Five SUVs pulled in front of Wilmer Andrade’s suburban north metro home Saturday afternoon. Two masked U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rang his doorbell and said they had a warrant for his arrest.
Andrade, 39, kept his composure. He calmly answered questions through his Ring camera and declined to open the door absent an official judicial warrant. An agent showed him an administrative warrant, which does not allow for agents to enter private property, with his name on it. He told the agents he has a valid U.S. work permit.
“A work permit doesn’t authorize for any kind of thing here in the U.S. to remain here legally,” a masked agent tells him. “That just authorizes you to work.”
Agents surrounded his house, standing outside of all entrances for over 30 minutes, Andrade told Sahan Journal. Eventually they left.
“I’m super scared to go out right now,” Andrade said. “I just don’t feel like going anywhere. I don’t know, it’s not normal.”
As the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge continues in the Twin Cities, ICE and Border Patrol agents are increasingly targeting people with valid work permits and pending visa or asylum applications, vastly expanding the pool of people they are directly seeking for arrest.
For months, ICE has been arresting people with work permits and pending immigration statuses. Immigrants from Latin America for years would cross the border without permission, and then present themselves to the first customs and border officials they encountered. Thousands were paroled in the United States and put into immigration court proceedings.
Most of those people arrested early during the second Trump administration were chance encounters, picked up by ICE as they searched for people with final orders of removal.
But with more than 2,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents on the ground in the Twin Cities for weeks, immigrants like Andrade are being increasingly targeted for arrest.
‘You follow the rules’
Immigration agents had visited Andrade’s New Brighton home before Feb. 7, seeking a person who used to live there. They’ve been on his street a few times in the past month, he said. He called the local police while agents were at his door, but they told him there was nothing they could do, he said.
Andrade has a pending U visa application, he told Sahan Journal. He received a work permit two years ago. U visas are reserved for victims of crimes; Andrade was beaten and robbed in Minneapolis five years ago, he said. A review of Minnesota Court records indicates he has no criminal history in Minnesota.
“It’s just annoying,” Andrade said. “You follow the rules. You do whatever they ask you to do. What’s the point of following all those rules?”
ICE officials have offered vague explanations of who agents are targeting for arrest. The agency did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Marcos Charles, leader of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, said at a Jan. 23 news conference that the agency works “through intelligence” to look for specific individuals.
“As we are looking for these individuals, if there is someone that is illegally in the country and amenable to removal from this country we will arrest them,” Charles said.
Charles told reporters in the Twin Cities that ICE agents were conducting a targeted enforcement operation when they arrested Adrian Conejo Arias along with his 5-year-old son Liam Conejo Ramos in Columbia Heights on Jan. 20.
“He was in the U.S. illegally, and I believe he had been ordered to be removed,” Charles said of Conejo Arias.
That wasn’t true; Conejo Arias did not have a final order of removal. A federal judge ordered their release. The family has a pending asylum case that the federal government tried and failed to expedite last week according to MPR News. Conejo Arias has a valid work permit.
As the immigration surge continues in Minnesota, ICE and Border Patrol agents go out seeking any target they can, experts say.
“They’re just arresting anyone they can get their hands on,” Minnesota immigration attorney Nico Ratkowski told Sahan Journal.
ICE is using the term targeting “pretty loosely,” according to St. Paul immigration lawyer Graham Ojala-Barbour.
He’s noticed ICE driving around, often checking license plates of drivers of color. If the car is registered to someone with a pending case in immigration court, they’re targeted.
“They’re just arresting them and figuring it out later,” Ojala-Barbour told Sahan Journal.
‘Minnesota is home’
Immigrants like Andrade with pending visa or asylum applications and government-issued work permits have been arrested in large numbers during Operation Metro Surge. Many have been released from ICE custody following successful habeas petitions, where lawyers challenge their detention before a federal judge and force the government to prove their clients are a flight risk.
Dozens of detained immigrants who were arrested in Minnesota and shipped to jails in Texas or Louisiana have been ordered released. Some have been left outside detention centers, forced to find their own way home. Others have been flown back to Minnesota, often shackled during the journey.
A Feb. 6 ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals could make those cases harder to win. The 2-1 appeals court decision sided with the federal government’s position that immigrants can be held in detention indefinitely while their case plays out, a move intended to pressure detainees to agree to deportation. The ruling will apply for cases filed in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, all of which have large ICE detention centers.
Andrade left Ecuador at 18 and has lived in Minnesota for 20 years. He came here to study English and is a graduate of Minneapolis Community and Technical College. He’s thought about returning to his home country amid the stress of the ICE surge. He knows people who have returned to Ecuador and others who haven’t left their homes in weeks out of fear of arrest.
“I have some friends who left already because they can’t afford to pay rent or anything,” he said.
But he built his life here. He works as a bartender. He owns his house. Returning to Ecuador after all these years would be like going to a strange place.
“I feel like Minnesota is home,” Andrade said.
Now, he feels targeted. Andrade told Sahan Journal that he got messages from neighbors early Tuesday morning telling him they saw suspected ICE vehicles on the street. But they didn’t come to the door.
