In an absolutely massive speech delivered on Thursday, February 12, Trump Administration Border Czar Tom Homan announced not only that Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota is coming to an end because it has succeeded in a massive way, but that more than three thousand “missing” children were recovered during the massive operation.
As background, a federal report into migration during the Biden years found that a massive 320,000 children who came into the country durig those years failed to appear for their immigration hearings or otherwise didn’t appear in court, leading many to suspect that those children have gone missing and might be in danger.
Because of that concern, the Trump Administration has made finding the children, to whom it generally refers as “missing” children, one of its leading priorities as it cracks down on sanctuary cities, using the suspicion over what is happening to the kids to draw attention to its anti-illegal immigration efforts.
Such is the context of the Border Czar’s speech about the recovery of thousands upon thousands of missing kids in the sanctuary state, during which he also announced that Operation Metro Surge would be coming to an end because it has reached a successful conclusion, with the Walz administration backing down.
Doing so, Border Czar Homan began by noting that the agents deployed by the administration to the state, namely ICE and Border Patrol agents, have managed to take numerous public safety threats off the streets while locating thousands of kids. He said, “In addition to taking public safety threats off the street, ICE here in this state, have located 3364 missing unaccompanied alien children.”
Building on that, the Border Czar explained to the crowd who the missing kids were, noting that the Biden Administration hadn’t been looking for them, but the Trump Administration was. He said that they are “children that the last administration lost and weren’t even looking for. That’s because the leadership of President Trump, these children were located.”
Watch him here:
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Also during the speech, the border czar explained that only a a “small footprint” of federal personnel would need to remain in Minnesota, for now, because the state has backed down and started assisting its immigration law enforcement efforts. “The Twin Cities, and Minnesota in general, are and will continue to be much safer for the communities here because of what we have accomplished under President Trump’s leadership,” he said.
During the same speech, he also noted that the officers would be redeployed, not that Minnesota is under control, to the hotspots that need them more. He said, “Operation Metro Surge is ending. In the next week, we’re going to deploy the officers here on detail back to their home stations or other areas of the country [that] are needed.”
So, he noted, 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.” Presumably, that means that normal ICE and Boder Patrol activity will continue, as during a normal situation, but the surge resources are being removed.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video