Bovino defends immigration surge tactics, deflects questions of abuse
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This story includes live updates from Jan. 20, 2026 about the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota. For the latest news on ICE in Minnesota, visit our collection of stories here.
7:02 p.m. | Doctors warn ICE presence is harming patient care across Minnesota
Dozens of physicians from across Minnesota say patients are suffering due to the presence of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in hospitals and clinics.
Sen. Matt Klein, DFL-Mendota Heights, is a physician of 35 years and reported encountering violations of patient rights for the first time in his career since thousands of ICE agents have poured into the state. He has heard accounts of people avoiding medical care due to fear of ICE, and patients’ privacy compromised while in federal custody.
“Patients are afraid to come in and seek care. When they do come in, ICE is pursuing them, with or without legal means or justification, and our medical staff feel intimidated and afraid to do the good work that they should do,” Klein said.
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Dr. Erin Stevens, legislative chair for the Minnesota section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, emphasized that many patients who are undocumented immigrants, naturalized citizens and U.S.-born citizens, fear leaving their homes to access health care.
“They expressed to us a feeling of being hunted,” Stevens said.
She added that some patients are giving birth alone, while others are missing, canceling or postponing prenatal care appointments due to the fear of being targeted by immigration officials at medical facilities.
Stevens mentioned that individual providers, clinic groups and hospitals are working to increase home health services, mobile visits, and telehealth care to meet patients’ needs.
Dr. Roli Dwivedi, a family physician with over 19 years of practice in Minnesota, said that she has “never witnessed this level of chaos and fear” in health care for patients and health care teams. “It is tragic and unthinkable,” Dwivedi said.
Dwivedi said a patient who depends on insulin for diabetes management stopped visiting the clinic, and had run out of both medicine and food.
“We are seeing levels of food insecurity that are simply horrific. One teenager nearly collapsed from starvation and was surviving on a single egg over three days after her entire family was detained,” Dwivedi said. “No one deserves to die or suffer because of how they look or how they speak or where they were born.”
— Erica Zurek, MPR News
6:30 p.m. | DOJ considers FACE Act for church protesters, KKK Act for Don Lemon
The Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into a protest against a pastor at Cities Church who also leads the ICE field office in St. Paul. The DOJ says they’re looking at violations of the FACE Act, a law enacted in 1994 that prohibits the threat of force or obstruction to a person obtaining services from a reproductive health clinic or a place of religious worship.
They are also looking at charging journalist Don Lemon, who was covering the protest, under the KKK act, a law from 1871 that makes it a federal crime to deny any group or individual any of the rights, privileges, immunities or protection named in the Constitution.
Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said she believes the pursuance of the two acts would be excessive.
“I would characterize it as overkill, in the sense that here in Minnesota, we have criminal laws and misdemeanors for the most part dealing with trespass and disrupting things in facilities that are not generally open to the public,” she said. “Which, would certainly suffice if the church wished to make a complaint along those lines.”
— Nina Moini and Aleesa Kuznetsov, MPR News
3:52 p.m. | Bovino defends immigration surge tactics, deflects questions of abuse, blames local political leaders, ‘anarchists’
One of the country’s highest profile immigration enforcement officials on Tuesday blamed “anarchists” in collusion with Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for the violence that’s gripped the Twin Cities during the federal immigration surge the past six weeks.
At the same, Gregory Bovino deflected questions around the growing concerns of local police that some federal agents are unlawfully stopping people without cause, sweeping up legal residents and violating their civil rights.
“What we do is legal, ethical and moral, well grounded in law,” Bovino told reporters. Agents, he added, have been professional and courteous despite attacks against them and are focused only on “individuals who pose a serious threat to this community.”
His comments stood in stark contrast to the daily reports of citizens and other people legally in the country being detained and intimidated, tactics that some in local enforcement have criticized as irresponsible.
“We have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens. They’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the streets with no cause” and asked to show papers they’re here legally, Mark Bruley, chief of the Brooklyn Park police, told reporters earlier Tuesday.
He said one of his officers, a woman of color, was stopped while she was off duty, her car boxed in by ICE with agents pointing guns at her and demanding to see proof of citizenship , with one agent pushing her phone away as she tried to video the encounter. Bruley said the agents simply left without apology after she told them she was a police officer.
Bovino, whose titles include commander at large for U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement, said federal agents had arrested more than 10,000 “criminal illegal aliens” in Minnesota over the past year, including 3,000 in the past six weeks. He described his agents as “troops.”
— MPR News staff
2:18 p.m. | Trump makes first comments on Renee Macklin Good killing
President Donald Trump made his first extensive comments about Renee Macklin Good, a U.S. citizen killed Jan. 7 by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
Speaking from the White House on the one-year mark of his term, Trump held up mugshots of immigrants detained in Minnesota. He insisted the operation involving thousands of federal agents is focused on immigrants without legal status and with criminal records.
The surge has raised tensions and led to confrontations between the agents and protestors. Good was shot in her car by an agent who positioned himself in front of the vehicle. Trump said her death is tragic.
“They’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes ICE is going to be too rough with somebody, or, you know, they’re dealing with rough people. Are they going to make a mistake sometimes? It can happen. I feel terribly. I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was, who had the tragedy. It’s a tragedy. It’s a horrible thing. Everybody would say, ICE would say the same thing."
Trump accused Good’s wife of being an instigator the day of the shooting. He hailed Good’s parents as past Trump supporters.
“I hope he still is, I don’t know,” Trump said of her father. “I hope he still feels that way. It’s a hard situation.”
— Brian Bakst, MPR News
2:06 p.m. | DOJ subpoenas top Minnesota leaders for ‘impeding immigration enforcement efforts’
The offices of Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her confirmed they received a subpoena from the Department of Justice Tuesday afternoon.
Last week, the Justice Department said they would be investigating Frey, Walz and other Democratic elected officials in Minnesota, accusing them of impeding federal immigration enforcement efforts in the state.
According to a copy of the subpoena shared with MPR News, the Justice Department ordered Frey’s office to bring a variety of documents related to his office’s handling of immigration enforcement efforts in Minneapolis to a hearing scheduled for the morning of Feb. 3.
In a statement, Frey said the federal government was weaponizing its power to “try to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs.”
“In Minneapolis, we won’t be afraid,” Frey said. “We know the difference between right and wrong and, as Mayor, I’ll continue doing the job I was elected to do: keeping our community safe and standing up for our values.”
“I am unfazed by these tactics,” said St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her. “I stand firm in my commitment to protect our residents, neighbors and community.”
Daniel Borgertpoepping, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, told MPR News the Justice Department also served Hennepin County a subpoena. The Hennepin County Attorney's Office will be advising the county on the subpoena.
— Ellie Roth, MPR News
1:35 p.m. | DOJ urges judge against restraining order, says Minnesota wants to ‘veto’ federal agents
The U.S. Department of Justice says a lawsuit filed by the state of Minnesota seeking to end the ongoing immigration crackdown is frivolous and lacks “a shred of legal support.”
In a DOJ court filing on Monday, federal attorneys argued that a temporary restraining order to stop the operations would be unprecedented and that the Constitution and previous court rulings don’t support the state’s case.
“Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement,” the DOJ filing stated, adding the move would “unduly interfere with federal immigration enforcement.”
In its filing, federal attorneys wrote that more than 3,000 people have been arrested during the current immigration operation in Minnesota, which started on Dec. 1.
The state and cities have argued that ICE’s tactics are causing undue cost and disruption to communities and local governments.
A federal judge did not immediately grant the temporary injunction during a status conference last Wednesday. But Judge Katherine Menendez is set to hold a hearing on the issue either late this week, or early the following week.
— MPR News staff
1:21 p.m | Emmer bill calls for stripping citizenship from government fraudsters
Minnesota Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer has introduced a bill that would make it easier to denaturalize U.S. citizens over certain crimes.
It would create a path to strip U.S. citizenship from someone who is convicted of fraud against the government, is found to have joined or affiliated with a foreign terrorist organization, or is convicted of an aggravated felony or espionage within 10 years of their naturalization.
In a news release, Emmer, the House majority whip, said the bill would "restore long-overdue integrity to America's entire naturalization process."
Historically, denaturalization cases have been relatively rare. They've occurred mainly when people misrepresented or concealed their identities to obtain citizenship.
— MPR News staff
12:50 p.m. | Walz invites Trump to Minnesota
Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday invited President Donald Trump to travel to Minnesota to “see our values in action.”
Almost two months into an immigration agent surge in Minnesota, tensions are high and political clashes are frequent between Democratic state officials and the Republican administration in Washington.
“Come see how communities from all walks of life are working together, and how the spirit of this state refuses to be defined by division or fear,” Walz said in a written statement that doubles as a letter to “Mr. President.”
“I invite you to join me, and others in our community, to help restore calm and order and reaffirm that true public safety comes from shared purpose, trust and respect.”
Walz added that “political theater” and “baseless legal tactics” are distractions. Walz himself is an apparent target of a Department of Justice investigation disclosed last week.
Walz said the DOJ investigation into him comes as local leaders seek accountability for the ICE killing of Renee Macklin Good on a Minneapolis street.
“A mother is dead, and the people responsible have yet to be held accountable. That’s where the energy of the federal government should be directed: toward restoring trust, accountability, and real law and order, not political retaliation,” Walz said. “Minnesota will not be intimidated into silence and neither will I.”
— Brian Bakst, MPR News
12:30 p.m. | Police chiefs say off-duty cops of color being stopped by ICE, call for more supervision of federal agents
Local off-duty police officers of color have been pulled over by federal agents in the Twin Cities the past few weeks and subjected to the same intimidating behavior seen in videos posted by residents online, a group of local law enforcement officials said Tuesday as they called for more supervision of federal agents during the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
“We have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from U.S. citizens. They’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the streets with no cause” and asked to show papers they’re here legally, Mark Bruley, chief of the Brooklyn Park police, told reporters.
He said a female off-duty officer was recently stopped in Brooklyn Park by ICE. Agents boxed in her car, pointed guns and demanded to see her papers. When she tried to record video of the encounter on her phone, an agent knocked it out of her hands. When she finally told them she was a Brooklyn Park officer, they got in their vehicles and left with nothing to say and no apology, he added.
Local police “know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that's what they were. If it is happening to our officers,” he said. “It pains me to think how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. It has to stop."
Bruley said he believes only a small fraction of the agents in the region are acting improperly but warned that those actions were damaging efforts to build trust between residents and local police.
Members of the St. Paul Police Department have relayed similar stories of being stopped for no cause, said Axel Henry, the city’s chief.
“This is not just a one-off,” he said, noting reports of intimidation by federal agents outside the Twin Cities. “Can we please find a pathway forward … without scaring the hell out of our community members?”
People are “scared to death, afraid to go outside,” he added, not because they’re legal status is in question “but they’re seeing what's happening and don’t want to take that risk.”
Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt echoed those comments. “People in Hennepin County are being questioned and harassed solely because of the color of their skin. This is not OK.”
The actions of some federal agents, “particularly in the past few weeks,” are damaging relations between local law enforcement and the public, she said. “If one person does something wrong in law enforcement, we all pay the cost.”
Bruley didn’t speak on how many federal agents are a problem but said he believes federal agencies need to do more to supervise operations happening on the ground in Minnesota. He said when he’s contacted agencies he finds that they often don’t know what their people are planning or doing that day.
There’s a site where complaints can be lodged but it requires you to name the agent, which isn’t possible since agents are masked and not identifiable, Bruley said.
Bruley, Henry and Witt made clear they’ve long had good relations with federal agencies but that what’s happening now has to stop.
“It’s really impacting my community,” Bruley said. “When people armed with rifles that just have ‘police’ across their chest get out and act a certain way, of course the public thinks it's us.”
— MPR News staff
11:10 a.m. | Attorney General Ellison removes name from list of governor candidates
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took his name off the list of possible candidates for governor this year, citing heightened tensions with the federal government as a reason to stay the course in his current role.
Ellison hadn't previously ruled out a campaign since Gov. Tim Walz, a fellow Democrat, ended his reelection bid this month. Ellison had said he was giving a run for governor some thought.
But on Tuesday, Ellison reaffirmed his campaign for a third term as attorney general, an office he says is important in the pushback to an onslaught of actions by the Trump administration.
“As the federal government declares war on Minnesota, it is clear to me that I am best equipped to defend Minnesotans from the Office of the Attorney General,” Ellison said in a statement issued through his campaign. “In October, I announced my campaign for a third term as attorney general, and I intend to stay in this race.”
Ellison has sued the Trump administration over immigration and many other actions over the past year.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is widely viewed as the top likely contender for Democrats as the party tries in November to hold the governor's office for an unprecedented fifth straight term.
— Brian Bakst and Cait Kelley, MPR News
This week | Labor unions are endorsing a ‘Day of Truth and Freedom’
Multiple labor unions are endorsing a “Day of Truth and Freedom” on Friday in Minnesota.
They are calling for Minnesotans not to work, go to school or shop to protest the ICE presence in the state. The labor unions and other groups sponsoring the day of protest say they want ICE out of Minnesota.
Organizers say they are calling for a “unified, statewide pause in daily economic activity. Instead, Minnesotans will spend time with family, neighbors and their community to show Minnesota’s moral heart and collective economic power.”
A march and rally in downtown Minneapolis is planned for Friday afternoon.
Speaking at a news conference on Monday, union leaders said recent immigration enforcement actions have amounted to worker harassment.
Natasha Dockter of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators said ICE and other federal agents have created an unsafe environment for teachers in the Twin Cities.
“They are driving to work through tear gas, pivoting to provide online instruction, and working in partnership and solidarity with the community to provide critical resources such as food to families,” Dockter said of union members.
Greg Nammacher is president of SEIU Local 26, a union representing 8,000 workers.
“Our local understands that some workers and bargaining units are going to be prohibited by law from striking,” he said. “We are not telling workers to violate those rules, and we'll respect workers’ individual choices on how they participate on the 23rd. But let us be very, very clear: We as unions will do everything in our power to protect the rights of all workers — union members or not — to express their right to free speech and free assembly on that day.”
Nammacher added that immigration enforcement officials have already detained over 20 union members.
Responding to a request for comment on the planned day of strike, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, “This is beyond insane. Why would these labor bosses not want these public safety threats out of their communities?"
The DHS spokesperson also provided a list of photos of individuals it said were public safety threats but did not include their names. As MPR News has reported, several of the "worst of the worst" criminals DHS has taken credit for apprehending were actually already in the custody of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
— Tadeo Ruiz Sandoval, MPR News
Tuesday | No classes in St. Paul Public Schools
There is no school Tuesday and Wednesday for students in St. Paul Public Schools.
The district announced the two-day closure last week. It’s to give teachers and staff time to prepare for a temporary virtual learning option, for students who don’t feel safe going to school amid the ongoing federal immigration crackdown.
Classes for St. Paul students will resume on Thursday — in-person or online. Families should have received an email with a registration link for the virtual learning option.
While schools in St. Paul will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, the district said take-home breakfast and lunch will still be available to students from their school cafeterias.
— MPR News staff
Monday afternoon | DOJ appealing judge’s order limiting federal agents’ actions against Minnesota protesters
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed notice that it’s appealing a judge’s order setting limits on federal agents’ actions against protesters in Minnesota. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez late last week ordered agents involved in the immigration crackdown in Minnesota to not detain or arrest protesters or observers, unless there’s reasonable suspicion or probable cause of a crime. The order also bars agents from using nonlethal munitions on peaceful protesters and bars them from stopping drivers who follow ICE to monitor operations.
— MPR News Staff
Monday | Christian leaders urge protecting worshippers’ rights after protesters interrupt service
Several faith leaders called urgently for protecting the rights of worshippers while also expressing compassion for migrants after anti-immigration enforcement protesters disrupted a service at a Southern Baptist church in Minnesota.
About three dozen protesters entered the Cities Church in St. Paul during Sunday service, some walking right up to the pulpit, others loudly chanting “ICE out” and “Renee Good,” referring to a woman who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.
One of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office, and one of the leaders of the protest and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said she’s also an ordained pastor.
The Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention called what happened “an unacceptable trauma,” saying the service was ”forced to end prematurely" as protesters shouted “insults and accusations at youth, children, and families.”
“I believe we must be resolute in two areas: encouraging our churches to provide compassionate pastoral care to these (migrant) families and standing firm for the sanctity of our houses of worship,” Trey Turner, who leads the convention, told The Associated Press on Monday. Cities Church belongs to the convention.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it has opened a civil rights investigation.
— MPR News Staff, Associated Press
Sunday afternoon | U.S. citizen says ICE removed him from his Minnesota home in his underwear after warrantless search
Federal immigration agents forced open a door and detained a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him out onto the streets in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.
ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap Sunday afternoon and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.
“I was shaking," he said. “They didn't show any warrant; they just broke down the door."
Amid a massive surge of federal agents into the Twin Cities, immigration authorities are facing backlash from residents and the local leaders for warrantless arrests, aggressive clashes with protestors and the fatal shooting of mother of three Renee Good.
— The Associated Press
Sunday | Man detained in Minneapolis dies in ICE custody in Texas
A Nicaraguan man arrested by ICE in Minneapolis earlier this month died in federal custody in Texas on Wednesday, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE says Victor Manuel Diaz died at the tent facility on Jan. 14. The 36-year-old from Nicaragua had been in custody since Jan. 6 when ICE says agents “encountered” him in Minneapolis and determined he was in the country illegally.
According to ICE, staff at massive detention camp in El Paso found Diaz unconscious and called for emergency medical help. ICE says the death is a presumed suicide, though his death remains under investigation.
There are conflicting reports about another death at the camp that ICE says was suicide. A detainee told the Associated Press that the man was in an altercation with staff when he died.
— MPR News Staff, Angela Kocherga | KTEP
