Minnesota and National Police Blow Up That Dem Narrative About ICE Arrest Problems in the State
By Nick Arama | 6:43 PM on January 29, 2026
One of the main things that has led to greater difficulty with enforcing federal immigration law in Minnesota is the lack of cooperation from the state and local officials.
What that means is that jails aren't notifying ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) when they are releasing people, so that ICE can pick them up from the safety and security of the jail. They're releasing them back into the community, which then sets up both the difficulty of hunting them down and picking them up with more potential issues.
On top of that, you have to deal with the rabid anti-ICE crazies who may try to obstruct you. In other states, you might have local police assisting in crowd control, so that's less of an issue, but Minnesota largely hasn't given that cooperation. Even when they were storming the Home2Suites for the Hilton hotel, breaking through the doors, even struggling with an MPD officer and security, it took a long time for the police to show up.
All of this isn't sitting well with some of the police, both nationally and in Minnesota.
St. Paul Police Federation President Mark Ross set it out plainly, saying that if they had been allowed to be cooperative with ICE, it could have prevented the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“Since the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul back in 2008, Minnesota law enforcement has undergone extensive training in mobile field force configurations and crowd management for major events. And because of that, I think we’re in the best position to deal with that,” Ross said.
“Unfortunately, our local politicians would not allow us to do that,” he added. [….]
“Had we been allowed just a little bit of coordination – not in terms of what ICE is doing, but if they say, ‘Hey, we need to go to this place to serve a warrant, we’re going to be out there a couple hours. We’re nervous that crowds are going to form and give us trouble. Can you come out and help?’ That’s something we can easily coordinate with a little bit of notice, and sometimes with hardly any notice, we can get out there quickly,” Ross said.
“I believe, had we been able to do that, that there would be no loss of life at this point,” he said. […]
“We want to be out there. We want to be keeping people safe, and it’s been really tough. We really feel like we’re in the middle of this, obviously, not by choice,” Ross added.
That just blows up the Democratic narrative, laying the fault on ICE. They have cooperation in most of the other states, without the same level of resistance from the state and local officials, and they don't have anywhere near the issues that have happened in Minnesota.So this isn't because of ICE, it's because the Democratic politicians refuse to cooperate.
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/01/29/national-and-mn-police-remarks-on-mn-policies-on-cooperation-on-illegal-aliens-n2198654