ICE Terrorist Campaign Not Over, Says Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey

WASHINGTON – When border czar Tom Homan announced last week that the Trump administration’s increase in immigration agents in Minnesota had ended, he said the reduction would begin immediately and extend through this week.

But while there is anecdotal evidence of fewer actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, federal agents are still very much present and residents are still terrified.

“It certainly hasn’t stopped,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in an interview Thursday. “I completely understand why people are so nervous.”

Frey said he receives daily reports on ICE activity in the city, but it is not objective data because ICE does not share its information with his office. Instead, his team tracks the number of residents who call 9-1-1 with reports of “a family member being kidnapped” by federal agents, for example, or of ICE “slamming someone into a car.” When police respond to these calls and confirm that ICE is on the scene, they file a report and the mayor’s office flags it.

This anecdotal information used to show between 10 and 30 ICE actions every day, Frey said, and in recent days, those numbers have dropped to one or zero. It’s a good sign, he said, but it doesn’t mean much has materially changed for Minneapolis immigrants who have been so traumatized by ICE’s months-long campaign of terror against them that they haven’t left their homes, in some cases, for eight or nine weeks.

“The reporting figures we have received in recent days have been in line with [a decrease]But again, that doesn’t mean that’s what people feel,” Frey said. “People are still afraid.”

Some residents don’t see much difference on the ground either.

“Absolutely not,” said Mary Granlund, school board president for Columbia Heights Public Schools. ICE has been aim aggressively this suburb for months, even stationing officers in elementary school parking lots and outside Grunland’s own home.

Nick Benson, an airplane enthusiast in Minneapolis who has been following ICE deportation flights out of the city, said he has seen fewer shackled passengers boarding planes. She has also seen more children returning to school after relying on virtual learning for weeks because their immigrant parents were too afraid to go out.

But what caught his attention is that ICE agents appear to have shifted their focus from immigrants to legal observers, or residents who volunteer to monitor and film federal agents during their operations. He said local clergy and observers have noticed ICE agents camping in front of their churches and homes, something they had not seen before.

“Real problems still happen here,” Benson said. “I feel like we’ve gone from the adrenaline-fueled ICE phase in Minnesota to the caffeine-sustained arduous phase.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment on how many federal immigration agents remain in Minneapolis. They also declined to say when DHS expects to reduce that number to the roughly 150 ICE agents who were in the state before the Trump administration’s surge in December.

“For the safety of our law enforcement, we do not disclose operational details while they are underway,” the spokesperson said.

Stephen Maturen via Getty Images

Frey said he has not spoken to Homan since the day before announcing the reduction. He also has not spoken to President Donald Trump, aside from a phone call they had after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, in late January.

Some Minneapolis residents have speculated that the administration agreed to reduce the ICE presence because local and state officials reached some type of agreement with Homan that involved police working with federal agents to help deport people. That’s false, Frey said.

“There is no agreement,” he said. “There was literally no agreement.”

Local officials have always worked with federal agencies “when it comes to keeping people safe and reducing crime,” he said, but city officials do not enforce federal immigration law and that will remain the case.

Minneapolis leaders have been so determined to make this point that there is a “fact check.” outstanding on the city government website explaining that the city “did not make any agreements or concessions with the federal government or ICE.”

“There was no capitulation,” Frey insisted.

Looking ahead, the mayor said he plans to continue doing what he can to protect immigrants from aggressive and illegal federal immigration operations. He pointed out city initiatives such as “know your rights” drives, food delivery services, mental health supports and rental assistance for immigrants who have struggled amid the ICE surge.

The city has also created a working group specifically focused on how to share information between community organizations that help immigrants. But local officials know they have to “be careful” with the data they collect for this, he said, because they don’t want to collect data on residents who could then be subject to a data request from federal officials.

Frey said he hasn’t had much time to reflect on the past few months of chaos in his city, but there are a couple of moments that stand out.

One of them was on a recent Saturday morning, when he took his 5-year-old son to dance class, the first time he “came up for air” after weeks of being intensely focused on ICE, only to receive a call 10 minutes into class about Pretti’s murder. Another was when he stopped by a local coffee shop to buy a bun and five Latino employees came out from the back of the house crying, desperate to tell him how terrified they were of ICE and begging for his help.

That same scenario was also repeated dozens of other times, he said, at various Minneapolis stores and restaurants.

“That hits you,” Frey said. “It stays with you.”