ICE operation shows the difficulty of immigration arrests amid pushback in frigid Minnesota

NBC News was granted exclusive access to accompany Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as they attempted to arrest targets in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — In what’s become an increasingly volatile deployment, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made more than 400 arrests in Minnesota since so-called Operation Metro Surge began this month, an ICE spokesperson said.

NBC News was granted exclusive access to the operation Wednesday in the frigid Twin Cities, where the wind chill dropped well below freezing.

“The frigid temperatures means that people aren’t out and about as much, so it makes it a little tougher,” said Marcos Charles, the acting executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Details of the federal surge, which include around 100 ICE agents from around the country, had been sparse, prompting backlash, protests and threats. ICE requested that NBC News conceal the identities of most of its agents, who said protestors had tried to block in their vehicles at scenes and had aggressively tailed them, even attaching Apple AirTags to their vehicles to track their movements.

Throughout the day, NBC News witnessed multiple protestors going up to unmarked ICE vehicles and blowing whistles at the agents. One agent related an anecdote of an ICE agent’s evading a tailing car by using his military ID to enter a military base.