The Minnesota Department of Corrections contacted all county jails in the state Monday to ask how many people in custody had immigration detention holds. The number totaled 94, Corrections Commissioners Paul Schnell said Thursday.
Combined with the 207 people with immigration holds in Minnesota prisons, the number is about 1,000 less than U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been saying, Schnell pointed out.
With a federal immigration enforcement surge underway in Minnesota, DHS has repeatedly said 1,360 people in the state have detention holds and, in response to Pioneer Press questions Thursday, they repeated those numbers:
“As DHS stated, across the state of Minnesota nearly 470 criminal illegal aliens including violent criminal illegal aliens have been RELEASED into communities,” a DHS spokesperson said. “We have more than 1,360 active detainers on illegal aliens in the custody across all jurisdictions in Minnesota. We are once again calling on Governor Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians to commit to honoring all ICE detainers. Instead, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey are actively encouraging an organized resistance to ICE and federal law enforcement officers.”
Schnell said DOC’s count is “nowhere close” to DHS’ 1,360 figure.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Thursday that “the 1,300 number is statewide in counties that we have lodged.”
“They may not have record of it if they don’t file them because they don’t honor them. They have no reason to keep them,” said Marcos Charles, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations executive associate director.
‘Sheriffs want to help’
ICE can pick up people with detainers from the state’s Corrections Department, said Charles, who told reporters that federal immigration officials are now “opening up dialogue” with some Minnesota counties to see if they will honor their detainers as well.
“The governor should talk to the counties and let them honor our detainers. Many of these sheriffs want to help us,” he said.
But Schnell said Charles’ statement “that the governor controls the actions of county jails is patently false.”
State law says local law enforcement cannot hold people in custody in county jails solely based on civil immigration detainer requests from ICE, according to a legal opinion last year from Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
“Civil liability in this area can be substantial,” the opinion noted and pointed to two lawsuits in Minnesota, one in which a person was awarded $30,000 in damages and more than $248,000 in attorney fees and another settled for $200,000.
The “vast majority of sheriffs across the state do provide notification to ICE” of people who have immigration holds, Schnell said.
When a person is arrested and booked into a county jail, ICE works to determine a person’s legal status, Schnell said. “In the meantime, the person can be seen by the court, could be subject to a bail release, released on their personal recognizance … and there is nothing that the jail can do to hold custody of that person, to wait for ICE, to pick them up,” Schnell added.
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At the Dakota County jail, ICE placed roughly 80 detainers last year, said Sheriff Joe Leko. “Every single one, ICE was notified of their release and I can recall dozens and dozens of times of agents waiting there” to pick them up, he said.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said his jail occasionally receives judicial arrest warrants that include a complaint signed by a deportation officer and a judge, which are different matters than immigration detainers. For example, a person currently in custody at the Ramsey County jail has such a warrant and is being held; the U.S. Marshals Service is scheduled to pick him up.
Jail rosters are public information. Two immigration officers were in the Ramsey County jail last week to interview people who may be in the U.S. illegally, Fletcher said. He said he hasn’t had reports of people being arrested by ICE as they left the jail.
The majority of people in the Ramsey County jail are “repeat offenders that are citizens,” Fletcher added.
County boards can enter into agreements with ICE, according to another advisory opinion from Ellison. Seven of Minnesota’s 87 counties have agreements with ICE. They are Cass, Crow Wing, Freeborn, Itasca, Kandiyohi, Mille Lacs and Sherburne counties, according to ICE.
Released or handed over?
Federal agents search for an address along Thomas Avenue near Avon Street in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Schnell said Thursday that DHS has insinuated that the feds arrested people who were released into the community when it was a matter of transferring them from prison into ICE custody.
He highlighted a Jan. 12 case.
DOC notified ICE when two men — Meng Khong Yang and Joshua Fornoh — were in prison, in accordance with state law, Schnell said. ICE issued detainers for both men.
Schnell showed surveillance video from the sallyport at the Lino Lakes prison on Jan. 12, which he said showed this transfer of Yang and Fornoh to ICE.
“As is the case for every single release where there is an ICE detainer in place, we contacted them weeks before the individuals reached the end of their prison term … and we coordinated pickup arrangements with them,” Schnell said.
The next day, DHS included Yang and Fornoh in a press release that listed “criminal illegal aliens arrested yesterday during Operation Metro Surge.”
Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the release: “Minnesota’s sanctuary politicians have chosen to side with criminal illegal aliens and ignored their American victims. Just yesterday our law enforcement arrested rapists, armed robbers, and drug traffickers. We are doing what Governor Walz and Mayor Frey REFUSED to do — make Minnesota safe again.”
But Schnell emphasized that when it came to Yang and Fornoh, “their custody was transferred from the DOC directly to (ICE). They were not picked up in the community, as is implied.”
Requested meeting
DHS hasn’t provided a source for their numbers of people with ICE detainers, jurisdictional breakdown or timeframe.
Schnell said they’ve requested to meet with DHS to “square up these numbers, to talk about things that we think could improve processes,” but as of Thursday morning “we have not had a response to those inquiries.”
Schnell said he wants the public to understand that:
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• DOC operates state prisons, not county jails.
• “We do not decide who receives an ICE detainer.”
• “When DHS conflates the processes and procedures of state prisons, county jails and ICE detention into a single talking point, the result is misinformation.”
• DOC has reviewed every person that DHS has publicly named as those they’ve arrested and many were never in DOC custody, several have no Minnesota court or prison records, some had short stays in county jails in Minnesota, and some were in custody in other states.
“Many were released directly to ICE, including cases going back to 2009, 2001, even into the 1990s,” Schnell said. “In some cases, DHS publicly implied Minnesota recently released individuals who were transferred to ICE years ago or decades ago.”
Alex Derosier contributed to this report.
