By Maria Tsvetkova and Jonathan Allen
FORT SNELLING, Minnesota, Feb 4 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will reduce the number of federal immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota by 700, although about 2,000 agents will remain on the ground, White House border czar Tom Homan announced on Wednesday.
Trump has deployed thousands of armed immigration enforcement agents in and around Minneapolis this year to detain and deport migrants, drawing protests.
Homan said he was partially drawing down the deployment because he was seeing “unprecedented” cooperation from Minnesota’s elected sheriffs who run county jails.
“Let me be clear, President Trump fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country,” Homan said at a news conference. “President Trump made a promise. And we have not directed otherwise.”
Trump, a Republican, and his senior officials have said many migrants must be deported, blaming them, often in sweeping terms, for financial fraud and violent crimes.
Minnesota, which is governed by Democrats, has sued the Trump administration over the surge, which has sparked weeks of protests that led to the killings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.
Homan wants more jails in Minnesota to allow immigration agents to transfer custody of detained migrants. Some already do. Others, including the main jail in Minneapolis, do not cooperate. Minneapolis and some other cities prohibit their employees, including police, from asking people about their citizenship or cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, saying it threatens public safety if migrants who are victims of or witnesses to crime are afraid to come forward.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Jonathan Allen in New York, additiona reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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