Border Czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that Operation Metro Surge, the enforcement operation targeting illegal immigrants in Minnesota, is concluding after agents successfully removed thousands of illegal immigrants from the state despite overwhelming public backlash and obstruction by anti-ICE agitators.
Homan, who was dispatched to the state last month to revamp operations after two anti-ICE agitators were shot and killed by agents, revealed that federal agents have made more than 4,000 arrests in Minnesota since the operation began — but he was unable to say definitively how many of those individuals were targeted public safety threats as opposed to general illegal immigrants.
A small number of agents will remain in the state to provide security and investigate allegations of widespread welfare fraud, Homan said.
“Federal government personnel assigned to conduct criminal investigations into the agitators, as well as the personnel assigned here for the fraud investigations, will remain in place until their work is done,” Homan said during a press conference Thursday morning in Minneapolis.
The border czar stipulated that the end of the surge operation does not mean the administration is taking a step back from enforcing immigration law.
“For those that say we are backing down from immigration enforcement or the promise of mass deportations, you are simply wrong… prioritizing public safety threats and national security threats doesn’t mean we’re forgetting about everybody else,” Homan said.
Homan announced earlier this month that he had secured “unprecedented” cooperation from local officials, which allowed him to pull 700 agents out of Minnesota. The main factor, which Homan reiterated on Thursday, is the cooperation of county jails, which began informing Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they had an enforcement target in their custody so the individual could be detained in jail rather than on the street.
Throughout his time in Minnesota, Homan said he did not encounter a single county jail that was unwilling to work with ICE.
Homan also revealed that thousands of illegal immigrant children who entered the country illegally under President Biden had been identified and located thanks to ICE’s efforts in Minnesota.
“ICE here in this state have located 3,364 missing unaccompanied alien children — children that the last Administration lost and weren’t even looking for,” Homan said.
Pushing back on what called misleading reports, Homan clarified that ICE agents have not gone into hospitals, churches, or other establishments of that nature to arrest illegal aliens. Homan did say, however, that if an illegal alien poses a serious security threat, that method of retrieval is “not off the table.”
“As result of this surge operation, we have to greatly reduced the number of targets for enforcement action, and many criminal aliens have been arrested and taken off the streets, including murderers, sex offenders, national security threats, gang members, and other violent criminals,” Homan said.
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site