Approximately 3,400 people detained by federal immigration agents in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge were transferred to detention centers in Texas; about 530 of those detainees still remain there as of early March, according to Sahan Journal’s analysis of ICE data.
Several local attorneys say those detainees are saddled with several challenges, including unsafe living conditions at detention facilities, difficulty accessing legal help since many Minnesota attorneys aren’t authorized to work in Texas, and a federal appeals court decision that allows the government to keep detainees in custody.
Attorney Brendan McBride represents a 28-year-old Crystal man who has lived in the United States since he was 6 and is now detained in El Paso. He was transported to Texas within an hour of being arrested on Jan. 17 while working at a restaurant. He’s married and has a 3-year-old daughter who is a U.S. citizen.
McBride said his client is at the Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas, the nation’s largest federal immigration detention facility. A Texas federal judge has denied his request for release. He has no criminal history.
“He’s in one of those tents with the dust storms and the filthy latrines,” McBride told Sahan Journal. “He could be in there for several years.”
McBride filed 21 federal habeas petitions for Minnesota clients who were transported to Texas requesting that a federal judge release them from custody. Three of his other clients still remain in custody.
“There’s a lot of people that we probably aren’t going to be able to help,” McBride said. “Some of them are stuck with judges that are not going to let them go, and there’s just so many it’s going to take a long time to go through all of them.”
Many Minnesotans were transferred out of state quickly, sometimes within hours of their arrest, several local immigration attorneys told Sahan Journal. Local attorneys also said the majority of their clients who were transferred out of state were sent to El Paso, Texas, and many remain there due to various factors, including limited access to legal help and judges not moving cases forward.
The data on Minnesota detainees transported to Texas counts detentions between Dec. 1, 2025 and March 11, 2026, and was initially gathered by the Deportation Data Project via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Deportation Data Project is an organization that collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets. It’s led by researchers at the law schools at the University of California, Berkeley; and University of California, Los Angeles.
The data shows that about 80% of people detained in Minnesota were later sent to facilities in Texas.
“Families of people in Texas are still calling,” said Kira Kelley, a Twin Cities immigration attorney. “There were just so many people that were sent to Texas that we just couldn’t — they didn’t know we existed or like they didn’t know I existed.”
Kelley filed 61 habeas petitions, mostly for clients in Texas, requesting a U.S. federal judge release her clients.
There are 23 ICE detention facilities and processing centers in Texas. The majority of Minnesota detainees in Texas, 3,061, were held at the Camp East Montana detention facility.
As of early March, 408 Minnesota detainees are still detained at Camp East Montana, El Paso Service Processing Center and El Paso County Detention Center, according to the data.
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas received international attention after 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, were held there in January after being detained in Columbia Heights. A photo of Ramos wearing his blue knit hat with bunny ears went viral on social media, and turned him into a national symbol for children swept up in federal immigration enforcement. Sixty-three Minnesota detainees were transported to Dilley, which is intended for families.
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, a Democrat, made an unannounced visit on March 23 to Camp East Montana at the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso. The tent camp held as many as 3,000 immigrants in January, but was down to 1,500 in early March. Four of her constituents are stuck there.
“It is horrifying,” Morrison told Sahan Journal.
Five big tents are set up to house a total of 5,000 people, each with a long hallway in the middle and locked doors on either side. Behind every door is a “pod” holding between 60 to 70 people, with metal beds crammed together.
“This is where people stay all day, every day and all night,” Morrison said.
Morrison has received multiple reports from Minnesotans about the conditions inside Camp East Montana, including from the family of a pregnant woman who reportedly did not receive prenatal care. The family of a man with diabetes said he did not receive medication. Several Minnesotans are not receiving medical care or basic necessities like food at the facility, she added.
“This is inhumane beyond words,” she said. “They say their goal is to get people out within two weeks, [but] the four constituents that I, at least know of, have been there since January.”
Kelley said her clients detained at Camp East Montana described the food similar to “dog food,” and one of them didn’t eat for several days because of a peanut allergy. Her clients reported crowded spaces and a lack of sanitation.
“Every single one of them had their own horror stories of what they lived through in that facility,” Kelley said.
Victor Manuel Díaz, who was detained in Coon Rapids, died on Jan. 14 at Camp East Montana. Díaz’s mother and one of his brothers spoke to Sahan Journal, saying they doubt his death was a suicide as the government reported. Díaz, 36, is survived by two sons, ages 10 and 15, his mother and five siblings in Nicaragua.
“The pain is very great,” said his mother, María del Rosario Díaz García. “Whenever someone who is close to you dies, you feel a lot of pain. But especially in this case, it was my son and this is a child who I held in my arms and protected.”
Fourteen people died in ICE custody across the country this year, according to NBC News. Aside from Díaz, two other detainees died at Camp East Montana.
Challenges to helping Minnesotans in Texas
Many Minnesota immigration attorneys are not authorized to work in Texas, and faced challenges accessing clients who had been transported to Texas. Graham Ojala-Barbour, a St. Paul immigration attorney, referred some clients to other attorneys who are authorized to work in Texas.
Attorneys said even if they could work in Texas, they often couldn’t reach clients because of limited phone access at Texas facilities. Kelley said their clients at Camp East Montana were given only a few minutes to talk on the phone, and they had little privacy due to the cramped quarters.
“It’s almost impossible to contact clients in that facility,” Kelley said.
Minnesota attorneys and families reached out to nonprofits and attorneys in Texas to locate detainees.
The length of time detainees wait for a decision on their request to be released from ICE custody varies depending on which judge is assigned to their case, because there’s no exact timeline for issuing a decision, said Linus Chan, director of the Detainee Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Ojala-Barbour said some federal judges in Texas ruled against releasing Minnesota detainees because of an appeals court ruling earlier this year that allows the government to require mandatory detention. The ruling also allows judges to deny bond for many immigrants who entered the country illegally.
But even after some Minnesota detainees were freed in Texas, they found themselves facing other daunting hurdles. Thi Dua Vang told Sahan Journal in February that she was released in Houston after two weeks of detention, but was not allowed to wait inside an ICE facility for her brother, who was driving from Minnesota to pick her up.
She waited outside the facility for nearly three hours and had to send a cell phone picture of her location to her brother, who had received an email from the government that she was being released. The email did not provide any information about where to find Vang.
“There should be some recognition here that the harm that we all know that Metro Surge had in our cities is still being perpetuated by the continuing separation and detention of so many of our community members,” Chan said. “It’s left behind families and communities who have to pick up the pieces and continue to do so, and that is a choice that the federal government is making and that the federal government does not need to make.”
Data Methodology
Sahan Journal analyzed ICE detention data obtained and processed by the Deportation Data Project.
To calculate the total number of Minnesota detainees transferred to Texas during Operation Metro Surge, we first counted the number of people who were detained under ICE custody in Minnesota from Dec. 1 2025 to March 11, 2026. This includes people who were arrested and detained at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building as well as ICE detainees who were initially located in several Minnesota county jails. People initially detained out of state and later transferred to Minnesota were not included in the analysis.
We then identified a list of detention centers and holding facilities in Texas, and filtered the data down to detainees who were transferred from Minnesota to these Texas facilities at any point during detention. The 3,423 total transferred detainees include people who were first transferred to multiple states before ending up in Texas, detainees transferred to other states after being detained in Texas, as well as detainees who were transferred to Texas for immediate deportation.
Have questions about this data? Contact Sahan Journal data reporter Cynthia Tu at ctu@sahanjournal.com.
