MINNEAPOLIS – The Trump administration blitz that flooded Minnesota with immigration agents also dramatically slowed other federal investigations and prosecutions into an array of serious crimes, a Reuters review of federal court records found.
New gun and drug prosecutions stalled. Several top prosecutors quit. Some federal agents disappeared from drug task forces and gang cases. Others took the unusual step of bringing their investigations to state authorities.
U.S. President Donald Trump touted the immigration operation as an urgent crime-fighting effort, targeting violent offenders. But the upheaval disrupted the regular work of the federal authorities charged with protecting public safety, according to the records and interviews with 10 current and former officials from state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Item 1 of 8 Federal agents carry away Aliya Rahman, days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
[1/8]Federal agents carry away Aliya Rahman, days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
Between January and the end of April, federal prosecutors charged eight people with gun or drug offenses – compared to 77 in the same period last year, the court records show. Overall, prosecutors charged 90 people with felonies, about half as many as a year earlier.
Those felony cases included 39 people, among them journalist Don Lemon, accused of disrupting a church service during a protest of the immigration crackdown. Another 17 of the total criminal cases involved immigration offenses such as returning to the United States after being deported. The cases don’t include deportation proceedings, which are not criminal and take place in separate immigration courts.
You can’t tell me that sex trafficking and drug trafficking and that kind of thing is less important than people going into a church to protest.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the top local prosecutor in Minneapolis, told Reuters the local U.S. Attorney’s Office has been so hobbled by departures and diversions to immigration enforcement that U.S. agents have started bringing complex cases to her office instead – a rare tactic for federal investigators.
“You can’t tell me that sex trafficking and drug trafficking and that kind of thing is less important than people going into a church to protest,” Moriarty said. “It’s a public safety issue that they’re not doing the types of prosecutions they should be doing.”
Moriarty declined to identify the cases federal investigators brought to her office out of concern about alienating their agencies.
The immigration crackdown became the nation’s latest flashpoint over the administration’s military-style policing strategy as about 3,000 agents swarmed the icy streets of Minneapolis starting in December. Agents pulled people from cars and schools to deport them and fatally shot two U.S. citizen protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, sparking national outrage that eventually led to the administration’s retreat from Minneapolis.
