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On Saturday morning in south Minneapolis, federal officers said they were hunting a dangerous man. Later, the Minnesota Department of Corrections quietly posted a fact sheet: the suspect, José Huerta-Chuma, “has never been in Minnesota DOC custody,” state records show “no felony commitments,” and public court files list misdemeanors—even as federal officials had just described him as a violent offender whom agents had to seize on sight. The same DOC note added that someone by his name had been held in federal immigration custody back in 2018, during the first Trump term, and released by federal authorities. It posted these facts to correct “inaccurate information about Minnesota custody and criminal records.”
DHS later told Fox News that Huerta-Chuma’s criminal history includes domestic assault causing bodily harm along with other offenses, an assertion that may reflect non-Minnesota convictions or charges. He is still at large.
This dispute came, of course, as ICU nurse Alex Pretti, a lawful gun owner with no criminal record, was shot dead during an incident that followed the attempted arrest. Videos reviewed by local and national outlets show Pretti filming, then helping a woman up, before agents pile on; a pistol is later taken off him, but footage does not show him brandishing it. The citizen who died wasn’t the domestic terrorist officials later implied, but what about the target of the raid?
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DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has presented the Minneapolis surge as a public-safety necessity: “You won’t steal from Americans or break our laws and get away with it,” she said while touting an arrest she called “another murderer and sexual predator off Minneapolis’s streets.” Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino, now apparently redeployed, said that operations would continue “until there’s no more of those criminal illegal aliens roaming the streets of Minneapolis.” President Donald Trump promised on Truth Social that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING” for Minnesota’s leaders and boasted, “Thousands of Criminals were removed!”
Yet arrest data—what little the government has released—suggests a sweep that snares many people with no violent record at all. It's a snapshot of immigration enforcement across the country.
Common Knowledge
The right’s line is blunt: this is about getting predators off the street. DHS press releases about Minneapolis insist ICE is removing “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, including rapists, pedophiles, and drug traffickers,” and vow, “We will not let violence or rioters slow us down.”
Noem has gone further, defending earlier deadly force in Minneapolis by calling Pretti's “a domestic act of terrorism,” and said that under Trump “we will expose and deliver accountability for the rampant fraud and criminality happening in Minnesota.”
Bovino brushed off criticism: he said that operations are “legal, ethical, and moral,” and disputes about tactics show “priorities are misplaced.”
The left says the branding is propaganda and the tactics reckless. The Star Tribune editorial board flatly concluded, “An ICE pause is the only path to peace.”
The ACLU says the spate of shootings is “further proof that ICE and Border Patrol are out of control and endangering our communities.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said after a call with Trump that the president “agreed that the present situation cannot continue,” while Governor Tim Walz demanded impartial investigations and a drawdown of agents.
Uncommon Knowledge
At a multiagency briefing last week, DHS officials said they had made about 3,000 arrests in six weeks under Operation Metro Surge. When local reporters asked who those arrestees are, the picture got murkier. FOX 9’s audit of the department’s own “worst of the worst” showcase page counted 212 Minnesota names and, using DHS’s running tally of total arrests at the time (just over 2,000), estimated that a little more than 10 percent of those arrested were the “worst.” Within that 212-person list, FOX 9 categorized 48.5 percent as violent or gang-affiliated. But across all arrests, the station estimated only around 5 percent were violent offenders.
National numbers show the same pattern. ICE detention snapshots compiled by Syracuse University’s TRAC show 70 to 74 percent of people in ICE custody in late 2025 had no criminal conviction. Independent analyses of agency datasets by the libertarian Cato Institute conclude that about 5 percent of people booked into ICE custody had a violent conviction.
None of this proves there are no violent offenders in the DHS lists—there plainly are, and some of the agency’s Minnesota arrests concern homicides and sex crimes. It does show, however, that the general haul is far broader and far less “worst” than the branding suggests. The FOX 9 breakdown is instructive because it leans on DHS’s own list to show how small that “worst” slice is relative to total arrests.
In Minnesota on Saturday, federal officials said the operation centered on Huerta-Chuma, described as an Ecuadorian national having a criminal history including domestic assault and disorderly conduct.
DHS sharpened that case later: a department spokesperson told Fox News that Huerta-Chuma, “has a criminal history [that] includes domestic assault to intentionally inflict bodily harm, disorderly conduct, and driving without a valid license,” adding that he “remains at large” and urging the public to report sightings to the ICE tip line.
Bovino likewise argued that lenient local politics created the risk: “This individual walks the streets today because of those choices made by politicians and those, perhaps, weaker-minded constituents that chose to follow directions of those politicians.”
Minnesota’s Corrections Department publicly contradicts the implication, and Huerta-Chuma's release from immigration custody in 2018 matters. It rebuts the talking point that “sanctuary” state officials are the sole reason such men roam free.
The deeper story is not new but is newly quantifiable. In immigration enforcement, rhetoric concentrates at the extreme: “worst of the worst,” “pedophiles and rapists,” “murderers.” Operations disperse to the median: workplace raids, home knocks, courthouse pickups, traffic stops. When researchers examine the ledgers, the ledgers disagree with the "worst of the worst" contention. If the goal is to maximize removals, it makes sense to focus on cases that can be processed quickly, but that is a different rationale.
Federal officials insist the mission is “legal, ethical, and moral,” and White House border czar Tom Homan promises to target public-safety threats “first.” They may yet do so. But if the White House wants Americans to believe the mission is primarily about stopping predators, it must publish detailed arrest ledgers, justify tactics proportional to the threat, and align claims with court files.
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