The Department of Homeland Security has no immediate plans for more large-scale immigration operations focusing on specific cities, two senior DHS officials told NBC News.
The news comes a day after President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. DHS had billed it as its largest immigration enforcement operation to date.
The Trump administration deployed more than 3,000 officers and agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies into the Twin Cities area beginning in November — resulting in the arrests of 4,000 people and triggering anti-ICE demonstrations.
The fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were U.S. citizens, by immigration agents in Minneapolis brought national attention and scrutiny to the massive deployment of ICE and CBP officers in American cities.
The two senior DHS officials said that moving forward, ICE will focus on arresting serious criminals with immigration violations nationwide, rather than focusing on specific locations.
There are also no future plans to have Border Patrol agents actively involved in immigration enforcement operations in the interior of the country, according to the two DHS officials, who added that those agents will be returned to their sectors along the nation’s borders.
More than 1,000 Border Patrol agents had been previously deployed to cities in the interior of the country. Last month, Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino was removed from his role as commander and returned to his previous job as sector chief in El Centro, California. He had been a leading figure in CBP enforcement operations in Minneapolis, as well as in Chicago and Los Angeles.
One of the senior officials added that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem plans to shift her focus to families who have lost loved ones to crimes committed by immigrants illegally present in the U.S., and on voting security.
Immigration-related street arrests and transfers to ICE custody increased in the first nine months of the Trump administration, resulting in a sevenfold increase in arrests of people with no convictions, despite top officials’ statements that their focus was on targeting the “worst of the worst.”
At least 75,000 people with no criminal records arrested during that time period were swept up in large-scale immigration operations conducted in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in a congressional hearing Tuesday that his agency has made 379,000 arrests during the first year of the Trump administration — including 7,300 suspected gang members and 1,400 known or suspected terrorists — and deported more than 475,000 people from the United States.
Colleen Long, Suzanne Gamboa and Laura Strickler contributed.
