2,300 immigrants arrested in Operation Metro Surge were deported or left country

The winter surge of 3,000 federal immigration agents to Minnesota eventually led to over 2,300 immigrants leaving the country, according to updated federal data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained by the Deportation Data Project.

The figure is a modest increase from the Reformer’s previous tally of 1,760 people who were deported or left the country after being arrested by ICE in the surge. The new total includes 2,019 immigrants who were explicitly recorded as being deported, as well as 315 immigrants who left the country after being arrested but under circumstances that are unclear from just looking at the data.

Pew Research estimated that Minnesota was home to around 130,000 undocumented immigrants in 2023, up from 100,000 in 2022, making up around 2% of the state’s total population. Undocumented immigrants in Minnesota are most commonly from Mexico.

The 2,300 immigrants deported during the winter surge, in turn, make up around 2% of the state’s undocumented population.

The new analysis is based on data ending in August, whereas the old analysis was limited to data prior to early March. It gives more insight into what eventually happened to the 800 immigrants who were still detained in early March. Overall, ICE recorded around 3,600 arrests from Dec. 1 to Feb. 15, the rough start and end dates of the surge. Most of those arrests happened in January, the chaotic peak, when federal agents also shot and killed two U.S. citizens.

The deportations were mostly from December to February, though over 400 were deported after February, according to the data.

Over 300 immigrants were still detained in May, meaning, if the data is accurate, they were detained for at least two months. Around 140 of those people continued to be detained as of the end of August, and around the same number were eventually deported.

The immigrants were most often deported to Ecuador, Mexico and other Latin American countries, consistent with the earlier data, with two notable additions: More than 80 immigrants were deported to Laos, and 14 to Somalia, higher than the one or two recorded deportations to those countries in the March data.

Many of those deported to Laos were sent there in March and May. Two of them were listed as being citizens of Thailand and Vietnam but were deported to Laos nonetheless, according to the data.

The data roughly lines up with the account of a Hmong man, reported by the Sahan Journal, who was arrested in South St. Paul in February and deported to Laos in May. The man, Zong Yang, told Sahan that he met about 50 other Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese men who were transferred to the El Paso Processing Center and held for two months. ICE’s data lists 44 men who were held for two months, were detained at the El Paso Processing Center, and were eventually deported to Laos.

Over 3,500 people were detained during Operation Metro Surge. Here’s where they went.

All were listed in the data as being convicted criminals. Yang, Sahan reported, was convicted of a felony burglary in 1999 and served seven years in prison. He appeared to be caught in the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants with past convictions, the so-called “worst of the worst.”

It’s unclear why ICE held the group of men for so long before deporting them. The 14 immigrants deported to Somalia — all of whom are citizens of Somalia — were also all detained for over a month, according to the data.

Immigration arrests in Minnesota returned to pre-Operation Metro Surge levels starting in March, though immigration enforcement is soaring nationwide.

The Deportation Data Project obtained the data from the federal government via a Freedom of Information Act request. It has some limitations — around 5% of arrests do not show where the arrest was made, for example. Still, it is some of the most detailed data on immigration enforcement available.

ICE has previously challenged the accuracy of the Deportation Data Project, even though the figures come from its own internal data. ICE did not respond to an inquiry of how many people arrested in the surge are still in detention.