DHS withdrawing 700 personnel in Minnesota “immediately,” border czar says
By Michael Williams, Jennifer Sherwood and Rebekah Riess
Minneapolis (CNN) — White House border czar Tom Homan on Wednesday announced that the Department of Homeland Security would be withdrawing 700 personnel from Minneapolis “effective immediately.”
Roughly 3,000 DHS personnel had been deployed to Minneapolis as part of Operation Metro Surge, the immigration crackdown that began in early December. The conduct of those agents has outraged residents and led to the fatal shootings of two US citizens. Homan was deployed to Minneapolis following the killing of Alex Pretti last month.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says the drawdown “is not de-escalation,” while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called it “a step in the right direction.”
“Operation Metro Surge is not making Minnesota safer. Today’s announcement is a step in the right direction, but we need a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and an end to this campaign of retribution,” Walz said in a post on X.
Homan said the 700 personnel leaving will leave “right around 2,000” remaining in the city.
“My goal, with the support of President Trump, is to achieve a complete drawdown … as soon as we can,” Homan added, “but that is largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ice and its federal partners that we’re seeing in the community.”
Homan added that a “complete drawdown” would depend on “cooperation” with local and state law enforcement and said that they “want to get back to the original footprint” of immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota.
His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s previous assurances that there would be no drawdown of personnel in the Twin Cities. Asked last Thursday if there were plans to pull officers out, the president responded, “No, no, not at all.”
The-CNN-Wire
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