Yesterday, Tom Homan announced a "drawdown" of 700 immigration-enforcement agents from Minnesota, part of the negotiations he conducted with Governor Tim Walz. The media reported this as a tacit retreat from Operation Metro Surge and a climbdown of aggressive immigration enforcement after the shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Homan had warned, though, that the Department of Homeland Security would continue its aggressive enforcement, and that the drawdown would only last if state and local officials cooperated with ICE and Border Patrol operations:
“Effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people,” Homan said Wednesday, adding that the remaining officers will stay to carry out immigration enforcement in the state. He added that about 2,000 officers will remain. ...
Homan said he wanted to turn down the temperature but would continue the unprecedented surge of federal officials in Minnesota until attacks on federal agents stop.
“We want to get back to the normal operational footprint here,” Homan said. “The more cooperation we get, the less rhetoric and hate we see, and the less attacks, means we can draw down even more quicker.”
Interestingly, albeit predictably, Minnesota officials didn't play along with the "Trump retreats" narrative. They continued talking tough about fighting immigration enforcement in the state, and pledged to keep fighting against ICE in courts:
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the drawdown was “a step in the right direction,” but added that “2,000 ICE officers still here is not de‑escalation.”
“My message to the White House has been consistent – Operation Metro Surge has been catastrophic for our businesses and residents. It needs to end immediately,” Frey told CNN in a statement.
Gov. Tim Walz echoed that sentiment on social media, calling for “a faster and larger drawdown of forces, state‑led investigations into the killings” of Pretti and Good, and “an end to this campaign of retribution.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison agreed with Walz’s assessment that the drawdown “would be a step in the right direction,” but added that he and his team are “still fighting to end this unlawful and unconstitutional surge.”
The tough talk turned out to be a show of impotence, however. The shootings definitely created a political crisis for Trump, especially the Pretti shooting and the initial responses of Homeland Security officials, including Secretary Kristi Noem. Trump recognized that quickly, however, and put Homan in direct charge of all operations in Minnesota to restore calm and confidence. That succeeded immediately, and all recent polling shows support for immigration enforcement remains strong, even if confidence in ICE has eroded with voters in the short term.
BREAKING NEW POLL from @cygnal
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) February 3, 2026
ICE/Immigration/deportations
"A huge majority of voters strongly believe people who came into the country without permission
broke the law doing so, proving the term “illegal” is how Americans term the topic. They support
deporting them back to… pic.twitter.com/bqWwYklARb
They support deporting them back to their countries of origin. And…a majority supports ICE enforcing federal immigration laws and removing those here illegally. The mainstream Democrat position to defund ICE is strongly opposed by most."
The most recent Harvard-Harris CAPS poll suggests that Trump's best issue is in responding to the Minneapolis protests. This survey was taken last week, in the two days after Homan's appointment:
Trump's highest approval is on responding to the anti-ICE "protests" in Minneapolis. 51%. Actual majority approves of his actions there. That's even above "immigration" itself in this poll from Harvard-Harris that also has Trump at 45/51 in approval with RVs and 48/51 with… pic.twitter.com/c4hWVieDUE
— Chris (@chriswithans) February 2, 2026
It's literally the only position for Trump that gets a majority level of support. Trump got 51% in December for "fighting crime in America's cities," an issue on which he dropped four points this month while still getting the same rating on handling the protests.
However, that's not where Trump has truly won the fight. The Free Press' Mene Ukueberuwa reports that Homan forced Walz and Frey to end its sanctuary policies in regard to cooperating on immigration detainers, which is why Homan drew down immigration enforcement levels to normal:
When White House border czar Tom Homan announced the withdrawal on Wednesday of 700 immigration agents from the Minneapolis area, news stories framed the pullout as nothing more than an admission of political defeat. The reports suggest that thousands of protesters, observers, and disruptors in the Minneapolis streets achieved an unconditional victory against an invasive federal force.
Yet the gears of Trump’s actual deportation policy are still turning behind the scenes of this political defeat. And if the new developments take hold, they could become one of the biggest policy victories of Trump’s term.
The key is that Democratic officials in the Minneapolis area are quietly letting jails work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “We currently have an unprecedented number of counties communicating with us now and allowing ICE to take custody of illegal aliens before they hit the streets,” Homan said at a press conference Wednesday morning, calling the new arrangement “unprecedented cooperation.”
These developments are making good on Homan’s strategy.
Ukueberuwa links to a CBS News interview with Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt, heretofore an enthusiastic supporter of sanctuary policies that preclude any cooperation with ICE. On Tuesday, Witt says she feels "scapegoated" by DHS. Now, she says she's open to "limited cooperation" with ICE on violent illegal aliens. That's at least a step in the right direction, and a partial repudiation of their previous position. Witt claims that Hennepin County has cooperated with ICE in the past, but the chief of St. Paul's police union scoffed at those claims last week, Mark Ross told the New York Post that orders against cooperation come from the very top:
“Since the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul back in 2008, Minnesota law enforcement has undergone extensive training in mobile field force configurations and crowd management for major events. And because of that, I think we’re in the best position to deal with that,” Ross said.
“Unfortunately, our local politicians would not allow us to do that,” he added. ...
“Part of it is leadership, because the leadership in our cities doesn’t want us communicating with the federal folks. And that disconnect has created some problems for everybody, and we’re stuck in the middle of it, and public safety is everybody’s responsibility,” he said.
“We want to be out there. We want to be keeping people safe, and it’s been really tough. We really feel like we’re in the middle of this, obviously, not by choice,” Ross added.
As it turns out, these "sanctuary" policies are not terribly popular with the rank and file, nor with police leadership in other Minnesota counties, Ukueberuwa reports:
It’s likely that some of the officials softening their sanctuary policies are doing so only to hurry ICE out of Minnesota, and would gladly return to stonewalling the federal government once Homan has left. But it appears that most Minnesota sheriffs would prefer to keep up the cooperation. The state sheriffs’ association is pursuing an agreement that would let individual counties honor each ICE detention request without risking legal challenges from state authorities. Many of the sheriffs, whose staff bears the burden of actually catching and releasing each criminal migrant, can see the shortcomings of sanctuary policies that their political bosses dismiss.
In other words, Trump and Homan have broken the pretense of Minnesota's "sanctuary" pose by enforcing federal law directly. It turns out that the consequences for non-cooperation get ugly when the federal government has to perform those tasks rather than just have state and local authorities cooperate with them up front. And that's why violent ICE encounters almost all take place in so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions:
I am horrified. I cannot believe it.
— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) January 26, 2026
I analyzed public databases and media reporting on violent confrontations with ICE over the past year.
Just 9 counties accounted for TWO-THIRDS of violent confrontations with ICE in America.
This is twice all violent confrontations in the… pic.twitter.com/PuQuntgtGF
This is twice all violent confrontations in the remaining 3,134 counties COMBINED.
A violent confrontation in these 9 counties was 590 TIMES more likely than any of these other 3,134 counties.
590 times.
I plotted these 9 counties, and I found that all 9 counties are sanctuary jurisdictions run by Democrat politicians that resist immigration law enforcement.
These violent confrontations are RARE in states and cities where local officials cooperate with law enforcement.
Walz, Frey, Witt, and the Left tried to escalate violence in an effort to force the end of immigration enforcement. They have lost, and Trump has prevailed. The Protection Racket Media may not want to report it, but the data – and the sudden, if grudging, start of cooperation – tells the real story.
