{"id":193398,"date":"2025-12-12T22:38:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ice-operation-shows-the-difficulty-of-immigration-arrests-amid-pushback-in-frigid-minnesota-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T22:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:38:21","slug":"ice-operation-shows-the-difficulty-of-immigration-arrests-amid-pushback-in-frigid-minnesota-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ice-operation-shows-the-difficulty-of-immigration-arrests-amid-pushback-in-frigid-minnesota-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE operation shows the difficulty of immigration arrests amid pushback in frigid Minnesota – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ST. PAUL, Minn. \u2014 In what\u2019s become an increasingly volatile deployment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made more than 400 arrests in Minnesota since so-called Operation Metro Surge<\/a> began this month, an ICE spokesperson said.
NBC News was granted exclusive access to the operation Wednesday in the frigid Twin Cities, where the wind chill dropped well below freezing.
\u201cThe frigid temperatures means that people aren\u2019t out and about as much, so it makes it a little tougher,\u201d said Marcos Charles, the acting executive associate director for ICE\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Details of the federal surge, which include around 100 ICE agents from around the country, had been sparse, prompting backlash, protests and threats. ICE requested that NBC News conceal the identities of most of its agents, who said protestors had tried to block in their vehicles at scenes and had aggressively tailed them, even attaching Apple AirTags to their vehicles to track their movements.
Throughout the day, NBC News witnessed multiple protestors going up to unmarked ICE vehicles and blowing whistles at the agents. One agent related an anecdote of an ICE agent\u2019s evading a tailing car by using his military ID to enter a military base.
On Wednesday, agents left their staging area at a federal building in St. Paul by 6 a.m. The first target was a Somali immigrant who ICE said had been in the U.S. illegally since 2019 and had a previous conviction for criminal sexual conduct. The agents, in several vehicles, surrounded a home outside Minneapolis \u2014 and waited.
Within the hour, they made contact with someone inside the home: the man\u2019s wife, who claimed he was staying elsewhere. Agents moved on to their next target, another Somali immigrant, but couldn\u2019t locate him.
\u201cIt is not an operation targeting the Somali community,\u201d Charles said. \u201cWe\u2019re looking for people that are here illegally.\u201d
Three hours later, after a burst of activity over the agency\u2019s radio transmissions, another team, including agents from Florida and Texas, gathered around a residence, hoping to make an arrest and trying to determine whether their target was home. A crowd began to gather.
\u201cLet\u2019s get out of there,\u201d an ICE official said over the radio with a curse and a sigh.
The operation was a constant, unrelenting sequence of trial and error, using previously gathered intelligence about targets to make arrests. Ideally, officers said, a person is taken into custody without incident. Many attempts don\u2019t pan out, the day\u2019s events showed and agents said, either because the suspect isn\u2019t home or because other obstacles get in the way, such as persistent protestors or property managers who restrict ICE personnel\u2019s movements within any given area.
At one location, ICE agents surrounded an apartment building attached to a business on the ground level. They were searching for a 68-year-old Somali who\u2019d been convicted of criminal sexual contact with a minor and who agents believed was upstairs. The property manager wouldn\u2019t let the ICE agents enter, so they had to abandon the plan.
Around noon, the agents arrived back at their staging area to regroup while another transport team brought in three undocumented immigrants from Ecuador who had just been taken into custody.
In a brief interview, one of the men, 32, told NBC News that he\u2019d been arrested while he was trying to find work shoveling snow. He acknowledged he\u2019d been convicted of drunk driving three years earlier but insisted he remained in the country to work and care for his family. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether he\u2019d be deported or how soon.
By the afternoon, agents got word that another ICE team had tried to stop a man in his car near his home in Burnsville, Minnesota<\/a>. He apparently escaped and ran inside the home. The agents consulted with a government lawyer and got a warrant allowing them to forcefully enter the home. About an hour later, a special response tactical team with a battering ram broke through the door.
The initial target had fled the home, but ICE said another undocumented immigrant from Honduras who had been staying at the home was taken into custody. During the operation, protestors gathered nearby. One of them rammed two ICE vehicles with his car, Charles said, and was arrested.
Even though ICE agents insist they\u2019re not specifically targeting the Somali community, President Donald Trump has been ramping up his criticism of Minnesota\u2019s Somali community<\/a>, by far the largest in the country. The vast majority are here legally, and many are U.S. citizens. But that hasn\u2019t stopped Trump from railing against their African homeland.
\u201cWe always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster,\u201d he said again Tuesday in Pennsylvania. \u201cFilthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.\u201d
Trump escalated rhetoric after convictions involving dozens of members of Minnesota\u2019s Somali community<\/a> who, during the pandemic, stole millions of dollars in taxpayer money, some of it from programs providing meals to low-income children. The majority of those charged in the fraud are U.S. citizens<\/a>.
State and city leaders in Minnesota have strongly argued that the scandal shouldn\u2019t be used to insult all Somali immigrants.
\u201cThe mistakes of a few individuals can never be used to generalize or stereotype an entire community,\u201d said Imam Hassan Jamma, executive director of the Islamic Association of North America.
A top adviser to Trump, however, isn\u2019t limiting his attacks to a few individuals. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller \u2014 the administration\u2019s immigration policy architect \u2014 was direct in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday in his xenophobic criticism<\/a> of African countries specifically.
\u201cYou see with a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful \u2014 again, Somalia is a clear example here \u2014 not only is the first generation unsuccessful, but you see persistent issues in every subsequent generation,\u201d Miller said. \u201cYou see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate. This shouldn\u2019t be a surprise.\u201d
\u201cThere are people all over the world that are great people,\u201d Miller added. \u201cBut you look at the society \u2014 if Libya keeps failing, if the Central African Republic keeps failing, if Somalia keeps failing, if these societies all over the world continue to fail, you have to ask yourself: If you bring those societies into our country and then give them unlimited free welfare, what do we think is going to happen?\u201d
\u201cThe biggest misconception is that we\u2019re out there just randomly arresting people, which we\u2019re not,\u201d Charles said.
Firm numbers about how many \u201ccollateral arrests,\u201d as DHS officials have described them<\/a>, have occurred have been difficult to determine. During NBC News\u2019 roughly eight hours with ICE, fewer than a dozen people were arrested despite not being the initial targets of the operation. They just happened to be at the scene when agents showed up.
In Minneapolis, as in other major cities where the Trump administration has surged resources, ICE has encountered concerted pushback from local leaders who have accused it of mistakenly taking U.S. citizens into custody.
On Wednesday, Minneapolis\u2019 mayor and police chief alleged at a news conference that ICE agents wrongfully arrested a U.S. citizen because he looked Somali.
Standing alongside the city leaders, Mubashir, 20, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, said he was on his lunch break Tuesday when a masked man running full speed tackled him and pushed him into a restaurant.
\u201cThe agent then, at one point, he never identified himself, he didn\u2019t say, \u2018ICE, stop.\u2019 I feel like I was getting assaulted, I was getting kidnapped,\u201d Mubashir said.
DHS said ICE officers were speaking to someone nearby who they suspected was in the country illegally.
\u201cAt that time, a second male individual walked out of a nearby restaurant, turned around, and fled from law enforcement,\u201d DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to NBC News. \u201cHaving reasonable suspicion–as protected under the U.S. Constitution–officers gave chase and caught up with the individual, who violently resisted officers and refused to answer questions.\u201d
She added that the officers \u201ctemporarily detained\u201d the person because a large crowd had gathered, presenting a threat to the officers\u2019 safety.
\u201cOnce officers finished their questioning, he was promptly released,\u201d McLaughlin wrote. \u201cAllegations that DHS law enforcement officers engage in \u2018racial profiling\u2019 are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE. What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.\u2014NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity. Under the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, DHS law enforcement uses \u2018reasonable suspicion\u2019 to make arrests. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.\u201d
Mubashir said that after the officers saw his passport hours later and became convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, they told him he was free to go. He asked whether they could take him back to where he was arrested, and he said they told him he could walk home in the snow.
\u201cI apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say \u2018police,\u2019\u201d Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O\u2019Hara said. \u201cThat\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d
Gabe Gutierrez is a senior White House correspondent for NBC News.
Susan Kroll is an awarding winning producer of domestic and international stories for NBC News including Nightly News and “TODAY.”\u00a0 She has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Boston Marathon bombings and various political campaigns.\u00a0Kroll has been honored with multiple Emmy, Murrow, National Headliner, NABJ awards.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeST. PAUL, Minn. \u2014 In what\u2019s become an increasingly volatile deployment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made more than 400 arrests in Minnesota since so-called Operation Metro Surge began this month, an ICE spokesperson said.NBC News was granted exclusive access to the operation Wednesday in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}