Tom Homan Makes a Good Offer to Minneapolis

Tom Homan Makes a Good Offer to Minneapolis

‘Just give us your criminals,’ Trump says he told Walz and Frey. How about it?

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

Jan. 29, 2026

President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Thursday in Minneapolis that he’s “working on a drawdown plan” for the federal immigration surge there, which will be possible “dependent upon cooperation.” It’s an invitation to Democrats to help calm tensions by handing over deportable criminals in state or local custody. Do Minnesotans really want their leaders to refuse?

Mr. Homan’s deportation priority is “criminal aliens, public-safety threats, and national-security threats,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of them to keep us busy.” What the feds say they need, however, is better coordination from Minnesota officials, so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can pick up illegal migrants who are already under arrest.

“More agents in the jail,” Mr. Homan said, “means less agents in the street.” That’s safer for both ICE and Minneapolis residents, and it also means fewer “collateral arrests.”

It’s a reasonable request, and the border czar credited the state prison system for honoring ICE detainers, as Gov. Tim Walz wrote Tuesday in these pages that Minnesota does. Yet the local jail in Minneapolis is run by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.

“We do not assist with or comply with any civil immigration requests from ICE,” it says. “In our jail, we do not honor administrative detainers or administrative warrants.”

Sheriff Dawanna Witt won the job in a 2022 nonpartisan election, though she had the Democratic endorsement. “Those detainers don’t give us any information,” she told WCCO last week, calling them “very generic” and “not signed by a judge.” If ICE is targeting criminals, it should get a warrant, she said.

That isn’t a spirit of cooperation. The sheriff wrote this week that she met Mr. Homan for a “constructive conversation.” She didn’t mention any policy change. But if Mr. Walz thinks state prisons should honor ICE detainers, why not the county jail?

Or consider that Minneapolis, under its sanctuary ordinance, broadly bans police from aiding ICE. As the city explained in a public update last month, its officers can’t even share information “for the purpose of locating a person solely for immigration enforcement.” They also can’t “escort federal immigration agents to enforcement locations,” absent some “clear and immediate threat.”

Since the federal government can’t commandeer state or local forces, noncooperation policies can be legal, even if they’re foolish in practice. “Violent criminals should be held accountable based on the crimes they commit,” Mr. Frey wrote this week, “not based on where they are from.”

Really? If a guy who jumped the border last month commits assault in Minneapolis, it’s hard to imagine refusing to deport him is a majority view, even in the Twin Cities.

Most Americans welcome immigrants, but they don’t want criminals in their neighborhoods, and Mr. Homan was smart to return to this high ground. Detaining other illegal migrants is “never off the table,” the border czar said, because the U.S. can’t send a message that it’s no big deal to swim the Rio Grande or evade a deportation order.

But he also seemed to acknowledge that ICE’s sweep through Minneapolis was overbroad: “Targeted enforcement operations is the way we’ve always done it. I think we got away from it a little bit.” This is what serious talk sounds like.

Ignore the posturing on the left and right, and it isn’t hard to imagine a modus vivendi the public could support, in Minnesota and beyond. ICE goes after criminals that threaten public safety. State and local officials help where they can, but especially when deportation targets end up in custody for other offenses, such as drunken driving or domestic abuse.

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As Mr. Trump grapples with the unpopularity of “mass deportation,” he could also tell his Administration to forget about arrest quotas and return to his promise to target the worst of the worst. Maybe he’s leaning that way. On a radio show Tuesday, Mr. Trump recounted his phone calls with Messrs. Walz and Frey: “I said, ‘just give us your criminals, and if you give us your criminals, it all goes away.’”

Why wouldn’t Minnesota Democrats take that deal? Unless, that is, they’d rather exploit the tragedies in their cities for political gain.