During Operation Metro Surge, ICE arrested dozens of immigrant crime victims

Rosa’s family is among the 75 Minnesotans identified by the Reformer who were detained by immigration authorities during Operation Metro Surge, despite having permission to live and work in the United States because they were victims of a crime and reported it to the police. 

One man survived a shooting in 2019 that took him out of work for six months and left him permanently disabled. Another was stabbed in the leg during a 2016 robbery in Minneapolis. Others survived human trafficking, felony assaults and armed robberies. 

In one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents broke down a family’s front door and arrested all three people inside — without a warrant, according to the lawsuit.

The Reformer analyzed more than 1,100 habeas corpus petitions — federal lawsuits challenging a person’s detention — filed in Minnesota between December and mid-March and identified at least 75 people who were detained by immigration agencies despite having been granted work permits and deportation protections allowed to crime victims. That number is likely an undercount; Many immigrants did not have access to attorneys for long stretches; couldn’t afford legal fees; or were shipped out-of-state before their lawyers could file the lawsuit in Minnesota. 

In May, a federal judge ordered ICE to revert back to its previous policy of not arresting crime victims, temporarily, while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. 

Many of the crime victims who filed lawsuits over their detention won and returned to their families in Minnesota, and are now fighting the deportation proceedings initiated by their arrest. 

Trump has remade the immigration court system to support his mass deportation campaign, however, so even people who have been issued work permits and deportation protections face an uphill battle to stay in the U.S. 

ICE did not respond to the Reformer’s emailed questions for this story. 

The arrest of immigrant crime victims undercuts a public safety tool created by Congress to combat crime and strengthen relationships between immigrants and law enforcement agencies. The shift in policy, however, fulfills a longstanding Republican goal to roll back the protections provided to immigrants under the program.

When Congress formalized the U visa program as part of a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act of 2000, members of both political parties agreed on the need for a law protecting undocumented victims of crimes. The U visa is an expanded version of the T visa, which offers protections for undocumented victims of human trafficking. 

Congress created the U visa “out of recognition that victims without legal status may otherwise be reluctant to help in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,” according to Department of Homeland Security guidance. 

Public safety and policing experts say the U visa program helps local police officers build trust with undocumented communities by assuring crime victims that they won’t be deported for seeking help from the police — the same logic that underlies many local police departments’ separation from immigration authorities.

A bona fide determination

Rosa and her family applied for a U visa in 2023, which required a certification document from local police confirming that Rosa’s husband had reported the robbery and cooperated with investigators. 

But there was one major issue: Congress had capped the number of U visas issued per year at 10,000. The year Rosa’s family submitted their application, the backlog of applications surpassed 344,000, or a 34 year waitlist.

In 2021, the administration of President Joe Biden found a way to help people waiting for their visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would review the pending applications — running criminal background checks and checking law enforcement certifications — and issue a “bona fide determination” to immigrants whose applications met the U visa criteria, but for whom there were no available visas. 

Two years after Rosa and her husband applied for the visa, and one month into President Donald Trump’s second term, they received a letter in the mail from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

“The evidence demonstrates that … they warrant a favorable exercise of discretion to receive employment authorization and deferred action,” the letter read, meaning work permits and protection from deportation while they waited for the full visa, which would provide a path to permanent residency. In the meantime, they needed to stay in the country; not commit any crimes; and attend regular check-ins with ICE.

Rosa walked into the Whipple Federal Building, the headquarters of ICE in Minnesota, on Jan. 23 with her husband, their six-year-old daughter and the paperwork they needed for a routine check-in. Friends had warned Rosa not to go to the meeting because many people never returned, but Rosa’s husband reassured her: “We have paperwork,” she remembers him saying.

After sitting in a waiting room for eight hours, Rosa said, three agents entered. They placed handcuffs on her husband, informed the family they would be separated, and whisked her husband out the door. 

Then, the agents ushered Rosa and her daughter in and out of hallways and holding cells, on and off airplanes. They spent the night on the floor of a room. Rosa had no idea where they were. Her daughter kept asking where her dad was. Neither of them could stop crying. 

Operation Metro Surge and beyond

Ten days after Trump assumed the presidency for the second time, the acting director of ICE issued a memo to all agency employees, reversing decades of policies that instructed agents not to detain immigrants with pending U visas. 

Shortly after, immigration authorities began arresting people around the country who had been granted work permits and deportation protections under the program. The Trump administration has similarly rolled back protections for refugees, asylum seekers and other categories of immigrants. 

By the time ICE agents swarmed Minnesota this winter, the agency was treating people with pending U visas as fair game for deportation. 

Marcos Lopez Garcia arrived in Minnesota from his rural Mexican town as a teenager. He dropped out of school at 13 to help with his family’s farm, and crossed the U.S. border in search of better job opportunities than in his rural community. He met his wife, also a teenager at the time, at their job cleaning Minneapolis hotel rooms. They settled in Bloomington and had four children, all citizens, the oldest now in her mid-20s. Lopez Garcia worked his way into a management position at a commercial cleaning company. 

At one of his cleaning jobs, a coworker repeatedly came onto him, asking him to leave his family for her. Each time he refused, she grew angrier, until she threatened to report him and his wife to immigration authorities. In June of 2022, she showed up at his home uninvited. 

He called the police to report the crimes. The Bloomington Police Department certified on his U visa application that he had been a victim of blackmail and extortion and that he was cooperative. 

ICE arrested him on his way to work on Jan. 26, shipped him to Texas and held him for two weeks before his lawyer won his release.

Kevin Ramirez Mancia hitchhiked from Honduras to Minnesota with his father when he was 13. They settled in Willmar, a city of 20,000 people, 100 miles west of the Twin Cities. 

Ramirez Mancia attended Willmar Senior High School while his father worked in a nearby egg factory. In November of his sophomore year, he was at his desk singing a song and waving his hands to the music. Another classmate thought Ramirez Mancia was making signs at him, and flipped him off. Ramirez Mancia kept singing. 

The classmate took a knife out of his backpack and walked towards Ramirez Mancia, the knife pointing towards his neck. 

“I thought he was going to stab me,” Ramirez Mancia said.

He got the attention of the teacher, who confiscated the knife and called the principal, who notified the police. Ramirez Mancia told the officer what happened, and that evening, police arrested the student who had threatened Ramirez Mancia, according to the incident report. 

In 2023, Ramirez Mancia applied for a U visa based on his status of a victim of second-degree assault and threats of violence, and received his work permit and deferred action — protection from deportation.

On April 4, police pulled over Ramirez Mancia, now 20, and arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence of cannabis and possessing a pistol without a permit, resulting in three misdemeanor charges. As he was waiting for his release paperwork, an ICE officer approached and informed him he was being taken into immigration custody. 

He spent exactly four months in Freeborn County Jail, which holds immigrants on behalf of ICE. On Tuesday a judge ordered his release; he will remain free while he appeals his deportation order.

A politicized program

Republican politicians have long criticized the U visa program, arguing that the list of qualifying crimes — blackmail, domestic violence, obstruction of justice and felonious assault among them — is too broad. In 2012, when the Violence Against Women Act was up for renewal, GOP members of Congress soured on the legislation in part because of its protections for immigrant crime victims. 

“(Violence Against Women Act) is meant to protect victims of violence. It shouldn’t be an avenue to expand immigration law or to give additional benefits to people here unlawfully,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a 2012 Judiciary Committee hearing before Congress ultimately renewed the law without major changes to the U visa provisions.

Project 2025, the roadmap for President Donald Trump’s second term, called for the total elimination of U and T visas.

“Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit…. Pending elimination of the T and U visas, the Secretary should significantly restrict eligibility for each visa to prevent fraud,” the document reads. 

Richard Hodsdon, general counsel for the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association and a former prosecutor, said U visas “certainly can support public safety from a victim perspective.” 

They can also be used for “manipulation and abuse,” he added. 

Defense attorneys, Hodsdon, said, sometimes asked for U visas for their clients as part of a plea negotiation, seeking compensation for flipping on co-conspirators. 

A handful of high-profile fraud cases have bolstered Republicans’ argument. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against multiple men accused of staging armed robberies at convenience stores to create pathways for U visas for the “victims.” The ringleaders in that case pleaded guilty, and in March, the feds charged 11 additional people for their participation in the plot. 

And, in June 2025, the DOJ charged five Louisiana men in an alleged scheme to falsify police reports for U visa applications. 

“(Those cases) are symptomatic of a bigger problem, which is that desperate people do desperate things, and if we had an immigration system that worked in an effective and efficient way, you wouldn’t have desperate people doing desperate things,” said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, a Kansas City-based attorney who serves on the executive committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 

In limbo

A coalition of California-based immigrants and activist organizations sued ICE in October over its treatment of people with pending U and T — trafficking — visas. 

“ICE now routinely detains and deports people who have valid grants of deferred action from USCIS in connection with pending U or T visa petitions,” according to the lawsuit. 

The Trump administration has found other ways to slow down the process of obtaining the visas or associated work permits: delaying confirmation of receipt of applications, prolonging processing times and nitpicking applications, according to the lawsuit and interviews with immigration attorneys. 

“USCIS is (starting) with the idea that we are going to deny the application, and then if they can overcome that and somehow convince you, then maybe we will think it over. That’s the attitude of the agency right now,” Sharma-Crawford said.

In May, a federal judge temporarily voided the 2025 ICE memo that permitted agents to detain crime victims with pending U and T visas. Since then, the arrest of such people has slowed, Sharma-Crawford said. 

“But that doesn’t mean that they won’t try and either disregard a court order or appeal it,” she added. 

For many families, the damage is already done. 

After their series of flights and holding cells, Rosa and her six-year-old daughter arrived at the processing center of the South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas. They spent 26 days in detention before a judge ordered their release. 

Every member of her family is still terrified. They’ve relied on support from staff at her daughters’ school to make ends meet. Her daughter complains of her chest hurting — possibly from anxiety, Rosa said — and can’t sleep. 

“My daughter still hasn’t recovered from this,” Rosa said, her voice shaking. She hasn’t recovered, either.