News of federal agent drawdown met with skepticism, calls for more action
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State and local officials and community groups opposing the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota reacted skeptically Wednesday to news that 700 federal agents will leave the state.
White House official Tom Homan said about 2,000 federal agents would remain in the state following the drawdown, still far more than the 150 he said would typically be in Minnesota. Homan said he wanted to get back to that “normal operational footprint.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the drawdown “a step in the right direction” but said the White House needed to move faster.
In a social media post, Frey said that “2,000 ICE officers still here is not de-escalation” — and reiterated his call for the federal operation to end immediately.
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Walz also called for “a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and an end to this campaign of retribution.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison echoed those comments, saying that “Minnesota is still enduring a campaign of political retribution from President Trump that’s causing suffering and chaos across our state.”
“I hope Mr. Homan is successful in his goal of achieving a complete draw-down and ending the surge as soon as possible. The people of Minnesota want and need no less,” Ellison wrote.
A coalition of Minnesota faith, labor and other community groups opposed to the federal operation called Homan’s announcement a “political stunt,” saying that “there are still thousands of masked, unaccountable agents terrorizing our communities, attacking peaceful observers, and undermining Minnesotans’ constitutional and civil rights.”
“This sudden shift in language is not accidental. It comes as federal agencies face budget negotiations and mounting public scrutiny,” the members of the ICE Out of Minnesota Coalition said in a statement. “Rebranding mass enforcement as ‘prioritized’ enforcement is an attempt to preserve funding, not to protect communities.”
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Homan’s announcement “does not address the broader crisis facing Minnesota communities, including allegations of unlawful arrests of protesters, aggressive intimidation tactics, and the ongoing lack of transparency surrounding the killings of local residents during federal operations.”
“The limited drawdown of ICE agents from Minnesota is not a concession. It is a direct response to Minnesotans standing up to unconstitutional federal overreach,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR-Minnesota. “Minnesotans are winning against this attack on all our communities by organizing, resisting, and defending our constitutional rights.”
