Small Town America is where the Miller sweeps are now going….
President Trump may be ending the surge of immigration agents in the Twin Cities, but his mass deportation effort has already extended well past large, liberal cities like Minneapolis, to small communities where the national spotlight does not exist but the impact can be at least as acute.
In places like Cornelius, Ore., Danbury, Conn., Biddeford, Maine, and Coon Rapids, Minn., where moderation, not partisanship, might predominate, the arrival of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and the more aggressive tactics ICE officers often use — have been jarring. In small towns, resources may already stretched, and even a single incident can shatter the tranquillity of neighborhoods unaccustomed to turmoil.
ICE is proud of its reach. The agency is using “data-driven intelligence” to deploy its agents, the agency said in an email, declining to identify a spokesman. It added, “ICE operates everywhere — rural, urban, and suburban.”
In Coon Rapids, an exurb about 15 miles from downtown Minneapolis, Bill Carlson recently watched federal agents as they waited across the street for hours to take away a Vietnamese family he called his neighbors.
“There is a fear here,” he said. “I didn’t think anything like this would happen in America, let alone Coon Rapids.”
Last month, ICE “surge teams” from Philadelphia were sent into West Virginia, hitting the towns of Martinsburg, Moorefield, Morgantown, Beckley, Huntington and Charleston. None of those places have more than 50,000 residents and Moorefield has less than 3,000. Federal officials boasted of arresting more than 650undocumented immigrants.
At a coffee shop in Hillsboro, Ore., deputies and local police in Washington County responded in October to multiple 911 calls that reported 10 armed men wearing masks who approached a car filled with high school students with weapons drawn in a crowded drive-through lane. Only after a tense encounter — and after the armed men got in their van and left — did the local officers understand they’d been in a standoff with federal immigration agents….
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Sheriff Massey [Washington County , Oregon] said she and other law enforcement leaders have met with regional and national officials from the Department of Homeland Security to ask for what they consider basic changes in how ICE operates — including wearing visible badges identifying themselves as federal officers and notifying local police before making arrests in public places.
“We’ve talked a lot,” she said. “Nothing has changed.”…
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Rights of people detained by ICE in Minnesota…
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration has been violating the rights of people detained by ICE in Minnesota, saying the agency had stashed them in an ill-equipped, overcrowded facility without access to attorneys.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel said it appeared the Trump administration had surged law enforcement into the Twin Cities without accounting for “the constitutional rights of its civil detainees” held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The government suggests—with minimal explanation and even less evidence—that doing so would result in ‘chaos,’” wrote Brasel, an appointee of President Donald Trump. “The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights.”
The judge ordered the administration to dramatically revamp conditions in the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building, and provide routine and unmonitored phone access to detainees, including the chance to alert attorneys and family members at least one hour before being transferred out of state.
The ruling came just hours after the White House announced an end to its recent immigration crackdown, which saw as many as 3,000 federal agents flood the Minneapolis region to conduct mass deportation operations.
Brasel repeatedly noted that prior to launching Operation Metro Surge, immigration officials had allowed attorneys to meet in person with detainees at the Whipple Building, on the grounds of Fort Snelling, southeast of Minneapolis. Such visits were discontinued once the operation began, the judge said….
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ICE wants to spend Tens of BILLION’s for Warehousing migrants in Detenion Centers….
ICE plans to buy and convert 16 buildings across the country to serve as regional processing centers, each holding 1,000 to 1,500 immigrant detainees at a time, according to one of the documents, an overview of the detention plan. Another eight large-scale detention centers will hold 7,000 to 10,000 detainees at a time, and serve as “the primary locations” for international removals….
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The documents offer the most complete picture to date of the Trump administration’s plan to overhaul immigrant detention using buildings that were originally designed for industrial purposes — an expansive effort aimed at boosting ICE’s ability to arrest more immigrants and deport them faster. Rather than moving people around the country to any detention center with available beds, the new system of warehouses is designed to funnel them into a series of large-scale holding centers where they will await deportation, ICE documents show.
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The Post previously reported that some warehouses are expected to accept detainees as soon as April. ICE appears to have given multiple deadlines for when it expects the centers to be operational, according to the overview document. The agency will “fully implement a new detention model” by Sept. 30 and will “activate” all facilities by Nov. 30….
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In several of the towns targeted for the project, local officials have said their water and sewer infrastructure would not be sufficient for a new facility holding thousands of people. For example, in Social Circle, Georgia, a town with a population of 5,000, the town is permitted to pump up to 1 million gallons of water per day, and for much of the year, its peak usage is already above 800,000 gallons, according to data the city’s manager shared with The Post….
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The federal government also plans to take ownership of 10 existing detention centers where ICE currently operates in buildings owned by private contractors or local governments, the overview document said, without providing more detail.
These facilities, combined with the new warehouses, would accommodate a total of 92,600 detainees at a time, the documents said….
Note….
Warehousing….
This HAS to be strictly Stephen Miller’s dream of exporting the 10 Million migrants in this country, most here NOT criminals….
The above linked piece points to third party efforts to purchase the building’s to ready people for exporting….
The Local and State government’s seem to be NOT to be notified of the moves in their area’s…
Finally?
Without local interactions and the rush to do this?
How are the local and state resources, energy and utilities need to support these warehouse’s gonna work?
In the cases of local targeted seizures of migrants?
How soon will there be a shoot out at night between masked , armed men and the local cops who might not have been notified on the Fed’s presence ?
The ICE/CBP ‘surge’ Operation in Minnesota HAS left in its wake the Federal Law Enforcement operation in shamble’s….overcrowded , over burdened, over whelmed and low on staff and frustrating …
More 2/13/2026 Update….
Zohran Mamdani and Liberal Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey Meet at City Hall, Announce a ‘Coalition of Mayors’ To Stand Up to Trump
Amid the immigration wind-down in Minneapolis, Frey eschews homeland security testimony to meet with Mamdani.
Journalist Don Lemon pleads not guilty to civil rights charges in Minnesota church protest
Supporters who gathered outside the courthouse in St. Paul chanted “Pam Bondi has got to go” and “Protect the press.”
Follow Up on ICE warehousing efforts….
SEVEN MONTHS AGO, the Florida detention center nicknamed, with equal parts triumphalism and cruelty, “Alligator Alcatraz” was all the rage. The Department of Homeland Security was hailing the abominable new prison as the first of many and proudly announcing a “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana and a “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska. But now the alliteratively named detention centers are facing a massive backlash, because it turns out that the public cares much more about rampant child abuse than a catchy name…
More….