Cynthia Tu

On Martin Luther King Day, immigration agents detained a 5-year-old Venezuelan boy and his mother in a Walmart parking lot in Mankato. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents demanded the mother reveal the location of a man named Mohammed, whom she did not know. They then handcuffed and shackled her and drove her around for hours with her kindergarten son. By the next day, both had been sent to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in south Texas.

Many Minnesotans were transferred out of state quickly, sometimes within hours of their arrest, several local immigration attorneys told Sahan Journal. Local attorneys also said the majority of their clients who were transferred out of state were sent to El Paso, Texas, and many remain there due to various factors, including limited access to legal help and judges not moving cases forward. The data on Minnesota detainees transported to Texas counts detentions between Dec.

Approximately 3,400 people detained by federal immigration agents in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge were transferred to detention centers in Texas; about 530 of those detainees still remain there as of early March, according to Sahan Journal’s analysis of ICE data.