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U.S. to Draw Down Immigration Officers in Minneapolis, Homan Says

MINNEAPOLIS—Tom Homan, the White House border czar who was dispatched to reset the Trump administration’s mission in the city, said the federal approach in Minnesota hasn’t been perfect as he announced that he was working on a plan to begin drawing down the law-enforcement presence.

“I do not want to hear that everything that’s been done here is perfect,” Homan said Thursday, in remarks that signaled a shift in tone and tactics from the administration after a surge of law enforcement officers and weeks of clashes with protesters on Minneapolis streets.

Homan said the federal government could do more to make the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book,” and that increased cooperation with state and local officials would allow him to reduce the number of agents operating in the city.

“I have staff from CBP and from ICE working on a drawdown plan,” Homan said, referring to Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had rushed about 3,000 officials to the state in the administration’s largest immigration operation.

He said the drawdown would depend on the ability to work more closely with local authorities. Since arriving in the state on Monday, Homan has met with officials including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The border czar said one meeting, with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, yielded what he described as a new agreement to allow ICE to carry out arrests in the state’s jails of immigrants who are in the country illegally and facing criminal charges but haven’t been tried.

Homan described it as a “very good” meeting. Ellison called it “cordial” in a statement. “While Mr. Homan and I agree no Minnesotan wants actual violent criminals on our streets, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, I firmly expressed to him that right now, Minnesotans’ foremost concern for their and their neighbors’ safety is the overwhelming presence and brutal tactics of federal immigration agents on those streets that are disrupting everyday life in our communities and doing harm to our neighbors,” Ellison said.
Homan signaled an overall shift in strategy, saying federal immigration officials will revert to conducting targeted operations against immigrants in the country illegally, giving priority to those with serious criminal histories. Before his arrival, the federal deployment had been characterized by large groups of roving patrols, sweeping streets looking for people to arrest.

“We’re not surrendering our mission at all. We’re just doing it smarter,” Homan said, adding that large groups of agents on the streets cause “stress in the community.” He echoed other administration officials who have blamed broad hostility toward ICE as endangering officers’ safety and requiring them to send in reinforcements. “The hostile rhetoric must stop,” he said.

Protesters gathered outside the gates of Fort Snelling, a military facility where Homan was briefing reporters. “You’re the bad guys! You’re the bad guys!” one man shouted through a loudspeaker, demanding that agents leave their city.

There were signs the government was pulling back operations elsewhere in the country. Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who is up for re-election, announced that ICE had ceased its heightened operations in the state at her urging.
The Trump administration targeted Minnesota, with what it described as the largest ICE operation in U.S. history, after a large Covid-era welfare-fraud scandal gained national attention. Many of the people convicted have been Somali immigrants.

It remains to be seen how different the operations under Homan will look. The Border Patrol, which was working alongside ICE for the past month under the command of Greg Bovino, has been blamed for some of the most aggressive tactics against immigrants and protesters. But in reality, the two agencies were generally working hand in hand and conducting many of their operations together.

Without mentioning Bovino, who had been a visible presence on Minneapolis streets, Homan appeared to draw a contrast with his approach. “I didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines. You haven’t seen me,” Homan said.

ICE, under the Trump administration, has also been carrying out an unusual strategy of arresting refugees in the state, who were vetted abroad and handpicked by the U.S. government to move to America, where they are on a path to citizenship. Hundreds of refugees were arrested at their homes or summoned to ICE offices where they were arrested and in many cases quickly moved to ICE detention centers out of the state.

That targeting didn’t require street operations, since the government knows where refugees live, and helped the government tout its central goal of going after the state’s Somali-American community.

On Wednesday evening, a federal judge in Minnesota temporarily halted the government’s refugee-targeting operation, and ordered ICE to release all lawfully resettled refugees it had arrested within five days.

Read More : U.S. to Draw Down Immigration Officers in Minneapolis, Homan Says - WSJ
Iran vows to conduct live-fire military drills in critical sea passage — after US announced its own

Iran vowed Thursday to conduct live-fire military drills in one of the world’s most vital sea passages — which sees 20% of the globe’s oil transports — next week, just two days after the US announced it would hold its own military exercises in the region.

The warning from the Islamic Republic was issued to all ships at sea in the Strait of Hormuz area, Jon Gambrell, the Gulf and Iran news director for The Associated Press, wrote on X.

The message claimed that Iran would be conducting “naval shootings” in the Strait on both Sunday and Monday, according to a copy received by the AP.
The order from Tehran comes just two days after the US announced its own plans to hold multi-day military exercises in the Middle East as President Trump’s “massive armada” arrives in the region.

Air Forces Central, the air component of US Central Command (CENTCOM), said the exercises were meant to “demonstrate the ability to deploy, disperse and sustain combat airpower across the US Central Command area of responsibility.”
The exercises would also show off America’s regional partnership and response time as tensions continue to escalate between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic Republic’s brutal crackdown on anti-regime protesters.

The dates and locations of the US military drills have not been made public, and it remains unclear whether they will coincide with exercises by Iran.
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group arrived in the region on Monday as Trump weighs his military options against Tehran.

Along with the aircraft carrier, which is equipped with several fighter jets and nearly 5,000 sailors, the US also deployed a squadron of F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets to the region, the same unit that participated in strikes on Iran in 2024, according to the Washington Post.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black also arrived in the Middle East on Thursday, bringing the total to 10 warships believed to be in the region, according to ship-tracking sites.

Trump said Wednesday that even more military assets are enroute to the region as he demanded Iran agree to negotiate a “fair and equitable deal” regarding its nuclear program.
“Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Read More : Iran vows to conduct live-fire military drills in critical sea passage
Alabama prisons add record number of officers but still well short of court-ordered goal

By Mike Cason | mcason@al.com

Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said Thursday the state is making progress toward fixing a long-time severe shortage of security staff.

Hamm said the ADOC had 473 graduates from the correctional officer training academy in 2025, a record high number.

Hamm said the ADOC has a security staff of about 2,300 employees. He said staffing has improved since substantial pay raises in 2023. The raises boosted starting pay to more than $50,000, with the potential to earn $15,000 to $20,000 more within a couple of years.

Hamm, speaking to legislators, showed photos of Gov. Kay Ivey posing with several classes of correctional officer graduates at the governor’s mansion.
“I think that is a significant indicator for support for the Department of Corrections and these men and women that do the job every day,” Hamm said. “We set a record in 2025. We’ve graduated more correctional officers from the corrections academy than any time in history.”

The shortage of correctional officers has been documented for years.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered the ADOC to increase staffing as part of a lawsuit over mental health and medical care for inmates. The case, filed in 2014, is ongoing.

Hamm said the ADOC still needs to add about 1,800 officers to meet the court order.

“When we came in, staffing was the number one issue,” said Hamm, appointed commissioner by Gov. Kay Ivey four years ago. “It’s still an issue that we work on every day.”

Thompson cited a shortage of correctional officers as an underlying cause when the judge ruled in 2017 that the prison system failed to provide adequate care for inmates with serious mental illnesses.

The Department of Justice also cited the shortage of officers in its December 2020 lawsuit that said Alabama fails to protect inmates from violence and sexual abuse and fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions.

Lawmakers, who are holding hearings to prepare to pass budgets for next year, asked Hamm whether the state’s new 4,000-bed prison under construction in Elmore County, the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex, would allow ADOC to monitor inmates with fewer officers because of technology.

It will be the first prison Alabama has built since the mid-1990s.

“We look at technology all the time to help us be more efficient and do our jobs a little bit more efficiently,” Hamm said. “But the courts are not going to look at just technology in supervising inmates. It’s not going to totally take the place of the human body having interaction with an inmate.”

The new prison, expected to cost about $1.25 billion, is scheduled for completion in October.

It will include facilities for medical and mental health care and for vocational education.
Hamm said about 80% of the housing in the prison will be cells, rather than the dormitory-style layout of Alabama’s older prisons, which can hundreds of inmates in a single, large room.

A documentary released last year, “The Alabama Solution,” brought new attention to the problems in Alabama prisons.

Much of the documentary, which has been nominated for an Academy Award, was gathered from inmates and videos they recorded on contraband cellphones.

Read more : Alabama prisons add record number of officers but still well short of court-ordered goal - al.com