Have Minneapolis officers quit and joined ICE?

1. The claim under scrutiny: what people mean when they say officers “quit and joined ICE”

The phrase can mean two different things: local Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers resigning their city jobs to become ICE agents, or law-enforcement personnel who had been working with MPD abandoning local duties to operate under ICE authority; the reporting available does not show either scenario having occurred in Minneapolis in the time period covered (no source documents MPD officers leaving to join ICE).

2. What the reporting actually documents: federal resignations, not MPD defections

What is reported is a wave of resignations by federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials in reaction to the handling of an ICE agent’s killing of a Minneapolis woman; six U.S. attorneys and leaders in DOJ’s civil rights division resigned in protest over decisions not to open a civil-rights probe, according to The Guardian ^[1]. Those departures were federal prosecutors, not Minneapolis police officers, and the coverage explicitly frames them as dissent within the federal prosecutorial ranks ^[1].

3. Minneapolis police have publicly distanced themselves from ICE operations

Local reporting and municipal communications indicate Minneapolis has taken steps to limit cooperation with ICE and to protect civil liberties — the city amended separation ordinances, revised immigration policies to prohibit assisting ICE in many circumstances, and instructed MPD not to provide routine crowd control or escort duties for ICE absent clear threats, signaling the opposite of a mass transfer of MPD officers into federal immigration work ^[4]. City leaders have also sued the federal government over the surge, and the city tracked thousands of hours of MPD overtime and millions in costs associated with the federal operation — evidence of strain, not defections ^[5].

4. The federal surge and ICE recruitment drive create a plausible alternate story

At the same time, national reporting documents an aggressive, rapid ICE hiring push — ICE grew its workforce quickly and shortened training timelines to bring in thousands of new agents to meet the administration’s deportation goals, an expansion that has placed hundreds and then thousands of federal immigration officers in cities like Minneapolis ^{[2] [6]}. Slate’s reporting on ICE recruitment and Time’s profile of the surge help explain why outsiders might see an influx of officers in Minneapolis and misinterpret that as local police switching sides ^{[3] [2]}.

5. Why misinformation or misreading the facts spreads amid protests and chaos

The confusion is compounded by vivid on-the-ground clashes, a rapid rotation of federal agents into neighborhoods, and highly charged municipal rhetoric — Mayor Jacob Frey demanding ICE leave, public protests after a fatal shooting, and threats by federal officials to escalate responses have all amplified attention and sometimes conflated different personnel movements ^{[7] [8]}. Independent outlets and civil-rights groups are also cataloguing federal activity and alleging suspicionless stops, which increases scrutiny of who is doing the policing — federal agents or local officers — but the sources do not show Minneapolis officers resigning to become ICE agents ^{[9] [10]}.

6. Bottom line and limits of the record

Based on the provided reporting, there is no documented instance of Minneapolis police officers quitting their department to join ICE; the concrete personnel changes cited are resignations by federal prosecutors and a national surge of newly hired ICE officers, not defections from MPD ^{[1] [2]}. If records or local personnel rosters exist outside these stories they are not included in the materials reviewed, so this conclusion is limited to the cited reporting.