MS Note: This is a strangely intriguing thing that I noticed a few times previously in polls in states other than Minnesota, but didn’t comment on. Now, seeing it in Minnesota, I think it’s worth pondering what it means.
…. in the same poll, an “overwhelming majority” of Minnesotans still want local police to cooperate with immigration authorities to deport people “in some or all cases” when those individuals are in law-enforcement custody.
But Minnesotans still support custody-based cooperation: “An overwhelming majority” want local police to cooperate with immigration authorities to deport people in “some or all cases.”
These are not random details. Together they suggest something precise: Minnesota’s electorate may be trying to “route” enforcement into a narrower, less socially explosive channel—custody-based processing—while rejecting the broader operational posture and public tactics associated with the crackdown.
The hidden lever is the phrase “some or all cases”
The strongest caution flag in the Minnesota “cooperation” result is also the most obvious: “some or all cases” is a wide doorway.
If you’re looking for real common ground, you have to ask what voters think they’re endorsing when they hear cooperate.
For one voter, “some cases” means: violent felonies, post-conviction, with clear due process, with a simple handoff at release.
For another voter, it means: anyone booked into a jail for anything, including minor offenses, including people never convicted of a crime, including detainers that extend custody.
Both voters can answer “yes” to cooperation, while imagining totally different policy outcomes.
This is why the “custody carve-out” is meaningful—but also why it’s politically dangerous. It creates room for coalitions, but also room for bait-and-switch.
Looking more deeply….
To test whether this “custody carve-out” is real common ground (and not just a polling mirage), let’s separate three different questions that most public debates mash together:
1) Communication vs transfer vs detention
“Cooperation” can mean at least three distinct policy behaviors:
Communication: notifying ICE that someone is in custody, sharing basic information, responding to inquiries
Transfer at the moment of release: letting ICE take custody when the local jail would otherwise release the person
Extended detention: honoring a detainer request by holding someone beyond what local charges would justify
Those three are not interchangeable in civil liberties terms. They also tend to poll differently once spelled out. The Minnesota write-up doesn’t break the concept into these parts; it’s bundled in a broad phrase.
A genuine “custody carve-out” consensus likely exists at the first two steps (communication and transfer at release), while support becomes much shakier as you move into extended detention.
2) “In custody” is not “in the street”
The poll’s anti-ICE sentiment is tied to tactics that feel like public disorder: masks, “war zone” visuals, fear among citizens, and anxiety that enforcement is not staying within advertised limits.
That helps explain how the same voter can say:
“This has gone too far,” and also
“If someone is already in custody, don’t obstruct basic cooperation.”
Those two statements are not inconsistent. They are a demand for containment.
3) The legitimacy problem isn’t “enforcement,” it’s “methods + credibility”
This is the part that shows up clearly in the Minnesota write-up: majorities are worried not only about immigrants, but about spillover risk to citizens; they reject immunity; they disapprove of masks; and they’re skeptical of federal transparency.
That combination signals something deeper than partisanship: it’s a legitimacy crisis. And a legitimacy crisis tends to produce bounded consent—approval for narrow actions (custody handoffs) paired with rejection of broader authorities and tactics.
“Other states do too” isn’t just rhetoric
Minnesota isn’t unique here. Two different kinds of evidence support the idea that a custody-based cooperation lane has broader appeal:
National polling points in the same direction
A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll reports that about two-in-three Americans say ICE has “gone too far.”
Yet, the same polling ecosystem reporting on Minnesota has also highlighted majorities favoring state/local cooperation with federal authorities in enforcement contexts.
The pattern is consistent: skepticism of ICE as an institution and disapproval of its tactics can coexist with support for limited cooperation—especially when framed through public safety or custody settings.
Policy reality: the “jail-to-ICE” pipeline is already a dominant channel in several states
Texas is a useful reference point not because it’s politically similar to Minnesota, but because it shows how enforcement often functions in practice: the Texas Tribune reports that more than half of ICE arrests in Texas have come from local jails, and notes that Texas law requires local agencies to support cooperation—an approach it says is also adopted by other states such as Florida and Louisiana.
That’s the key: even where rhetoric differs wildly, the custody channel remains central to how immigration enforcement is operationalized.
The political implication: this is where the fight will move
If Minnesota’s “custody carve-out” is real, it creates a new battleground line that doesn’t map cleanly onto “pro-ICE” vs “anti-ICE.”
It becomes:
Stop the street-surge posture, masks, disorder, opacity, and mission creep
But don’t force local agencies into open defiance when someone is already in custody
That’s a coalition you can actually imagine holding. It includes people who dislike the crackdown, and people who support enforcement in principle but want it constrained to serious cases and controlled settings.
And it puts pressure on both sides:
The administration can’t treat “cooperate with ICE” as a blank check for tactics that majorities reject. Minnesota’s poll suggests the public is drawing lines, not handing over carte blanche.
Anti-ICE local leaders can’t assume that opposition to ICE automatically translates into support for full non-cooperation, especially in custody settings. The public may oppose the surge and still reject local “stonewalling” in jails.
He said his deportation machine would go after only the “worst of the worst.”
But according to newly leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year have either been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.
The vast majority of immigrants jailed by ICE have no criminal record at all. A few have previously been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as overstaying their visas or permission to be in the country.
(In the past, alleged violations of U.S. immigration laws were normally adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.)
A large proportion of the people ICE has arrested are now in jail — some 73,000 — and being held without bail. They’re in what the Department of Homeland Security calls “detention facilities.”
Many lack adequate medical attention.
A federal judge has ordered an external monitor to oversee California’s largest immigration detention center, California City Detention Facility, citing “shockingly deficient” medical care, including cases where detainees were denied medication for serious conditions.
A 2025 U.S. Senate investigation uncovered dozens of cases of medical neglect, with instances of detainees left without care for days and others being forced to compete for clean water.
Reports from early 2026 indicate that even children in family detention centers face poor conditions, including being returned to custody after hospitalization for severe illness without receiving necessary medication.
People held in detention facilities are deprived of the most basic means of communication to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email. Some have been split off from the rest of their families, held hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Some of them are children.
Many are in the United States legally, awaiting determinations about their status as refugees fleeing violence or retribution in their home countries. Or they have green cards that would normally allow them to remain in the United States. Others have been in the United States for decades as law-abiding members of their communities.
They are hardly the “worst of the worst.” Most resemble our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who came to the United States seeking better lives. We are a nation of immigrants. While this doesn’t excuse being here without documentation, it doesn’t justify the draconian and inhumane measures being utilized by the Trump regime.
These leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security have not received the news coverage they deserve.
Moreover, these data pertain only to ICE. They don’t include arrests by Border Patrol agents deployed by the Trump administration to places far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people — including U.S. citizens — to question them about their immigration status.
This is a moral blight on America, a crime against humanity. As Americans, we are complicit.
Who is cooperating?
Does your state partner with ICE? Here’s who does, who doesn’t, who’s wavering
Krystal Nurse
Wed, February 4, 2026 at 9:49 PM GMT
5 min read
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Some law enforcement agencies are signing new contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite criticism from activists fearing racial profiling by agents.
See more
As scrutiny of how law enforcement agencies collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement increases, some are signing new contracts, seeing it as a public-safety tool. Still, activists criticized the program, fearing racial profiling by agents.
Public reaction to how local law enforcement interacts and works with ICE has become tense in some places as people point to the killings of 37-year-olds Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. States like Maryland are having second thoughts about police enrolled in the program. Meanwhile, Texas has mandated that all sheriff’s offices with jails sign agreements, KXAN reported.
“The goal in signing this legislation is the goal that you and I have everyday, and that is to make our state more safe,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in July when he signed the bill into law. The new requirement went into effect on Jan. 1, and the state has 291 agreements in place, just behind Florida’s record high of 341 contracts.
Yahoo
How and why?
Irishman held in ICE ‘concentration camp’ for five months despite valid work permit
Seamus Culleton has been in a Texas detention centre for more than four months
Seamus Culleton, originally from Co Kilkenny, has resided in the US for nearly two decades and is married to an American citizen.
He was apprehended by ICE agents in September 2025 while driving home from work, recalling how he first noticed a man in blue sunglasses before other agents appeared.
When asked if he had a green card, he said he did not, but that he was married to a US citizen, had a work permit and was due to receive his green card.
He was detained and initially put into a holding cell in Massachusetts before being taken to New York and then to the detention centre in El Paso, Texas. He claimed that ICE agents had tried to get him to sign deportation papers, which he said he “absolutely” did not.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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