The end of Operation Metro Surge, in data
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Minnesota Reformer) — President Donald Trump’s border czar announced the imminent end to Operation Metro Surge, the surge of 3,000 immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota, on Feb. 12. At the time, Tom Homan said that agents from other states would be sent home or deployed elsewhere within a week, and a “small footprint” would remain for “a period of time” to wind down the operation.
On Friday, U.S. Reps. Angie Craig and Ilhan Omar said that during an oversight visit to the Whipple Federal Building, immigration officials told them that fewer than 500 federal immigration agents remain in the state, and that agents are making roughly 20 arrests a day. The pre-surge number of immigration agents was 150, Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this month.
People tracking ICE have reported significantly less federal immigration enforcement activity, though reports of ICE activity continue. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said during a Wednesday press conference that ICE “continues to terrorize” community members. Sahan Journal reported that people observing ICE are finding that agents use increasingly covert tactics — including reports of agents going door-to-door pretending to be environmental canvassers — to continue operations across Twin Cities suburbs.
Crowdsourced data from Minnesota’s decentralized rapid response network, composed of neighborhood group chats dedicated to tracking ICE activity, show a noticeable dip in tracked ICE activity the week following the announcement.
Rapid responders also recorded more ICE activities in the suburbs than in the Twin Cities in recent days. On Feb. 17, for example, observers recorded immigration activities 20 times in the suburbs, compared to three times in the Twin Cities.
The data is incomplete and not intended to capture all ICE activity. The crowdsourced data includes 578 arrests during Operation Metro Surge, around 14% of the 4,000 arrests federal officials announced on Feb. 4. An untold number of immigrants have been arrested without the cameras and whistles of observers, and even when people do witness ICE activity, they may not be connected to a rapid response group chat to report it. Also, the number of people actively observing and documenting ICE activity has fluctuated over time.
Still, in the absence of robust, publicly available data on arrests and other immigration enforcement activity over time from the federal government, data collected by observers offers some insight into immigration enforcement trends.
Flights transferring detainees out of state, observed and recorded by activists from MN50501, offer another source of data on federal immigration activity. That data also points to a significant drop in immigration activity, with 15 or fewer people flown out each day last week, down from a peak of 246 detainees flown out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Jan. 10.
Feb. 13, the day after Homan’s announcement about the end of Operation Metro Surge, was the first day in over a month that there wasn’t a chartered ICE flight observed by the activists.
A federal judge appointed by Trump, in a pointed ruling on Feb. 12, ordered that ICE has to give immigrants access to lawyers within an hour of detaining them, and can’t transfer a detainee out of state until after 72 hours of detention, possibly affecting the cadence of ICE flights.
Nick Benson, a photographer and longtime planespotter who has been recording deportation flights since before President Donald Trump’s second term, tallies the majority of the flights included in the data. Benson said he thinks immigration activity in Minnesota is in “a new phase,” with significantly fewer arrests reported and fewer ICE detainees leaving the state.
Benson also said that the need to observe immigration activity continues and plans to keep going to the airport to make sure the numbers keep decreasing.
“We need accountability and transparency to verify that ICE is continuing to decrease their detentions,” Benson said. “And if the citizens aren’t providing that oversight, I certainly don’t trust the Department of Homeland Security to be giving us information.”
(Story written by Alyssa Chen – Minnesota Reformer)
