MINNEAPOLIS — A University of Minnesota graduate student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement was taken into custody because of a drunken driving infraction, not for being involved in protests, federal officials said Monday.

“This is not related to student protests,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “The individual in question was arrested after a visa revocation by the State Dept. related to a prior criminal history for a DUI.”

News of the student’s detention — and the lack of an official explanation — sparked student protests and expressions of concern from university and political leaders. Gov. Tim Walz told reporters Monday that he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about it Friday and was still waiting for further details.

Meanwhile, officials at Minnesota State University Mankato said Monday that one of their students had been detained by ICE as well.

President Edward Inch said in a letter to the campus community that the student was detained Friday at an off-campus residence.

“No reason was given. The University has received no information from ICE, and they have not requested any information from us,” Inch wrote. “I have contacted our elected officials to share my concerns and ask for their help in stopping this activity within our community of learners.”

The Mankato school did not name the student, nor give the student’s nationality or field of study. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for details on that case.

“This is becoming a deeply concerning pattern, where ICE detains students with little to no explanation … and ignores their rights to due process,” U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement. “I will keep pressing the administration for answers about these arrests and work to get answers from federal immigration authorities about this case.”

The University of Minnesota has not named its student either.

That student, who was detained at an off-campus residence Thursday, was enrolled in the business school on the Minneapolis campus. University spokesperson Andria Waclawski said the school had no further updates Monday. She said earlier that they were following the lead of the student and respecting their request for privacy, while providing the student with legal aid and other supports.

The governor said Monday that, “A deep concern is, here, that no matter what the situation was, in this country, everyone has due process rights and our concern is whether those due process rights are being followed.”

The Trump administration has cited a seldom-invoked statute authorizing the secretary of state to revoke visas of noncitizens who could be considered a threat to foreign policy interests. More than half a dozen people with ties to universities are known to have been taken into custody or deported in recent weeks. Most of those detainees have shown support for Palestinian causes during campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Las agencias tendrán flexibilidad para decidir cómo y cuándo ofrecer servicios en idiomas distintos al inglés para servir mejor al pueblo estadounidense y cumplir su misión”, dice la orden ejecutiva.

El presidente Donald Trump.

El presidente Donald Trump designó el inglés como idioma oficial de los Estados Unidos el 1 de marzo, como parte de su agenda America First (América primero).

Con esta orden ejecutiva la administración Trump revoca la orden ejecutiva firmada por el expresidente Bill Clinton en agosto de 2000 que obligaba a las agencias federales a prestar servicios a las personas con conocimientos limitados del inglés.

Si bien la orden de Trump no obliga a las agencias a dejar de ofrecer documentos traducidos y servicios de traducción; ahora dependerá de los directores de las agencias la decisión de prestar estos servicios o no.

“Las agencias tendrán flexibilidad para decidir cómo y cuándo ofrecer servicios en idiomas distintos al inglés para servir mejor al pueblo estadounidense y cumplir su misión”, dice la orden ejecutiva.

La orden supone una victoria para el English-only movement (movimiento sólo inglés) y organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro que forma parte de este movimiento como ProEnglish, que ha sido designada como grupo de odio por el Southern Poverty Law Center.

El 78 por ciento de las personas mayores de 5 años sólo hablan inglés en casa en los Estados Unidos, según cifras del Pew Research Center, y desde hace tiempo se exige a los inmigrantes que demuestren su dominio de la lengua antes de obtener la ciudadanía.

Si bien el Pew Research Center no encuestó directamente a los estadounidenses sobre la orden ejecutiva, una encuesta realizada antes de las elecciones de 2024 arroja luces al respecto. 

Cerca de la mitad (51 por ciento) de los estadounidenses dice que es extremadamente o muy importante hacer del inglés la lengua oficial. 

Algunos adultos estadounidenses son más propensos que otros a decir que el inglés debería ser la lengua nacional. El 73 por ciento de los republicanos encuestados por el PEW, por ejemplo, piensa que es supremamente importante. El 71 por ciento de las personas mayores de 65 años también cree que es muy importante.

Así que para hablar sobre las percepciones de los estadounidenses sobre la importancia del idioma inglés como idioma oficial del país, invitamos a Mark Hugo Lopez, coautor del artículo corto y director de investigación sobre raza y etnicidad en el Pew Research Center.

Más detalles en nuestra conversación a continuación.

Ciudad Sin Límites, el proyecto en español de City Limits, y El Diario de Nueva York se han unido para crear el pódcast “El Diario Sin Límites” para hablar sobre latinos y política. Para no perderse ningún episodio de nuestro pódcast “El Diario Sin Límites” síguenos en Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Pódcast y Stitcher. Todos los episodios están allí. ¡Suscríbete!

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Sunday’s win over Detroit wrapped the Timberwolves’ most successful March in franchise history. Minnesota went 11-3 to set a new franchise mark for most wins in March.

On top of an eight-game winning streak, Minnesota also won its past two games of the month to move itself to the precipice of a top-six seed in the West, which would allow the Wolves to bypass the play-in tournament and go directly to the first round of the playoffs.

Minnesota posted the third-highest winning percentage in March across the NBA, trailing only Boston and Oklahoma City — the two betting favorites to appear in the NBA Finals. And not only did the Wolves win, they were dominant in doing so. They posted the fourth-best offensive rating (scoring 122 points per 100 possessions), the fourth-best defensive rating (110.1) and the third-best net rating (11.8).

Minnesota led the league in effective field goal percentage (59%), was sixth in rebounding percentage (51.4%) and eighth in assist-to-turnover ratio (2.20). There were no weak points.

As of Monday afternoon, the Wolves had four players in the top five in the NBA in plus-minus this month. The Wolves outscored opponents by 150 points over the course of the month when Mike Conley was on the floor, by 149 with Rudy Gobert and by 147 with Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels.

Conley and Gobert were the best two-man pairing in the NBA after Gobert returned from his lower back injury on March 9. Minnesota outscored opponents by 26 points per 100 possessions in March with those two in tandem.

Some of Minnesota’s dominance can be attributed to a lighter schedule. The Wolves played just four games in March against teams with winning records and split them. But the ways in which Minnesota won often mirrored the team’s path to success a year ago.

Perhaps the road map to success has been rediscovered.  With fewer than two weeks remaining in the regular season, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.

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With utilities scheduled to be turned off at the Alliance Bank Center in downtown St. Paul on Tuesday, a former commercial tenant has found a new home in the suburbs, just north of the capital city.

Allegra Marketing Print Mail and Image360, which had been situated at three different locations within the Alliance Bank Center across 18 years, opened Monday at 2043 County Road E., just off White Bear Avenue in White Bear Lake. Longtime franchise owner Jim Flaherty said with the help of his printing partners, business has continued uninterrupted, even during a surprise relocation that came together in weeks.

“We were wheeling in our big presses while they were gluing down the carpet on Friday afternoon,” said Flaherty, who is leasing 5,000 square feet of strip mall space from Jim Kelly of Kelly Bros. “We’re operational enough to actually conduct commerce right now.”

“It will be all day tomorrow too — moving, more moving,” said Flaherty on Monday. “All the supplies — 18 years, it’s not an easy move.”

Utilities to be cut

On March 10, tenants of the Alliance Bank Center received an unexpected notice from property owner Madison Equities to vacate the building immediately as it would soon be losing its utilities, the latest setback for what had been downtown St. Paul’s largest property owner. City officials confirmed electricity was scheduled to be cut on March 12, but the mayor’s office negotiated with Xcel Energy and District Energy to extend the timeframe to April 1.

That left tenants with about three weeks to find new spaces, negotiate new leases and relocate offices and retail equipment, from computers and filing cabinets to pizza ovens, jewelry vaults and in Flaherty’s case, printing presses.

“I own a signage company but I haven’t had time to make my own signage, not even a banner,” Flaherty said. “We’ve just been mad scrambling.”

Flaherty said the new location, within a strip mall containing an auto parts store and a driving school, has ample parking and will be a safer and more seemly destination for customers, though many accounts are now virtual.

Alliance Bank Center “is just a disaster of a building right now,” Flaherty said. “It kept getting worse and worse, especially these last seventh months. You’ve got the light rail hub right there, which hasn’t been the safest place.”

The franchise serves both walk-in and national accounts like Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bagels, offering printing, marketing consultation, graphic design and copywriting, among other services.

“It’s not crucial anymore to have that walk-up business, and we certainly didn’t have it for the last several months with the (Alliance Bank Center) building being on lockdown,” Flaherty said. “A lot of what we have are national accounts. … Those guys don’t mind where we are.”

Some tenants find new digs fast

Several other skyway tenants that offer walk-up retail — including Paul A. Hartquist Jewelers, Skyway Mart, Pino’s Pizzeria and Greenwolf Hemp and Organics — plan to reopen within the skyway in the Town Square building at 444 Cedar St.

Alliance Bank left the building about nine months ago, relocating three blocks away to Wells Fargo Place at 30 East Seventh St. Around the same time, the accounting firm Redpath and Company relocated to the Securian Center building on Robert Street.

Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services — the Alliance Bank Center’s largest remaining office tenant as of March — was still packing up two floors of office space last week, including some 60 staff members, many of them attorneys and paralegals. Some staff will use a smaller satellite office at University Avenue and Syndicate Street, but others will work from home until the firm, which offers free legal representation in civil cases to those in need, finds a new home.

As of late last week, the ice cream and sandwich stand Rico’s on Wabasha also was looking for a new location.

On March 14, the St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections announced that the Alliance Bank Center skyway will close at 9 p.m. on weekdays and remain closed on weekends. With Madison Equities no longer supporting electricity, trash pick-up or security, it’s unclear what building access will look like moving forward.

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