Border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday that 700 federal agents are leaving Minnesota thanks to “unprecedented” cooperation from local law enforcement. While about 2,000 federal officers will remain, the drawdown is a welcome concession to political reality—and an opportunity for a reset at the Department of Homeland Security.
President Donald Trump arrived in office with a mandate to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants who had committed crimes. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could have focused primarily on apprehending dangerous criminals, which would have been an easy win for Trump and, more importantly, made America safer. Instead, the DHS prioritized quantity over quality. The ensuing dragnet, combined with the needless demonization of immigrants and unprofessional behavior from many agents, turned immigration into a liability for Republicans.
At the same time, blue-state leaders have advanced policies to block local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration enforcement. Maryland’s House and Senate advanced a bill this week to end 287(g) agreements, which are formal partnerships between local law enforcement and ICE. Virginia, New Mexico, New York and Hawaii are considering similar bans. Maine and Delaware did so last year. But without state and local cooperation, ICE gets a strong justification to deploy force in pursuit of the violent criminals that the overwhelmingly majority of Americans don’t want on the streets.
Handing over criminals in the security of a jail is safer not just for agents but also the people they’re apprehending. Democrats will come to regret adopting policies that shield criminals, and as a result, push ICE agents into neighborhoods.
On Wednesday, Homan explained how cooperation between local cops and ICE leads to safer communities and narrower deportation operations. “More officers taking custody of criminal aliens directly from the jails means less officers on the streets doing criminal operations,” he said. While it takes “one or two officers to assume custody” of someone at a jail, eight or 10 are required to arrest someone in public.
While Minnesota’s Department of Corrections cooperates with ICE, counties take different approaches. Some “sanctuary” jurisdictions, like Minneapolis’s Hennepin County, have policies that allow for the release of criminals instead of handing them over to ICE. That creates a genuine danger to public safety.
Since the surge began in Minnesota, Homan says agents have apprehended 14 people who had been convicted of homicide, 139 with assault convictions, 87 sex offenders and 28 gang members. It isn’t clear how many of these criminals were handed over by law enforcement or captured in the streets, but even one released murderer is one too many.
America has swung between extremes on immigration. Maybe the issue is too intractable to form a healthy consensus, but enterprising politicians with 2028 ambitions have the chance to offer a better way forward.
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