MPR: Omar and Craig describe empty Whipple detention center, feds say less than 500 agents remain

Two Minnesota Congress members went to the Whipple Federal Building on Friday in Minneapolis for an oversight review of its detention facilities, but ICE detainees were nowhere to be found, they said. 

U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig said federal officials told them no one was detained at the facility. They'd given eight days advance notice that they'd be touring the building to check on conditions and speak with detainees.

"There was not a single detainee that we could see or talk to. Every cell, every inch of it, was completely empty. And when we'd asked, 'Why isn't there anyone here?' Because we obviously know they've been detaining people, they said the last people left at 11:30."

Their visit was scheduled for noon.

“It seems very convenient that they removed anyone who had been arrested today from the facility 30 minutes before we arrived at the facility,” Craig said. “What we saw today was an incredibly clean facility. It was a facility without a single individual being held in it."

Omar said federal officials later told the congress members there were five detainees in the building. 

“I said, ‘Can we go and see the five that are here, because we have privacy release forms?’ And they said, ‘No, we cannot permit you to go into the cell to see the detainees.’ And I said, ‘Well, we don't need to go into the cell,’” Omar said. 

She told them they would slide the forms underneath the cell’s door, and they’d look through the door’s glass opening to see observe their conditions, she said.

“Conveniently, as they were taking us towards the cell, someone said, there is not a single person left, and they took us into an empty cell,” Omar recalled in a press conference afterwards outside the Whipple building.

“So it's just the timeline and the stories seem very convenient for what they really were working very hard for us not to see and witness,” she said.

Federal law says congressional members can visit detention facilities unannounced or with little notice, but the Trump administration issued a new policy requiring seven days’ notice. A federal court reaffirmed the no-notification policy in a recent lawsuit, but the administration continues with its policy.

Craig and Omar said federal officials told them that fewer than 500 ICE agents remain in Minnesota, down from the approximately 3,000 officers deployed under “Operation Metro Surge.”

On Friday, border czar Tom Homan, who was brought in recently to oversee the federal immigration operation in the state, said about 2,000 federal agents have left the state.

“We were told that they are averaging now only 20 arrests per day, and that they are moving those individuals to the four county jails in order to hold them,” Craig said.

Omar said federal agents have not arrested any observers in recent days.

Craig said the clean, empty facility they saw Friday was “very, very different” than what the state has experienced during the surge.

“So certainly we observe the draw down is occurring. They are back to, on average, only two deportation flights per week from Minnesota, supposedly,” Craig said.

Still, she said, “we will take everything we're told with a grain of salt, and we will only believe things when we see them here as this operation winds down.”