A top prisons official says Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is trying to pass off years-old arrests as new and brazenly inflating numbers to hype Donald Trump’s “worst of the worst” immigration crackdown.
Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell held a press conference Thursday to offer evidence of what he described as “pure propaganda” being pushed by top Trump officials.
“This is no longer a simple misunderstanding,” Schnell told reporters in St. Paul. “At best, DHS fundamentally misunderstands Minnesota’s correctional system.”
“At a minimum, this reflects systemic data management inadequacies or incompetence. At worst, it is pure propaganda, numbers released without evidence to stoke fear rather than inform the public.”
DHS has routinely framed its immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota as the Trump administration cleaning up messes made by the state’s Democratic leaders, accusing them of unleashing “criminal illegal aliens” onto the streets after refusing to cooperate with ICE.
Noem’s department has raged over the release of nearly 470 “criminal illegal aliens” and accused local authorities of refusing to honor ICE requests to turn over more than 1,360 people sitting in state custody.
But Schnell said those numbers are flat-out wrong. A survey of facilities found 94 people with ICE detainers in county jails and 207 in state prisons—around 300 in total, roughly 1,000 fewer than Homeland Security has claimed. Corrections officials called DHS’ figures “categorically false, unsupported by facts, and deeply irresponsible,” according to the Star Tribune.
Schnell also took aim at the way DHS has been selling its Minnesota operation. In one Jan. 12 news release, federal officials boasted that two men—identified as Meng Khong Yang and Joshua Fornoh—had been taken off the street “yesterday” as part of Operation Metro Surge.
But those same men had actually been handed over to ICE from a Minnesota prison, he said, showing reporters security footage of the transfer.
Schnell said his department has not found “a single case” where Minnesota prisons failed to honor an ICE detainer when a noncitizen left state custody. State law requires prison officials to notify ICE when a noncitizen enters prison and to coordinate transfers on release, and Schnell insisted the agency does exactly that.
But the commissioner said the problems go deeper than one press release. Some people listed on the DHS “worst of the worst” rosters were actually transferred to ICE years ago, sometimes as far back as the 1990s, he said. Others, according to DOC checks, were never in Minnesota prisons at all, and had only brief stays in local jails, or had no criminal record in the state.
In some cases, Schnell said, DOC handed people to ICE, and federal agents later released them back into the community, where they now live under state or county supervision.
His comments came as Metro Surge faces growing legal and political fire. The ACLU of Minnesota and national civil-rights groups have sued to shut down what they describe as “suspicionless stops, warrantless arrests, and racial profiling” by ICE and Border Patrol across the Twin Cities, arguing federal agents are violating Minnesotans’ constitutional rights.
The operation has also been blamed for the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother Renée Nicole Good on Jan. 7 by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, which sparked national protests and a separate lawsuit against DHS.
Despite mounting criticism, DHS has doubled down on its Minnesota talking points, portraying Noem’s team as the only one willing to take dangerous offenders off the streets. Schnell said that kind of messaging “undermines trust and disrespects the dedicated professionals who work every day to keep Minnesotans safe.”
He went on to stress that the misleading numbers and bogus arrest claims appear to be coming from “higher levels” inside Homeland Security.
When contacted for comment by the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for DHS cited the same figures Schnell said appeared to have been deliberately inflated.
“As DHS stated, across the state of Minnesota nearly 470 criminal illegal aliens including violent criminal illegal aliens have been RELEASED into communities. 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,” the spokesperson said.
