“To be clear, we did not agree with Minnesota state and local officials that they would be involved in immigration enforcement. I didn’t ask them to be immigration officers. I’m asking them to be cops working with the cops to help us take criminal aliens off the street. What we did agree upon is not to release public safety arrests back in the community and they could be lawfully transferred to ICE.”
That was White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Tom Homan on Jan. 29 on the ground in Minneapolis, Minn. announcing that just after a few days in the state upon being dispatched by President Donald Trump on Jan. 26, that the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis are now honoring Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests to remove illegal aliens at jails, courthouses and prisons.
In short, Trump and Homan have, working with Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, already ended one of the key sanctuary policies that have been used for decades by state and local officials to prevent federal immigration enforcement from removing illegal aliens who are in state and local custody for other crimes.
The illegal aliens were instead being released into the community, which in sanctuary jurisdictions requires ICE to then go the aliens’ residences. That’s bad enough, but in the case of Minnesota, and what’s new, are the ICE Watch protesters who are being organized to directly obstruct and interfere with federal immigration officers.
This has created not merely a dangerous set of circumstances, but a deadly set of circumstances that led to the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were similarly engaged in these obstruction efforts.
Now, Minnesota and Minneapolis have finally relented, per Homan, and will let ICE pick up the illegal aliens at the courthouse, jails and prisons when the detainer requests are made. Tragically, it took the deaths of Good and Pretti — set in motion by very the sanctuary policies of the state and city that necessitated ICE to operate on the ground in the first place — to finally begin to undo the sanctuary policies.
Assuming Minnesota and Minneapolis stick to their word, then, and the detainer requests are indeed being honored, federal immigration enforcement efforts will now be “targeted,” Homan said: “Now, all operations will be targeted, but the prioritization are going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats, and national security threats…”
That’s what ICE has been doing all along, recently launching its database website “Arrested: Worst of the Worst” that showcases “the worst of worst criminal aliens arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)… fulfilling President Trump’s promise and carrying out mass deportations – starting with the worst of the worst…”
But Homan also had a message for non-violent and other offenders that they are subject to removal, too, noting the bad incentives: “If you’re in the country illegally… you’re never off the table… If the message we send is you can enter this country illegally, it’s a crime, don’t worry about it. You can have your due process, show up in court, not show up in court, get ordered to move, don’t worry about it. Unless you commit a serious crime, you’re good to go. If that’s the message we sent to the world, you’re never going to fix this problem.”
That’s the right message, and it could help those here illegally to come to the decision that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and will voluntarily go home. In the 1950s, when Dwight Eisenhower embarked upon the most ambitious deportation program in American history, much of the success was convincing illegal aliens to voluntarily repatriate themselves.
According to the Texas Historical Society: “The forces used by the government were actually relatively small, perhaps no more than 700 men, but were exaggerated by border patrol officials who hoped to scare unauthorized workers into flight back to Mexico. Valley newspapers also exaggerated the size of the government forces for their own purposes: generally unfavorable editorials attacked the Border Patrol as an invading army seeking to deprive Valley farmers of their inexpensive labor force.”
As a result, people left all by themselves: “The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most undocumented immigrants, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation.”
Today, the same thing appears to be happening, with the most reliable metric being the foreign-born population measured by the U.S. Census, which peaked at 50.5 million in March 2025, and as of December 2025 was down to 48.9 million. The same leveling off of the foreign-born population occurred in the first Trump administration, too, with the number peaking at 43.5 million in March 2019 and falling to 41.8 million by September 2020, before skyrocketing by about 9 million from 2021 to the end of 2024 under Joe Biden’s open border, no-enforcement policies.
Therefore, the tales of how tough the immigration enforcement operations, refugee re-vetting and deportation generally can be, and what awaits those who are put into the process formally will undoubtedly reach the next generation of would-be illegal aliens. And while President Trump is still in the White House, the message will be crystal clear: Don’t even think about it. It’s already working, the numbers show it and with the help of even blue states and cities to remove the worst of the worst, it can get even better.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
