The fallout continues after the end of the largest crackdown on illegal immigration in U.S. history: Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.

"Full Measure" was on the ground in Minneapolis the week that White House border czar Tom Homan announced the close of the operation and accompanied agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, on one of their last official Metro Surge sweeps.

It began at 5 a.m. in St. Paul. 

“Some of these targets [will be] entering vehicles, exiting their homes, things like that, and then we’ll initiate a vehicle stop,” says Richard Tine, an ICE field office assistant director.

The first target of the day was an illegal immigrant previously arrested for DUI. Local law enforcement released him without notifying ICE, which would have deported him. Now, agents are trying to arrest him in the neighborhood where he lives.

As the ICE agents worked, protesters were on their heels, converging at ICE headquarters, tracking and following ICE vehicles, coordinating by phone, and blowing a whistle, potentially warning alleged criminal illegal immigrants. While "Full Measure" was on the scene of one arrest, a notification came that an apparent agitator had rammed into an ICE vehicle at another location.

Just a week prior, de-escalation signals emerged. The Trump administration pulled 700 agents from the force of several thousand, while Minnesota sheriffs committed to handing over illegal immigrants arrested for new crimes rather than releasing them.

“The changes were brought about because we were getting the cooperation that we were seeking, which was to go out into the field and go after targets that we had already missed,” Tine said. “And now we can focus on the targets that are going into the jail and getting them in a secure environment and then go out to get the ones that we missed when that wasn't happening with the cooperation.”

Homan announced Metro Surge’s end on Feb. 12 in Minneapolis.

In the end, it resulted in the removal of over 4,000 illegal immigrants from Minnesota’s neighborhoods.

Among them, 13 men alleged to be active gang members from Mexico, Laos, Guatemala, Cuba, Burma, Thailand and El Salvador. All were roaming Minnesota streets after allegedly committing drug crimes, arson, sexual and weapons offenses, robbery and kidnaping. Two of them were convicted of murder.

Nationally, since 2000, official data from the federal government and Texas indicates illegal immigrants have committed five million serious crimes including:

• 200,000 robberies
• 100,000 rapes or sexual assaults and
• 30,000 murders — equivalent to the population of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Some of the multiple murders by illegal immigrants include:

• A 2007 triple murder in Newark, N.J., by illegal immigrant gang members from Peru and Nicaragua.
• A 2008 triple murder of a father and two sons in California by an illegal immigrant gang member from El Salvador. He was shielded from deportation, after prior arrests, by San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies.
• The 2015 quadruple murder spree in North Carolina involving a gang member mistakenly granted amnesty under President Obama.
• The 2023 murder of five people in Cut and Shoot, Texas, by an illegal immigrant from Mexico deported five times.

In President Trump's second term, federal officials report about 540,000 deportations nationwide – coinciding with a remarkable drop in crime.

According to analyses from the Council on Criminal Justice, 2025 compared to 2024, declines include: violent crimes such as robbery (-23%), aggravated assault (-9%), gun assaults (-22%), and carjackings (-43%). Homicides plunged 21% – the largest single-year drop on record, and the lowest in at least 125 years (since 1900).

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt credits, in part, the crackdown on illegal immigration.

“This dramatic decline is what happens when a president secures the border, fully mobilizes federal law enforcement to arrest violent criminals and aggressively deports the worst of the worst illegal aliens from our country,” Leavitt said on February 5.

Operation Metro Surge had multiple casualties on both sides. Protesters were frequently documented becoming violent, assaulting ICE agents and injuring some of them. Two protesters were shot and killed by federal agents. Internal reviews in both cases are underway. Two ICE agents were recently put on administrative leave after their non-fatal shooting of a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally. Authorities say the agents allegedly gave false statements during the investigation, which is ongoing.

For more on this story, watch "Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” Sunday. Attkisson's most recent bestseller is "Follow the $cience: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails."