How many violent criminal illegal aliens are there presently in Minnesota?

1. What federal agencies are claiming: large enforcement tallies and a narrow “worst of the worst” list

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have publicized thousands of arrests tied to “Operation Metro Surge,” including repeated statements that more than 1,500 and eventually “over 10,000” criminal illegal aliens have been arrested in Minnesota since the operation began, and they have circulated a list of roughly 212 people characterized as the “worst of the worst,” of which ICE/DHS reporting and associated local coverage identify about 103 as violent offenders (DHS/ICE releases; FOX 9) ^{[5] [6] [1]}.

2. What local and state officials say: numbers disputed and custody distinctions matter

Minnesota officials pushed back on some of those federal claims, noting that DHS conflates ICE-only detentions, county jail stays and out‑of‑state custody with people “in Minnesota’s custody,” and pointing to the state Department of Corrections’ figure that about 207 of roughly 8,000 people in Minnesota state prisons are non‑U.S. citizens — a much smaller, clearly defined group than the sweeping federal totals imply ^[3].

3. How reporters have tried to reconcile the counts: percent of arrests that are violent

Local reporting that examined DHS’s lists found that when DHS says it made more than 2,000 arrests in recent weeks, roughly 103 of those listed as “worst of the worst” were characterized as violent convicts — a share that local outlets converted to roughly 5% of the arrests being violent offenders in that operational window — but that same reporting stressed DHS would not provide a verified deportation or custody accounting for all names on the lists ^{[1] [7]}.

4. Why a single, precise “present” number is not supportable from the public record

The public record mixes different constructs — arrests since a campaign began, an ICE curated list of 212 “worst” cases, agency claims about “in custody” counts, and the state DOC’s count of noncitizens in state prisons — none of which yields a clean, contemporaneous inventory of unauthorized people currently in Minnesota who have violent criminal convictions; media and state reporting explicitly document those definitional and custodial discrepancies ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

5. Broader research context: crime rates and undocumented populations warn against simple inference

Scholarly and policy research cautions that unauthorized immigrants overall tend to have lower incarceration and violent‑crime rates than U.S.‑born residents, and state‑level studies find no clear relationship between increases in immigration and violent crime — relevant context when interpreting enforcement tallies that are selective and not population‑based ^{[4] [8] [9]}.

6. Bottom line — the defensible answer

There is no single, verifiable figure in the cited public reporting that can be presented as “how many violent criminal illegal aliens are presently in Minnesota”; the best available documented snapshots are agency and media tallies that indicate roughly 103 individuals identified by DHS/ICE as violent among a 212‑name “worst of the worst” list and reporting that about 5% of recent ICE arrests were for violent crimes, while Minnesota’s corrections data show about 207 non‑U.S. citizens in state prisons — but reporters and state officials say federal totals are not directly comparable and remain unverified ^{[1] [7] [3]}. Any definitive present‑time number would require reconciled custody definitions and access to corroborating records that DHS/ICE and Minnesota officials have not jointly produced in the public record ^{[2] [3]}.