Homan says that Minnesota surge in immigration crackdown is ending
Tom Homan just announced that given the “success that has been made arresting public safety threats” and the “unprecedented levels of coordination we have obtained from state officials and local law enforcement” the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota is concluding. He said that he proposed winding down the operation, and Donald Trump agreed.
Homan added that law enforcement officers drawing down from this operation will either return to their duty station or be assigned elsewhere across the country, as the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda continues. “A small footprint of personnel will remain for a period of time to close out, and transition full command and control back to the field office, as well as to ensure agitator activity continues to decline.”
The border czar said that there were more than 4,000 arrests throughout the Minnesota operation, but didn’t have the exact breakdown of those who were part of ICE’s targeted efforts to arrest undocumented criminals. This comes amid several examples of people caught in the immigration dragnet in the state who are either US citizens or living in country with legal status.
“We’ve had great success with this operation, and we’re leaving Minnesota safer,” Homan said.
Key events
Minnesota governor Tim Walz, issued a short and simple statement in response to Tom Homan’s announcement that the federal immigration surge in Minnesota is ending.
“Thank you, Minnesota,” he wrote on social media.
Homan touts cooperation from Minnesota jails
During his press conference today, Tom Homan announced that cooperation from local law enforcement was a significant factor in the decision to conclude the surge of immigration officers in Minnesota.
“We now have the ability to arrest criminal aliens and the safety and security of jails throughout the state at the time they’re being released, like we’ve done in other states,” Homan said.
Access to county jails is one of the border czar’s long-standing goals. In Minnesota, each sheriff decides on their level of cooperation with federal immigration officials. However, jails are banned under state law from holding a detainee beyond their release date – known as an “ICE detainer”.
Today, Homan said that he has “not met one county jail that says ‘no’ to us”. However, he did not say whether the state’s two largest counties, Hennepin and Ramsey, have agreed to coordinate with ICE agents and make arrests at the time of release.
Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) already works with ICE to transfer non-citizens in state prisons, who have completed felony sentences, to federal custody. Homan added that the administration is “moving further on our agreements for the state”.
Homan says that Minnesota surge in immigration crackdown is ending
Tom Homan just announced that given the “success that has been made arresting public safety threats” and the “unprecedented levels of coordination we have obtained from state officials and local law enforcement” the surge of federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota is concluding. He said that he proposed winding down the operation, and Donald Trump agreed.
Homan added that law enforcement officers drawing down from this operation will either return to their duty station or be assigned elsewhere across the country, as the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda continues. “A small footprint of personnel will remain for a period of time to close out, and transition full command and control back to the field office, as well as to ensure agitator activity continues to decline.”
The border czar said that there were more than 4,000 arrests throughout the Minnesota operation, but didn’t have the exact breakdown of those who were part of ICE’s targeted efforts to arrest undocumented criminals. This comes amid several examples of people caught in the immigration dragnet in the state who are either US citizens or living in country with legal status.
“We’ve had great success with this operation, and we’re leaving Minnesota safer,” Homan said.
Homan says Minnesota immigation crackdown has been successful
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan kicked off his press conference today announcing that the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota has “yielded the successful results” they were looking to achieve.
Homan also noted that Immigation and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not made any arrests at hospitals, elementary schools or churches. However, many people in the Twin Cities have told the Guardian that they’re fearful of federal immigration officers who patrol near these spots, and appear to make indiscriminate arrests throughout the region. The anxiety has resulted in parents keeping their children at home, and patients missing hospital appointments.
“Those locations are not off the table,” Homan added. “I said on day one, there’s no sanctuary for a significant public safety threat or national security threat.”
Trump’s border czar to hold press briefing on Minnesota immigration crackdown
In a short while, we’ll hear from Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, who will address members of the media at 9am ET. A reminder that Homan took over the federal immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota from senior border official Gregory Bovino, after the second fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minneapolis by immigration officers, and the ensuing backlash from residents.
On Tuesday, governor Tim Walz said that after recent conversations with Homan, he is convinced that the immigration crackdown in his state will end in a matter of days. A reminder, that the administration drew down 700 federal immigration officers last week — still leaving around 2000 stationed in the North Star State.
Trump plans to announce rollback of key environmental protection rule
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We’ll hear from him at 1:30pm ET, when he’s expected to formally announce the rollback of the Obama-era endangerment finding. This is 2009 determination that concluded CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a detriment to public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. My colleague, Dharna Noor, notes that this underpins virtually all federal climate regulations, and the repeal will likely be challenged in court. The president will be joined today by Enivironmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin.
We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines as that gets underway.
Venezuelan interim leader president Delcy Rodríguez said she has been invited to the United States, according an interview released Thursday by NBC News as US energy secretary Chris Wright visited Caracas.
“I have been invited to the States,” Rodríguez was quoted as saying. “We’re contemplating coming there once we establish this cooperation and we can move forward with everything.“
Rodriguez, the former vice president and oil minister, was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president in early January after the United States deposed president Nicolás Maduro.
She and Wright face the task of organizing the recovery of Venezuela’s oil industry after decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and US sanctions, while putting US investors at the front of the line.
Marina Dunbar
Yadin Eldar, 21, has been betting on prediction markets since 2019. His friends think he’s “crazy”, he said. But the craze surrounding these platforms is rapidly gathering steam.
Users can bet on virtually anything, from the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl to whether the US will invade Greenland, every second of every day.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are now wagered each week, generating odds that users promptly screenshot, post and meme far and wide, from social media feeds to mainstream news networks.
Polymarket and Kalshi, two of the leading platforms, collectively saw about $1.2bn in trading volume on Sunday, according to analysis by Piper Sandler, as the Super Bowl spurred a betting frenzy.
“I wouldn’t describe it as gambling,” stressed Eldar, a student at Florida State University, but “a mix of betting and options trading”.
“It’s not like when you go to the casino, and play against the house, and hope you get to win against the house,” he said. “That’s not what it is.”
About six in 10 US adults say president Donald Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into American cities, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
Views of Trump’s handling of immigration – which fell over the course of his first year – remained steady over the past month, with about four in 10 saying they approve of the president’s approach.
But the poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also found that the Republican party’s advantage on Trump’s signature political issue has shrunk since October.
The data also found that about three in 10 adults trust Republicans to do a better job handling immigration, while a similar share say the same of Democrats.
An additional three in 10, roughly, do not think either party would do a better job handling the issue, and about one in 10 say both parties would handle it equally well.
George Chidi
The House on Wednesday passed the Save America Act, which would dramatically change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting.
The legislation, which passed 218 to 213, faces an uphill battle in the Senate, close observers say.
“I’m skeptical that the Senate will vote on this bill, because this bill goes farther than the bill they’ve already sent to the Senate, [which] it hasn’t taken up,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state and a Democratic candidate for governor.
One Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, joined Republicans in passing the bill.
The House previously passed a version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility – the Save Act – in 2024 with three Democratic votes. Without some Democratic support in the Senate, however, it has languished on the margins.
The Save America Act, introduced by Chip Roy of Texas this year, expands on changes to voting laws in the 2024 bill, adding a nationwide photo ID requirement to vote, with a list of acceptable identification that is stricter than many states that already have voter ID requirements. Student IDs are explicitly not allowed.
Robert Mackey
Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year.
Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. But the case was abruptly dismissed after video evidence emerged showing that an agent had steered his vehicle into Martinez’s car.
Lawyers for Martinez have pushed to make evidence in the dismissed criminal case public, saying they were especially motivated to do so after a federal agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis under similar circumstances.
The new evidence – which includes emails, text messages and videos – was released this week after a US district judge, Georgia Alexakis, lifted a protective order. Federal prosecutors had argued the documents could “further sully” reputation of the agent who shot Martinez.
“I don’t know why the United States government has expressed zero concern for the sullying of Ms Martinez’s reputation,” Alexakis countered.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth failed to attend a gathering of defense ministers at Nato headquarters in Brussels this morning, with Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, representing the US instead.
Hegseth’s absence marks the second time in a row that a top Trump administration official has skipped a Nato meeting, after secretary of state Marco Rubio missed a gathering of the alliance’s foreign ministers in December, Reuters reported.
Those absences and repeated tensions between president Trump and European nations – most recently over Greenland – have prompted fresh questions from European officials and commentators about Washington’s commitment to Nato, which for decades has been the foundation of the continent’s defence.
House backs bid to block Canada tariffs in rebuke of Trump
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that the House has voted to rescind tariffs that Donald Trump imposed on Canada last year, in what has been seen as a rare bipartisan rebuke of the White House’s trade policy.
The largely symbolic resolution to disapprove of the national emergency Trump declared to impose tariffs on Canada passed 219 to 211, with six Republicans – Don Bacon of Nebraska, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Kevin Kiley of California, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Jeff Hurd of Colorado – voting with all Democrats except Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against it.
“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” Trump warned on Truth Social before the vote was finalized, adding:
TARIFFS have given us Economic and National Security, and no Republican should be responsible for destroying this privilege.
Undoing Trump’s tariff policy would ultimately require his approval, which was unlikely. On Wednesday, he warned Republicans against voting for the resolution, which GOP leaders had worked to forestall. The measure next goes to the Senate.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said Trump’s tariffs were “causing prices to skyrocket and creating unnecessary uncertainty for American families”.
“For months, sycophantic Republicans in the House have tried to block us from acting on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries said in a statement after the resolution was approved. “Today, House Democrats forced a successful vote to detonate the Trump tariffs on Canada.”
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year. Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times by a border patrol agent in October while in her vehicle. She was charged with a felony after officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle.
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The US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions.
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The number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday. The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress.
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The wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months – despite having a valid work permit – is pleading for help in instigating his release from the “dire conditions” he is facing in detention. “I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started,” Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference.
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Donald Trump has said that he is still seeking a deal with Iran to prevent it from seeking a nuclear weapon following a three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in which the Israeli leader was expected to advocate for a more forceful intervention by the US military. Netanyahu’s sixth visit to the White House since Trump returned to office ended without any public remarks between the two leaders.
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