The data was released by the Deportation Data Project through a FOIA lawsuit.

MINNEAPOLIS — Thousands of federal agents descended on Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. A major reason why they were here in the first place was to deport undocumented Somali immigrants, after the president called the Minnesota Somali community “garbage” in December.

“We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. I don’t want them in our country to be honest with you,” Trump said in December 2025. 

New data released by the Deportation Data Project shows that between Dec. 1, 2025 – March 10, 2026, less than 3% of people who were arrested by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge were Somali.

“This is what was expected, majority of Somali Americans are U.S. citizens, majority of Somali Americans have legal status here,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations Jaylani Hussein said. “We knew and we’ve said this in many different ways that this operation, while it targeted Somali Americans, was really going to focus on the larger Latin American population.”

According to our news partner MPR, the majority of people arrested were Latin American. Based on the country of origin, Ecuador had the highest number of arrests at 1,026, Mexico had 885 arrests, and Somalia had 106 arrests.

The project obtained this information through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and released it on March 30. The data is likely incomplete because ICE omitted detention stints in hospitals and medical centers, and there are duplicate arrests.

In February, the Department of Homeland Security announced they had arrested more than 4,000 people who they called the “worst of the worst.” MPR reports that the number of arrests was more than 3,700 and less than a quarter of them had a criminal conviction on their record.

“However, what this data does not show is the violation of U.S. citizens who were detained and many who were questioned, so there is a lot more Somali Americans that were stopped and questioned and verified that they were U.S. citizens that this data does not include,” Hussein said.

Hussein said he would like to see Minnesota lead efforts to collect this data. He said he believes it needs to be documented so future administrations are held to a higher standard in their operations.

He said he thinks the number of federal agents grew because the federal government wasn’t deporting as many Somali people as they anticipated.

“The increase of the ICE surge was in result because they could not produce Somali Americans being deported. Their goals were to deport as many Somali Americans, but the results, week one, week two, week three, was, it wasn’t happening, and so they increased it thinking the more officers they had on the ground, the more likely they’ll capture more people and then that didn’t happen, and they realized they even needed more,” he said.