Border Czar Says End in ICE Operation Surge in Minnesota Not an Entire Pullback

‘This is ending the surge, but we’re not going away,’ Tom Homan says.

White House border czar Tom Homan attends a press conference in Minneapolis on Jan. 29, 2026. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

White House border czar Tom Homan has said that the decision to end the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota doesn’t indicate that agents will be leaving in their entirety, coming hours after he announced a pullback from the state.

In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, Homan said that “hundreds of agents” will carry out investigations into allegations of federal entitlement fraud in the state.

“This is ending the surge, but we’re not going away,” Homan told the channel. “And let me say this, over 800 flights a day land in St. Paul, Minnesota; if we need to come back, we’ll come back.”

His comments on fraud were in reference to allegations that billions of dollars in federal funding are being stolen in the state. Since 2022, dozens of people, mostly of Somali descent, have been charged in relation to a number of alleged fraud schemes in the state, including the defrauding of programs designed to provide meals, therapy for autistic people, housing assistance, and more, congressional lawmakers said in a hearing last month.

Earlier on Thursday, Homan announced in a news conference that a weeks-long surge of agents in Minnesota would conclude and confirmed “a significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue into the next week.”

The pullback comes weeks after agents fatally shot two people in the midst of protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, drawing national attention over ICE’s tactics. The most recent shooting death of a protester, identified as Alex Pretti, prompted President Donald Trump to send Homan to the state to have talks with local Democratic officials, who have been largely critical of ICE efforts.

Tensions over ICE have also impacted Congress, where Democrats have sought to block a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Democrats said they would not support funding the agency unless Republicans agreed to reforms that would rein in immigration agents.

On Thursday, the legislation designed to fund DHS stalled in a 52–47 vote. That was short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill and raises the likelihood the embattled agency would face a shutdown if funding expires on Saturday.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor that continued funding without reforms would give the green light to “a rogue police force that doesn’t obey the rules that every local police force and sheriff’s office must obey.”

“We demand commonsense solutions, practical solutions, solutions that every police department in America abides by, to rein in ICE,” he added.

Congress is expected to begin a 10-day recess on Saturday and is not due to return to Washington until Feb. 23, or a day before Trump delivers his annual State of the Union address to Congress.

Meanwhile, since ICE and other federal agents were surged to the city in December, more than 3,300 unaccompanied, illegal immigrant children were located, Homan said in the Thursday morning news conference. Those were children who “the last administration lost, and weren’t even looking for,” he said.

“The Twin Cities, and Minnesota in general, are and will continue to be much safer for the communities here because of what we have accomplished under President Trump’s leadership,” the border czar also said.

The Trump administration has vowed to deport significant numbers of illegal immigrants, namely those with criminal records. Starting immediately after he took office in January 2025, Trump signed numerous executive orders on immigration and the U.S.–Mexico border.