Last week, Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” said the ‘Surge’ in Minnesota was over, and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was reducing its presence. One report on Friday, February 20, 2026, said that there are now fewer than 500 ICE agents still in Minnesota.
But, local news sources, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, report that crowdsourced data, particularly from People Over Papers (https://iceout.org/en/), shows ICE activity in Minnesota equal to or greater than that in December when Operation Metro Surge began.
How is this possible?
One possibility would be outright lying by ICE. After all, it would not be the first time.
But we think a more likely possibility is that Tom Homan, et al, are again choosing to be clever rather than smart.
Maybe there are less than 500 ICE agents now in the North Star State. But how many U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents are there? How many agents do other federal departments and agencies such as DEA, BATF, and even National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers, have on the ground in Minnesota? Are they included in that ‘less than 500’ count?
Our guess is ‘probably not.’ And this is what we mean by trying to be clever instead of smart.
The CBP and those other agencies are not part of ICE but are sister organizations, many of them under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CBP alone is more than twice the size of ICE with 45,000+ officers/agents (ICE has barely 22,000). And the CBP as well as other agencies have been a major part of the Minnesota Surge.
In our opinion, it is very likely that the reduction of “ICE” agents is only a small part of the overall federal anti-immigrant effort in Minnesota. This would account for the continued high levels of abductions and smash-n-grabs that are being reported.
The Mafia tactics of Kristi Noem’s DHS
DHS, like the Mafia and other criminal organizations, hates and fears public attention. The impact of the executions of Renée Goode and Alex Pretti was only possible because they were videoed live. There was no way a positive spin could be placed on those murders, unlike the shootings, deliberate ramming’s, and other violent, illegal acts that are not shared live. Like cockroaches, DHS hates the light of public awareness and so has scuttled its operations out of the center of the Twin Cities and into the surrounding cities and towns, desperately trying to find the darkness that shields them.
This is another reason that anti-immigrant activity has not fallen back to pre-surge levels, despite Homan’s announced ‘draw down.’
Instead, it is a feint made by Stephen Miller’s wanna-be Brownshirts, trying to get the public eye off their illegal behaviors. (For more on how the evolving nature of the war in Minnesota, we can highly recommend “What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis” by Jonathan V. Last of The Bulkwark. It matches very well with what we saw when we were there about the same time.)
There is no Spring Thaw that has melted all the ICE in Minnesota. Instead, Minnesotans have plowed some major roads, but that has merely thrown the dirty ice off those streets and onto the sidewalks and side streets. And the smaller towns are experiencing their own ICE storm. Spring is not yet here.
Out Of Many, One! 
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