 arrests during the operation.

“All of the traffic we have here are domestic transfer or domestic shuffle flights moving people from their homes here in Minnesota to detention centers elsewhere,” Benson said.

Although he’s hopeful of the trend he’s seeing, he said his work is not over.

“I don't know what the end of this project looks like for me,” Benson said. “Yet, we are certainly not there right now.”

The Minneapolis City Council approved liquor license renewals Thursday for two hotels that protesters have targeted for allegedly housing federal agents. 

Some council members pushed to deny the license renewals for the Canopy by Hilton and the Depot Renaissance hotels. Council members pointed to public comments from staff at the hotels, who said they felt unsafe amid the federal immigration operation.

Some said they’ve been covering up windows to back-of-house areas to block worried staff from the view of agents.

Council member Aurin Chowdhury voted against renewing the liquor licenses, saying those reports were concerning. 

“If workers can’t move around freely in their workplace and windows need to be covered up, that just feels like a real issue with labor standards and workplace safety that I am absolutely not OK with,” Chowdhury said. 

Amy Lingo, the city’s manager of licenses and consumer services, led a review of the hotels’ liquor license renewal applications. She said the city heard those concerns and discussed them with hotel staff, but that none of the concerns were specifically related to the hotels serving liquor. 

She said other concerns in public comments — including reports of hotel staff finding unsecured weapons in rooms while cleaning — were not specific to those two hotels, but were instead general concerns or related to other hotel locations.

“The relevant liquor codes are specific in use and scope, and the concerns that have been brought before me are tied to hotel occupancy more so than they are to the actual liquor license,” Lingo said. 

She recommended approving the liquor license renewal applications. 

Council member Jamal Osman agreed — though he said he understands the calls for hotels to stop housing federal agents. 

“We must follow legal process in our city, even though it’s very uncomfortable to … have ICE agents in our city,” he said. “We have to show that we’re doing the right thing. We are the ones actually following the laws that we set.” 

The council voted 8 to 5 to approve the liquor licenses.

A judge has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to release a Burnsville woman and her 8- and 14-year-old children who had been in ICE custody since Jan. 30. 

In a habeas corpus petition filed in court on Feb. 12, an attorney wrote that the youngest child suffers from panic attacks and that their older sibling recently had foot surgery. Both children, says the petition, did not receive appropriate medical care while in custody. 

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis issued an order granting the family’s petition. In his order he expressed concern that the family’s attorney was unable to locate their clients for about two weeks.

Davis wrote “it is disturbing that an entire family unit can somehow disappear into an ICE blackhole for more than two weeks.”

He went on to say, “This concern over the lack of transparency concerning petitioners’ whereabouts is exacerbated due to the children’s health issues, which respondents do not even mention in their brief. All the more reason to grant the petition.”

The family crossed the border into the United States from Mexico in 2024 and were detained and released. Davis said that at the time, government officials found that the family members “were neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk.”

In a Feb. 15 filing, a federal attorney argued the family is “not entitled to habeas relief.” The filing said the family was already in removal proceedings and said they are subject to mandatory detention. 

The government attorney also said the family is still engaged in the removal process and has a hearing at the end of March. 

Before her arrest, the woman had attended a regularly scheduled supervision appointment, according to the judicial findings. The case manager told her to return the next day with her children.  “At that time, all three of them were arrested and detained. The arrest was warrantless.”

Two days after the order was released, the government followed up with a status report saying the family was released “as a family unit in Minnesota.” However, it didn’t say where the family had been detained.

A kidney transplant recipient who spent nearly two weeks in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Texas without access to his life-saving medications is finally back home in Minnesota. Javier Abreu-Vasquez arrived at the Rochester International Airport Thursday evening and was reunited with his family.

Even after his medical team at Mayo Clinic and legal team intervened with the Texas detention facility, his attorney says federal agents continued to give Abreu-Vasquez, 38, incorrect dosages of the medications he needs to keep his body from rejecting the donated kidney.

His wife Carolina Rosario de Abreu, his mother Melania and his two daughters Laura, 12, and Zemaiah, 6, welcomed Abreu-Vasquez at the airport. Abreu-Vasquez hugged his family. When asked how it feels to be back with his family, he answered while tearing up.

“Good, because they are the best part of my life,” Abreu Vasquez said in Spanish as his friend interpreted.

When asked how he feels about being home, Abreu-Vasquez said that he is “happy for now, but I have the ankle monitor, and so they told me I can't go out, I can't drive around, and so that limits my movements.”

Asked what the experience of being held in ICE custody was like, Abeu-Vasquez said he “would not like to talk about that right now. It was not something good to see.”

Abreu-Vasquez was arrested Feb. 5 in Rochester and taken into custody without his life-saving medications. His family rushed the medications to him before he was flown to a detention center in Texas, but his wife and his attorney told MPR News that he wasn’t given the medications often.

“I think he maybe received a 90 percent version of it one day,” said David Wilson, managing attorney at Wilson Law Group. The rest of the time, it was all over the place. And so there would be days where [he] would only get one [pill] out of five, or the timing was off. There was no rhythm to what was happening.”

The Department of Homeland Security sent a statement to MPR News multiple times saying that ICE is aware of Abreu-Vasquez’s recent kidney transplant, that the family gave authorities the medications and that ICE was working to ensure he gets them. 

However, his wife, Rosaria de Abreu, and Wilson told MPR News that he was never given the correct doses at the correct items. 

On Feb. 9, a Mayo Clinic physician wrote another letter to ICE on behalf of its patient. MPR News obtained the letter from Wilson and agreed to not disclose its author. 

“Mr. Abreu received a kidney transplant in 2023 and, as a transplant recipient, requires strict adherence to a complex immunosuppressive medication regimen to maintain the health of the donated kidney. Interruptions or delays in these medications place him at significant risk for acute rejection, which can rapidly progress to organ failure, necessitating dialysis and potentially resulting in life-threatening complications,” the letter stated.

The physician went on to request a “direct physician-to-physician consultation” and urged federal authorities to give “prompt attention to this urgent medical matter.”

Wilson said ICE did not respond to this or other follow up messages from the medical team beyond confirming receipt. 

“Javier’s experience is essentially reflective of the inability of an organization to manage medical care when it's moving so fast,” Wilson said. “It's not taking time to really understand anything about the people they're detaining. They're just a number, and their medical needs are kind of irrelevant until they don't have a choice to deal with it because the person is now on the floor and may need to go to the hospital. That's when they seem to start paying attention.”

Abreu-Vasquez was arrested by immigration agents in Rochester while he was delivering groceries as part of a local mutual aid group organized through his church. He was taken without his medications to the Whipple Federal Building near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that day and flown to the ICE detention facility in El Paso the next day.

Abreu-Vasquez is from the Dominican Republic and entered the United States legally on a visa, according to Wilson, and he had been working through the process to remain in the country legally when that visa expired. At a hearing Feb. 13, an immigration judge set Abreu’s bond at $12,000.

There was a team effort to bring Abreu-Vasquez home. 

Raul Aldrete, executive director of the Rochester-based charity We The Gente, said he connected Abreu-Vasquez’s wife with his legal representation and then covered the initial $2,000 bond hearing fee to ensure things could move forward immediately. It also worked with Southeastern Minnesota Interfaith Immigrant Legal Defense (SMIILD) and its fiscal sponsor, the Rochester Area Foundation, which paid for the $12,000 bond and reimbursed We The Gente for the $2,000 bond hearing fee. 

After Abreu-Vasquez was released from the ICE detention center in El Paso Wednesday, We The Gente arranged his ride to the airport and worked with the nonprofit Stand With Minnesota for his flight home — which was paid for by a community member’s donated airline miles.

Now that Abreu-Vasquez is back in Minnesota, Wilson said they can begin to figure out together how to complete the process for him to become a legal U.S. resident and prevent his deportation. Wilson said Mayo Clinic will be expecting a very prompt follow up visit with its patient to stabilize his condition. 

Correction (Feb. 20, 2026): A previous version of this story misspelled Javier Abreu-Vasquez and Raul Aldrete’s names. It has been corrected. The story also misstated the role a local El Paso nonprofit played in helping Abreu-Vasqeuz; it has been clarified.