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650 DHS agents still in Minnesota, Kristi Noem says at Senate hearing

By
Aki Nace
Digital Producer, CBS Minnesota
Aki Nace has been a web producer for CBS Minnesota since 2019. She covers breaking news and makes short-form documentary films.
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Aki Nace

/ CBS Minnesota

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified Tuesday that 650 federal agents in her division are still on the ground in Minnesota, a figure that contradicts a sworn declaration by a local field office leader.

Sam Olson, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office director in St. Paul, said in an affidavit that approximately 107 Enforcement and Removal Operations agents would remain in the office after Feb. 25. In the same document, Olson wrote that Homeland Security Investigations anticipates there will be approximately 300 agents on detail in the St. Paul office by March.

Noem was fielding questions about her office's national immigration crackdown at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked her about DHS's continued presence in the state.

The 650 agents include investigators working on fraud cases, Noem told Klobuchar. Operation Metro Surge began in December with the purported purpose of probing alleged fraud. Since then, top prosecutors in the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney's Office — including the lead prosecutor in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme — abruptly resigned amid pressure to investigate the widow of Renee Good, who was shot by an ICE agent in January.

There were roughly 4,000 federal agents in Minnesota at the height of Operation Metro Surge, which led to approximately 4,000 arrests, according to DHS. Before the surge, there were approximately 150 agents.

When Klobuchar asked when DHS would get down to its original footprint, Noem said "we're continuing to work at that, although those investigators will continue to stay there to get to the bottom of that fraud."

Lawmakers from across the country pressed Noem at the hearing about the shootings of Good and Alex Pretti, her claims that protesters are "domestic terrorists" and her office's use of administrative warrants. 

In the weeks after border czar Tom Homan declared a drawdown of federal activity, observers have noted that agents have changed their tactics, fanning out into the suburbs of the Twin Cities metro and beyond.

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