The Minneapolis surge has ended. The lessons shouldn’t be ignored.
On Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026, White House Border Czar Tom Homan confirmed that the federal enforcement surge in Minneapolis is effectively over — more than 1,000 agents have departed, with several hundred more expected to leave. A “small” security force will remain temporarily to ensure that “the coordination, the agreements we have with local state law enforcement stay in place.” But when asked whether future deployments could match the scale of Minneapolis, Homan left the door open: “I think it depends on the situation.”
That makes what happened in Minneapolis — and what it cost — urgently relevant beyond Minnesota. The day before Homan’s initial withdrawal announcement, a vehicle pursuit by federal agents through a residential St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood ended in a multi-car crash, injuring bystanders, triggering school lockdowns and drawing a large crowd of angry onlookers. It was exactly the kind of street-level flashpoint that federal and local leaders had spent two weeks pledging to prevent.
That juxtaposition — a declaration of operational completion alongside a crash that contradicted it — captures what Minneapolis should teach us. This is not about whether the federal government has the authority to enforce the law. It does. Nor is it about whether the agents on the ground faced serious and dangerous conditions. They did. Law enforcement personnel were forced to operate amid sustained protests, threats to their safety, and an environment that grew more volatile by the week.
The lesson is about what happens when federal, state and local agencies are not set up to work together — and the human cost when that coordination is absent. Two U.S. citizens died during this operation. Thousands of officers were placed in environments they were not prepared for. An entire city’s public safety infrastructure was strained to its limits.
I spent years as a police officer. One thing that experience made unmistakably clear is that multi-agency operations in dense urban environments either work through coordination or they don’t work at all. When agencies operate alongside one another rather than with one another — different command structures, rules of engagement and training — everyone is put at greater risk: agents, officers and the communities they serve.
Minneapolis bore this out. When the federal enforcement surge began in December, there was no unified command, no advance coordination with state and local agencies and no shared operational framework governing how multiple federal agencies would work alongside a city already managing staffing shortages and institutional challenges. More than 3,000 federal agents were deployed to a city with 600 police officers.
Federal agents faced hostile crowds, physical confrontations and chaotic street-level conditions — while local officers were simultaneously stretched thin managing crowd control, traffic disruption and public disorder from operations over which they had no input and little visibility. Research on interagency collaboration has long found that interpersonal relationships and institutional trust between agencies are the foundation of effective coordination — elements that must be cultivated before crises demand them, not improvised under fire.
As Homan was making his Feb. 12 announcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell was offering a blunt assessment before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He called the operation a “public safety mess.” He described the approach as “crisis driven.” And he told senators that “a lot of this could have been avoided.” His critique was not directed at the agents who carried out the mission, but at the absence of a coordination structure that left them operating without the structure they needed.
The adjustments that eventually brought the surge to a conclusion demonstrate what becomes possible when federal, state and local agencies are given a framework to cooperate. When Homan arrived in late January and took direct control, he shifted from street-level enforcement to targeted, facility-based operations — working with county sheriffs to take custody of individuals within correctional facilities rather than sending teams into neighborhoods.
He established a unified joint operations center that consolidated command across multiple federal agencies, addressing the parallel-operations problem identified by research as a primary driver of miscommunication and inconsistent responses. He opened lines of communication with Gov. Tim Walz (D), Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and local law enforcement leadership. Body-worn cameras were proposed for all federal personnel. By Feb. 4, 700 agents had been withdrawn, the product of what Homan called “unprecedented cooperation” from state and local officials. On Feb. 12, the operation was declared complete.
None of this is new. The federal government’s own framework for multi-agency coordination has existed for two decades. Published guidance on managing large-scale operations during civil unrest is widely available. So is research on multi-jurisdictional task forces and detailed best practices for policing during protests. None of what was eventually implemented required invention. It required application.