ICE is taking credit for arresting people who were already behind bars to sell its Minnesota crackdown as a success.
The Department of Homeland Security has paraded lists of people it says ICE has arrested to market its Minnesota surge as a win and push the claim that they are rounding up “worst of the worst” criminals.
But a new report suggests the department has been spinning old transfers of people from Minnesota jails into ICE custody as fresh arrests.
MPR News reported that most people on a Jan. 10 “worst of the worst” list, in which the DHS boasted about ICE arrests in Minnesota, had been transferred to ICE custody before the start of “Operation Metro Surge” in December 2025.
Some transfers even took place under the Biden, Obama, and Bush administrations, according to MPR News, which looked at the criminal histories, public records, and available prison records of the 13 individuals on the list.
The DHS release states, “Below are the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens that our brave ICE officers arrested, despite the efforts of rioters and sanctuary politicians to protect them.”
Yet, five people on the list were simply picked up by ICE agents from Minnesota state prisons between August and November 2025, MPR News reported, citing Department of Corrections records.
Three more were reportedly transferred into ICE custody during previous administrations: one in 2021 during Joe Biden’s term, another in 2012 during Barack Obama’s term, and a third in 2003 during George W. Bush’s term.
When reached for comment, the DHS did not directly address the Daily Beast’s questions about the Jan. 10 list, and whether it counts jailhouse transfers as new arrests.
It is unclear whether the DHS has counted additional transfers as arrests; MPR News examined only the Jan. 10 list. But the Department of Corrections says that it coordinated with ICE on the release of 84 people last year.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other DHS officials have frequently accused Minnesota politicians and prisons of failing to cooperate with immigration enforcement, especially as a defense for its aggressive tactics in the state.
Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell told MPR News, “We are part of the overall criminal justice system and our statutory obligation is to provide support, including to ICE and notification to ICE and we do that.”
Some Minnesota county jails, whose policies are not set by the Department of Corrections, refuse to coordinate with ICE detainers, which are requests to hold a prisoner for the agency.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a DHS spokesperson called on the state to honor all ICE detainers and slammed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“As DHS stated, across the state of Minnesota nearly 470 criminal illegal aliens including violent criminal illegal aliens have been RELEASED into communities,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “We have more than 1,360 active detainers on illegal aliens in the custody across all jurisdictions in Minnesota. We are once again calling on Governor Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians to commit to honoring all ICE detainers. Instead, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey are actively encouraging an organized resistance to ICE and federal law enforcement officers.”
But the Department of Corrections called the DHS’s numbers “inexplicable” in a release on Thursday, saying that only 207 people in Minnesota state prisons are non-U.S. citizens.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Corrections for comment.
