Walz creates council to document Metro Surge harms as new ICE data shows most arrestees had no criminal record

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has created a council to document the local impacts of ICE’s recent Operation Metro Surge, an enforcement sweep that internal ICE data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project shows resulted in roughly 3,800 arrests across the state, with daily arrests peaking at more than 100 in early January. The ICE dataset and subsequent reporting find that fewer than a quarter of those arrested had any criminal convictions (including misdemeanors and traffic violations), another roughly 13% had pending charges, and more than 60%—about 63% by one count—had no criminal record at all, including no prior immigration convictions or charges. The largest single nationality detained was Ecuadorian: ICE picked up more than 1,000 people from that community in Minnesota, a state where the Ecuadorian population has grown to roughly 15,100 as of 2025 and where asylum filings from Ecuadorians have surged in recent years. The data also show many of the detained were drawn from sizable caseloads—thousands of pending immigration and asylum cases—rather than from a small pool of known, previously convicted criminals.

Walz and supporters frame the council as a way to build a public record of harms—family separations, economic disruption and even deaths—that the governor says should not be forgotten. Local reporting and supplemental data point to concrete community effects: enforcement actions have contributed to labor shortages in construction, delaying new-home closings by as much as two months and worsening housing supply problems at a time when Minnesota’s foreign‑born population has been a major driver of labor-force growth. The move has drawn sharp partisan pushback. Conservative outlets and commentators have criticized the council as one‑sided or politically motivated—Alpha News emphasized Walz’s stated aim to document “the Truth” about enforcement and framed the council as part of pushback against the federal operation—while social media and analysts traded competing takes, from immigration experts highlighting that roughly two‑thirds of arrestees had no criminal record to conservative voices pointing to nearly 1,000 people with prior convictions removed during the surge. Journalistic threads and data projects have also flagged that a significant share of arrests may have been “collateral,” sweeping up people who were not the intended targets.

The emerging picture represents a notable narrative shift from early public accounts that stressed removals of dangerous criminals. Administration officials initially framed the Metro Surge as focused on public‑safety threats; the new disclosures from ICE’s own files—publicized by outlets drawing on litigation‑obtained data and data groups such as the Deportation Data Project—have complicated that framing by showing the majority of those detained had no prior criminal record. That reporting, pushed by local outlets and data journalists, has in turn prompted state‑level responses like Walz’s council designed to document community harms and shape public memory. Political analysts have long cautioned that immigration surges are often noisy but not always decisive for voters; however, they also note that high‑visibility enforcement actions that cause family separation or visible local disruptions can generate durable backlash—a dynamic that helps explain why Minnesota’s governor would move to create an official record of impacts.