The Department of Homeland Security is planning to deploy roughly 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to Minneapolis, Minnesota, as part of its largest immigration operation ever. The surge in federal officers comes one month after the Trump administration sent ICE officers to the Twin Cities area, where the state's Somali population is heavily concentrated. The operation is part of a widening investigation into alleged social services fraud, including a welfare-fraud scandal involving Somali-owned daycares that receive federal funding.
The deployment will involve personnel from ICE's deportation branch and Homeland Security Investigations, and will be led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino. The operation is expected to target the Somali community in Minneapolis, where allegations of fraud have been made. The federal government has already frozen $185 million in funding sent to Minnesota for day care services, despite state health officials finding that the child care centers were operating normally.
The operation is a significant escalation of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts, and is likely to draw attention to the issue of immigration and fraud in the United States. The deployment of 2,000 officers is a major resource allocation, comparable in scale to immigration deployments in Chicago.