CHICAGO — Major League Baseball will reveal its schedule for the 2026 this week, but there’s already one big highlight on the Twins’ schedule.

The Twins have been tapped to play in the Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, an industry source confirmed, hosting the Philadelphia Phillies in a game is expected to take place in August. The game will be played at the site which the 1989 Kevin Costner baseball classic was filmed, about four hours south of the Twin Cities.

It will be the third major league game played in Iowa, following the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees playing among the cornfields in 2021 and the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds playing there the next year. The temporary stadium that those two games were played at held around 7,800 fans. Since then, a massive undertaking has been underway expand the site, add youth fields and other amenities and construct a permanent stadium, which is expected to have a smaller capacity.

The first Field of Dreams game turned out to be one of the more memorable games in Major League Baseball history, starting with Costner emerging from the cornfields and walking onto the field of play before the White Sox and Yankees followed. It ended with the Yankees scoring four runs in the ninth inning before Tim Anderson hit a walk-off home run that disappeared into the corn stalks.

This will be the first regular-season destination game that the Twins have played in since they traveled to Puerto Rico in 2018. They also played a spring training game in the Dominican Republic in 2020.

Topa calls his pitch

Watch Justin Topa’s next relief outing carefully and you’ll see him twist before each pitch, hitting a button on his PitchCom device. With Erasmo Ramírez designated for assignment on Sunday to make space on the active roster for Taj Bradley, Topa is the Twins’ lone pitcher who is calling his own pitches.

Topa started doing it last month, at the suggestion of his coaches, and the reasons are twofold.

One, he often felt that if he shook off a catcher’s call, he’d wind up with very little time left on the pitch clock and so calling his own pitch immediately and then adjusting as necessary makes for “less anxiety,” with the pitch clock. And two, it allows him to take ownership of how he’s going to attack hitters and be aggressive immediately.

“(It) kind of gives us a piece of mind … in the sense of not feeling rushed and boom, right away having that conviction of, ‘OK, this is what I want to throw in a situation,’ and then … if (Ryan Jeffers) or (Christian Vázquez) or if Mickey (Gasper’s) back there, if they’ve seen something different, we can play off of that.”

Briefly

Joe Ryan will take the ball on Monday when the Twins head to Toronto opposite three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer. … Byron Buxton played in his 98th game of the season Sunday. He is on track to reach game 100 in Toronto, which would be the first time in his career that he’s played in 100 or more games in consecutive seasons. … Buxton is also just one stolen base away from becoming a member of the 20 home run/20 stolen base club, something which he has yet to accomplish in his career. … The Twins have not named a starter for Wednesday in Toronto but Simeon Woods Richardson joined the team in Chicago and could be in line to come off the injured list and start that game.

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President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations may be coming closer to reality. Until June, deportations had lagged behind immigration arrests and detentions. By the first week of August, deportations reached nearly 1,500 people per day, according to the latest data, a pace not seen since the Obama administration.

With an infusion of cash from Trump’s domestic policy bill signed in July — an additional $76 billion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can spend over a little more than four years — the agency appears poised to scale its operations even further.

At least 180,000 people have been deported by ICE under Trump so far. At the current higher pace, the agency is on track to deport more than 400,000 people in his first year in office, well more than the 271,000 people ICE removed in the year ending in September but still short of the administration’s stated goal of 1 million deportations a year.

ICE now uses about a dozen charter planes every day to conduct deportations and move detainees around the country, almost twice as many as in January, according to data collected by Tom Cartwright, an immigration activist who tracks ICE flights. In May, ICE modified its contract with CSI Aviation, its primary air charter company, to increase the number of flights per week. It has also resumed using a limited number of military planes.

ICE’s expanded operations have drawn nationwide protests, fierce backlash and an endless series of legal challenges. But officials have pressed forward with their aggressive tactics.

Not Just Criminals

Trump may be catching up to President Barack Obama, whom immigrant activists called the “deporter in chief,” but the nature of Trump’s immigration enforcement has been very different. The hundreds of thousands of people removed under Obama were mostly recent border-crossers, and ICE focused its arrests in the interior of the country on criminals.

In late May, Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and a top immigration policy adviser, ordered ICE leaders to escalate arrests across the board, even if it meant broadening its focus beyond immigrants with a criminal record.

Since then, almost all of the increase in arrests has been of people without prior criminal convictions. Immigration arrests of people with a past violent criminal conviction increased to about 1,900 in June from about 1,100 in December. At the same time, arrests overall tripled to more than 28,000 and arrests of people with no past conviction or charges increased by almost 20 times.

But the summer surge experienced in much of the country did not last. Arrests peaked at an average of almost 1,200 per day in early June, but the pace has since fallen back to levels seen in April.

It is unclear why arrests dropped, but in Los Angeles, high-profile street arrests and raids triggered a backlash that led to protests and the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines.

In response to a lawsuit accusing ICE of illegal racial profiling, a federal court issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from arresting someone based on their race or ethnicity and presence at a certain location. The Trump administration has appealed the order.

Between the start of the surge and the court order, ICE arrested more than 2,000 immigrants in the Los Angeles area who had no criminal records. A majority were from Mexico or Guatemala.

New York City also saw a spike in arrests of non-criminals this summer, many at immigration court and ICE check-ins, tactics that prompted their own backlash and lawsuit.

New Detention Centers

With 60,000 people now in custody, the Trump administration has stretched the capacity of the immigrant detention system, arresting more people and releasing far fewer on bond, parole or supervised release.

That’s a deliberate tactic to boost deportations, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, because people held in detention are more likely to have their cases end with a removal order and are also more likely to abandon their cases and agree to be deported.

The Laken Riley Act also expanded the types of immigrants whom ICE is required to keep in detention to include many who have been accused of low-level crimes, like shoplifting.

To hold them all, ICE has had to seek more and more detention space. In addition to holding more people at existing facilities, ICE has added at least 50 new detention centers since Trump took office Jan. 20. At the end of July, these facilities held more than 6,000 people.

Among the detention centers are Delaney Hall, a private facility run by the Geo Group in Newark, New Jersey; a tent facility in El Paso, Texas, that was formerly used by the U.S. Border Patrol; the Guantánamo Bay naval base; a reopened family detention center in Dilley, Texas; federal prisons in Atlanta, New York City, Miami and Philadelphia, and a large number of state and local jails and prisons.

More Funding

Because deporting people who are in the country unlawfully is logistically challenging, ICE will likely need to hire more agents not only to arrest people but also to ensure due process, said Blas Nuñez-Neto, who was a homeland security adviser to President Joe Biden. The agency will also need to procure more detention space to hold people for several weeks while their removal is arranged, he said, and contract for more aircraft for removal flights.

Flush with new money on top of its 2025 budget of $10 billion, ICE is preparing to spend to address each of those chokepoints. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, said the new funding would go toward hiring 10,000 ICE agents and adding 80,000 new detention beds. Some $45 billion is designated for expanding detention, and $14 billion is set aside for transporting people out of the country.

ICE also intends to expand detention partnerships with state and local governments, like the one for the facility Florida has named “Alligator Alcatraz,” McLaughlin said.

—

About the Data

Data comes from Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports and data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of immigration enforcement data at the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

Arrests in charts are administrative arrests — arrests in which ICE is seeking to deport rather than criminally prosecute the arrestees — that were conducted by the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division and that led to a book-in to detention. The charts do not include criminal arrests, arrests by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division or arrests by Customs and Border Protection.

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Deportations are removals and enforcement returns conducted by ICE.

For the chart of arrests by field office, the Los Angeles field office covers Los Angeles County and surrounding counties from San Luis Obispo to Riverside counties. The New York City field office covers the five boroughs, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. The Boston field office covers all six New England states. The Miami field office covers Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Chicago field office covers Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas and Wisconsin. The San Antonio field office covers central Texas spanning from near Del Rio to Austin.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

CHICAGO — Taj Bradley spent the first couple innings of his Twins’ debut trying to find the strike zone, going fastball-heavy as he worked to establish command of all of his pitches. By the time he was doing so consistently, the game was well out of hand.

Seven runs scored in the first two innings of Bradley’s Twins debut, something which was insurmountable on a day in which the Twins’ offense could not push any runs across. The Twins fell 8-0 to the Chicago White Sox at Rate Field, dropping the series to the only team in the American League with a record worse than their own.

“I had a lot of nerves in the first inning, but it was also a little frustration with the weak contact, the singles and then not being able to find the zone early on,” Bradley said. “I think the later I got into the game, I just felt more comfortable and I was able to find the zone.”

The White Sox (47-83) began the game with four straight singles, part of a five-hit inning that ended with them scoring three runs. His second inning wasn’t much better, surrendering four runs, including two on a blast to shortstop Colson Montgomery, who hit a grand slam a day earlier.

But he settled in nicely after that, sending the final 10 batters he faced down in order in what turned into a five-inning start.

“If you’re going to start out not throwing the way you want but then you find it, it gives you something to look towards and to be somewhat pleased about,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Overall, obviously the beginning of the outing, they plated some runs. … It clearly wasn’t all ideal but it was actually encouraging by the end of the outing.”

The Twins (59-71) acquired Bradley at the trade deadline in a deal for reliever Griffin Jax and while he’s had plenty of major league experience over the past three seasons, the Twins sent him to Triple-A to settle into his new organization before calling him up.

His debut comes a day after that of Mick Abel, another trade deadline and while the results for either might not have gone to plan, the Twins got a good look at two starters whom they expect to be important for them moving forward.

“Both of them settled down really well and ended up throwing pretty good,” catcher Ryan Jeffer said. “They both have electric stuff.”

While the Twins did see some things to like from Bradley, he received no offensive backing behind him. Though the Twins only went down 1-2-3 twice in the game and had runners on base nearly all day, they couldn’t convert on their opportunities. They left nine runners on base and finished the day 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position as they dropped the series finale in Chicago.

“I don’t think it’s possible to go that long with that many base runners in scoring position and out there and not bring any home,” Baldelli said. “We had guys on second base, guys on third base and couldn’t find a way to shoot one through and find some grass and get rolling.”

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The Minnesota high school football season kicks off Thursday and Friday across the metro. Here’s a look at the Metro South subdistrict, with more team-by-team previews to come throughout the week.

Eagan

2024 record: 6-4 (lost in second round of Class 6A playoffs)

Returning starters: 6 on offense, 2 on defense

Impact returnees: Defensive back Grady Recer is a Minnesota-Duluth commit who had four interceptions last season, and will play some in the offensive backfield, as well. Gage Halvorson averaged nearly 10 yards per carry as a sophomore, and reportedly keeps getting faster.

Shoutout to a lineman: Peyton Grandbois and Marshall Bierly form a tandem of two-year starters up front. Coach Nick Johnson said  “they are both bulldogs and love the grind of run blocking. They are machines!”

Schedule: vs. Shakopee, at Prior Lake, vs. Eastview, at Lakeville North, at Lakeville South, vs. Farmington, vs. Rosemount, at Rogers

The skinny: Eagan did graduate a bevy of athletes from last year’s breakthrough team and will trot out a heavy dose of juniors this fall. But the Wildcats return four offensive linemen from 2024 – Grandvois, Bierly, Roman Stok and Joe Noreen – and Johnson is excited for the progress to come as the fall progresses.

“The kids we have love to work,” he said.

Farmington

2024 record: 5-4 (lost in first round of Class 6A playoffs)

Returning starters: 5 on offense, 6 on defense

Impact returnees: After leading the team in tackles in 2024 at inside linebacker, Chris Rehak is expected to get a heavy load at running back this fall. Linebacker Max Blandin is a versatile field patrol who defends the run and pass well.

Shoutout to a lineman: Tigers coach Jon Pieper calls returning junior offensive tackle Rocco Fulk “nasty and aggressive.”

Schedule: vs. Eastview, at Lakeville North, at White Bear Lake, vs. Lakeville South, vs. Rosemount, at Eagan, vs. Shakopee, at Prior Lake

The skinny: The Tigers defense figures to be stout, with Division-2 prospects littered across the field in defensive backs Daniel Sather and Logan Petsinger, defensive end Hank VonBank and Blandin at linebacker.

Since graduated dual-threat quarterback Jonah Ask carried the offense last year, but Cade Boyles will take the snaps this fall and guide an offense that could feature a strong rushing attack.

Lakeville North

2024 record: 9-2 (lost in Class 6A state quarterfinals)

Returning starters: 6 on offense, 6 on defense

Impact returnees: Defensive lineman Roman Johnson and offensive lineman Carter Crawford, a four-year starter, are both Minnesota-Duluth commits.

Shoutout to a lineman: Riley Forar is a defensive lineman who Panters coach Brian Vossen noted is “built like a strong safety.” Added Vossen: “He is fast, tough and relentless to the ball.  He is really difficult to block and he pursues like a madman.”

Schedule: at Blaine, vs. Farmington, at Lakeville South, vs. Eagan, vs. Prior Lake, at Rosemount, vs. Champlin Park, at Shakopee

The skinny: Vossen said this year’s group has frequently been overshadowed by the classes above it, but said this crew of players is “humble and they are tight as a unit.  They are hungry and they want to be great.”

Lakeville North was riddled with injuries last fall, but receiver Pierce Buckley and tight end Blake Hendrickson are back in action. The Panthers return three offensive linemen from a year ago, and look for Pete Krolak to be a playmaker in the secondary.

Lakeville South

2024 record: 6-4 (lost in second round of Class 6A playoffs)

Returning starters: 6 on offense, 4 on defense

Impact returnees: Tight end Henry Hauge is an Air Force commit who’s critical to the Cougars rushing attack, and also a pass catching option. Josh Bergan and Kaleb Williams are impact defensive linemen who will be back up front.

Shoutout to a lineman: Cougars coach Ben Burk called offensive lineman Asher Collins “fast, physical and fearless.”

Schedule: vs. Mounds View, at Shakopee, vs. Lakeville North, at Farmington, vs. Eagan, at Edina, vs. Prior Lake, at Rosemount

The skinny: Lakeville South will again deploy a number of running backs behind their strong blocking scheme. Nick Swanson will see an increased carry load, but also look out for Griffen Dean.

Hauge and Collins key much of the run blocking, but junior Joseph Hamer is a 6-foot-7, 345-pound tackle already armed with high-major Division-I offers.

Lakeville South’s defensive front is equally scary with Bergan, Williams, Jaymel Kalimu and Oscar Anaya.

Prior Lake

2024 record: 5-5 (lost in second round of Class 6A playoffs

Returning starters: Not known

Impact returnees: Receiver Aiden Mbinda was the team’s leading receiver in 2024. Linebacker Dylan Hawley led the team in tackles last year, with 86.

Shoutout to a lineman: Iowa State commit Ethan Beckman is one of the top offensive linemen in the state.

Schedule: at Forest Lake, vs. Eagan, at Rosemount, vs. Minnetonka, at Lakeville North, vs. Shakopee, at Lakeville South, vs. Farmington

The skinny: Prior Lake has to replace its offensive backfield, but there’s enough returning talent up front and defensively to surmise the Lakers will again be a tough out.

Rosemount

2024 record: 1-8 (lost in first round of Class 6A playoffs)

Returning starters: 5 on offense, 5 on defense.

Impact returnees: Linebacker Max Jones is a captain who led the Irish in tackles in 2024. Running back Jakai Hollie was Rosemount’s leading rusher last fall.

Shoutout to a lineman: Brady Struble is a three-year starter who’s played a different position each season – at center as a sophomore, at tackle as a junior and now at guard as a senior.

Schedule: vs. Centennial, at Eastview, vs. Prior Lake, at Shakopee, at Farmington, vs. Lakeville North, at Eagan, vs. Lakeville South

The skinny: Rosemount may have been the best one-win team in recent history last fall, with nearly all of their losses coming in competitive fashion.

They return experienced players at all levels of the offense and defense, with receiver Mayon Dixon and running back Savion Severson expected to deliver big production this fall.

The Irish are also boosted by Bennett Simmering, a talented kicker and punter.

Irish coach Jeff Erdmann said this year’s team has exuded a “great vibe and consistent work ethic.”

Shakopee

2024 record: 10-2 (lost in Class 6A state semifinals)

Returning starters: 2 on offense, 4 on defense

Impact returnees: Junior safety Blake Betton is one of the top recruits in the state, with offers from the likes of Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan. Judah Forsberg ran for north of 500 yards last season while also handling quarterback duties.

Shoutout to a lineman: Defensive lineman Nehemiah Ombati has offers from South Dakota State and North Dakota.

Schedule: at Eagan, vs. Lakeville South, at Stillwater, vs. Rosemount, vs. Osseo, at Prior Lake, at Farmington, vs. Lakeville North

The skinny: Shakopee has a number of fresh faces after graduating a large chunk from last year’s title contender, but the Sabers are restocked with athletes and gamebreakers. Running backs Joseph Taye, Carson Turner and Chris Peris and receiver Quinn Schriever all have explosive possibilities, while Ombati and linebacker Blake Loughlin are poised for potential breakouts. Loughlin will be aided by returning linebackers such as Andrew McGee and Mike Doering.

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