Border czar Tom Homan had a simple message for Minnesota's Democratic leaders after they demanded federal money to offset the impact of immigration enforcement in their state: say thank you.
Appearing Sunday on "Fox & Friends Weekend," Homan dismissed calls from Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for financial reimbursement following the conclusion of Operation Metro Surge. The operation, which deployed 700 federal immigration enforcement personnel to the state, resulted in over 4,000 arrests — including 14 illegal immigrants with homicide convictions and 87 with sexual assault convictions, mostly against children.
Homan wasn't interested in writing checks. He was interested in receipts.
"Their county jails weren't working with us across the state. So, you know what? We fixed it. They ought to be saying thank you. The state's safer because of that."
Frey stepped to a podium and did what Democratic mayors do when federal law enforcement operates in their cities — he asked for money. The Minneapolis mayor claimed his city sustained "$203 million in economic impact in just January alone" and called on Washington to cover the tab, Fox News reported.
"And so we're calling on the federal government to fully step up, to provide direct financial assistance to our city."
No methodology. No study. No independent verification. Just a number — $203 million — launched into a press conference without explanation of how it was calculated or what it actually measured.
Walz followed with his own proposal: a $10 million emergency relief package offering forgivable loans ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 for small businesses that could demonstrate "substantial revenue loss" during unspecified dates tied to Operation Metro Surge. His framing was blunt. He wanted the federal government "to pay for what they broke."
Homan had a different inventory of broken things — and none of them were storefronts.
"The border — last four years, over 10 million illegal immigrants crossed that border. That was broken. Where were they then? Did Gov. Walz speak out against that, with the overdose deaths and the sex trafficking and... terrorists? No."
That's the contradiction that Minnesota's leaders cannot escape. For four years, the state functioned as what Homan called a "sanctuary state," refusing cooperation between county jails and ICE. Walz said nothing. Frey said nothing. The policies that drew illegal immigrants to Minneapolis — the refusal to cooperate with federal enforcement, the deliberate shielding of people from deportation proceedings — those were choices made in St. Paul and City Hall, not Washington.
Now that the federal government showed up to do what state and local leaders refused to do, those same leaders want to send an invoice.
"A lot of things were broken, but it wasn't because of Trump administration."
Consider what Operation Metro Surge actually pulled off. Over 4,000 arrests. Fourteen people walking the streets of Minnesota with homicide convictions — removed. Eighty-seven convicted of sexual assault, most of them against children — removed. A linked report attributed to Emmer noted that the operation located 3,000 missing migrant children in Minneapolis alone.
These are not abstract enforcement statistics. These are people who should never have been in Minnesota in the first place, living in communities that Democratic leaders insisted they were protecting by refusing to cooperate with ICE.
Protecting whom, exactly?
Not the children targeted by the 87 convicted sex offenders. Not the families of those murdered by the 14 with homicide convictions. Not the 3,000 missing children whose whereabouts no one in the state government seemed particularly urgent about locating.
Walz wants $10 million for business loans. The real cost of his sanctuary policies — measured in lives destroyed, children exploited, communities terrorized by criminals who should have been deported years ago — dwarfs any loan program he could design.
The playbook is now familiar enough to diagram. A Democratic city or state refuses to cooperate with immigration enforcement. Illegal immigrants — including those with serious criminal records — settle in, knowing local authorities won't hand them over. The federal government eventually intervenes because the local government won't. And then the local leaders who created the problem demand compensation for the disruption caused by solving it.
It's an insurance scam dressed as governance. Light the fire, then bill the fire department.
Frey's $203 million figure is doing a lot of work without much support. That's a staggering claim for a single month's impact, and the mayor offered no source, no breakdown, and no independent analysis to back it. In a functioning media environment, that number would face immediate scrutiny. Instead, it becomes a headline, a talking point, and eventually a funding request — all before anyone asks whether it's real.
As of February 4, the 700 federal immigration enforcement personnel deployed to Minnesota began their withdrawal as Operation Metro Surge wound down. The mission, by Homan's account, accomplished what it set out to do — enforce the law in a state whose leaders had spent years refusing to.
Walz and Frey now face a choice. They can continue demanding reimbursement for an operation that removed convicted murderers and child predators from their communities. They can keep framing law enforcement as an economic disruption. They can treat the arrest of dangerous criminals as something that happened to Minnesota rather than for it.
Or they can do what Homan suggested.
They won't. But the 4,000 arrests speak for themselves — and so does the silence that preceded them.
