How many active ICE agents working in Minnesota

1. The headline number: “2,000 ICE agents” appears repeatedly in public reporting

Early DHS and local coverage of Operation Metro Surge reported that more than 2,000 ICE agents were sent into Minnesota as part of what DHS described as its largest operation, and several local outlets and official statements repeated that figure when describing the initial deployment ^{[1] [5] [6]}.

2. Some legal filings and state statements codified the 2,000-ICE figure but also describe larger multiagency totals

Attorney General filings and amicus briefs supporting Minnesota’s lawsuit against DHS stated that DHS deployed as many as 3,000 federal immigration officers to the Twin Cities area and explicitly characterized about 2,000 of those as ICE personnel with additional hundreds of Border Patrol and other DHS officers included in the total ^[2].

3. Subsequent announcements of a 700-agent drawdown complicate the count and blur agency lines

On Feb. 4, 2026, White House border czar Tom Homan and other administration spokespeople announced the withdrawal of roughly 700 federal immigration and border agents from Minnesota, while saying that roughly 2,000 federal agents would remain; those remaining 2,000 were described as a mix of ICE and other federal agents in the administration’s statements and press coverage, meaning the number labeled specifically “ICE” after the drawdown is not directly specified in those announcements ^{[7] [3] [8] [4]}.

4. National outlets and DHS language sometimes conflate ICE and other DHS components, creating reporting divergence

Several national outlets reported “about 2,000 agents will stay,” but explicitly noted that those totals include a mix of ICE, CBP, Border Patrol and other DHS personnel, and DHS releases touted arrests tied to Operation Metro Surge without always breaking down staffing by subagency, which has produced legitimate variation in how reporters and officials characterize the count ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

5. What can be confidently concluded from the available sources — and what cannot

Confident conclusions supported by the sources are: DHS and multiple local outlets reported more than 2,000 ICE agents were on the ground during the surge ^{[1] [5]}, legal filings and state briefings described roughly 2,000 ICE personnel within a broader 3,000-person DHS deployment ^[2], and an announced drawdown of 700 federal agents left about 2,000 federal immigration and border agents in Minnesota, according to administration statements ^{[3] [8] [4]}. What cannot be established from the reporting provided is a single authoritative, current tally of “active ICE agents working in Minnesota” after the drawdown that isolates ICE personnel from other DHS components, because public statements and media reports mix agency categories and no definitive post-drawdown ICE-only headcount appears in the cited material ^{[7] [3] [4]}.

6. Alternative framings and implicit agendas in the numbers

Pro-administration sources and DHS communications emphasize large ICE staffing to underline enforcement achievements and justify the surge, while state and municipal plaintiffs and sympathetic outlets emphasize the same figures to argue militarization and civil-liberty harms, and legal documents from states frame totals to support litigation; readers should therefore view the “2,000” and “3,000” figures as political as well as operational claims that are accurate as descriptors of deployment scale but not reconciled into a single, independently verified ICE-only roster in the public record ^{[5] [2] [9]}.