In a special session earlier this week, the Dakota County Board of Commissioners gathered to discuss sending a letter detailing the impacts of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within Dakota County to Minnesota’s congressional delegation and potentially other appropriate federal and state officials regarding federal law enforcement and its impact on county operations.
“This is not about debating immigration policy — that is a federal responsibility and we respect that. This is about our ability as the third-largest county in Minnesota to serve our residents, maintain public safety, be good stewards of tax dollars and support the well-being of our community,” according to a draft of the letter.
The discussion came from the first of what is expected to be ongoing updates from Dakota County department heads on how their operations—from the County Attorney’s Office to the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office to regular department functions across the county—have been affected by federal immigration operations in the Twin Cities. The update came during a regularly scheduled General Government and Policy Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, Jan 20.
Operation Metro Surge has brought thousands of federal immigration officers to the streets of the Twin Cities and beyond in the last month. Those operations have quickly expanded beyond Minneapolis and St. Paul, however, and into surrounding metro counties including Dakota County.
Two weeks ago, Dakota County set up Incident Command, a communication structure used for emergencies, in response to the ongoing federal immigration operation. Incident Command was established because of a “fire hose of questions coming at us,” from both staff and residents, said Dakota County Manager Heidi Welsch.
The last time Incident Command was used county-wide was during the COVID-19 Pandemic, but it has been used in a smaller capacity since then.
“I’ve lost track honestly, of how many dozens of staff we’ve heard from who have had some kind of incident,” said Welsch. “We have staff who are afraid.”

Law Enforcement
Dakota County Sheriff Joe Leko spoke to the ICE impact on the sheriff’s office calling the last month a “very fluid situation.”
He spoke first to the role of county sheriffs with immigration charges.
Sheriff’s offices do not have the authority to hold individuals on federal immigration charges. Individuals cannot be held in the county jails on ICE detainers alone in the state of Minnesota. They would need a state charge in order to be held in those facilities, according to Leko.
“It’s not a choice. It’s authority. We don’t have the authority to arrest on immigration charges.” said Leko.
The Dakota County Sheriff’s office will communicate with ICE about inmates in the Dakota County Jail, especially about when they are being released so that ICE can be there at the time of release if they choose.
“If they want to come, they can pick them up outside of our doors. So that’s how we cooperate with them. We’re not sliding people out the back door and not communicating,” said Leko.
Last year, ICE detained 80 individuals leaving the Dakota County Jail, according to Leko.
The Dakota County Sheriff’s Office is in near-daily communication with police departments across the county because of the increased calls due to ICE operations. A spike in calls both for and from ICE has been seen in recent weeks.
Residents call both local police departments and sheriff’s offices for assault and kidnapping reports on ICE during immigration operations. At the same time, ICE has called those same local enforcement agencies for assistance due to protests, bystanders and other situations.
Despite those calls for assistance from local law enforcement, communication is a sticking point for Leko when it comes to ICE in Dakota County.
ICE does not tell the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office when or where operations take place.
“We’re just not privy to a lot of the information in-house, the operations day-to-day to know what those might be,” said Leko.
Leko said the Sheriff’s Office had asked to be informed of ICE’s Dakota County activity, which has not happened at time of writing.
“They have hundreds of operations going all the time. We have asked for that of ICE and HSI, but due to large operations, they tell us that ‘just know we’re in your county.’ Which they are,” said Leko.
Leko was clear about the role of the Sheriff’s Office: “My job as in the Sheriff’s Office here in Dakota County is to make sure things are done with due process and dignity […] If there’s a time when we need to intercede because of excessive use of force, then we’ll do that. I’m not making up beliefs here or allegations, but we always need to prepared.
“We aren’t going to stand by and watch something happen,” said Leko.

Attorney’s Office
Dakota County Attorney Kathy Keena said her office has received two cases for felony crimes between ICE and residents.
The first was on Dec. 22, 2025 which the office declined to charge but was taken up by the St. Paul City Attorney who did press charges on the case.
The second took place in Burnsville on Jan. 6, 2026 and the County Attorney’s Office is still considering charges and therefore Keena couldn’t provide details about the case.
Keena mentioned a common comment she heard regarding prosecuting alleged criminals who don’t have documentation rather than simply deporting them.
“I take the victim perspective and the public safety perspective,” said Keena referencing the example of child sex abuse cases: “So you’re telling me that the children in the country that they are going to be deported to don’t deserve the same public safety?”
While there have been reports of ICE pulling criminals from jails, as of the Tuesday meeting, that has not happened in Dakota County, according to Keena.
The lack of cooperation from federal officials with the county attorney’s office was notable to Keena, however: “generally what we would see is joint cooperation and the fact that we didn’t is just disheartening.”
One of the commissioners’ concerns was jury attendance across Dakota County in recent weeks, which according to Keena, had largely not been affected by ICE operations within Minnesota.
“There’s not hard stats for that,” said Keena.
Keena said she spoke with court staff who anecdotally had not noticed an increase in absences but due to the holidays, fewer jury pools were taking place in recent weeks.

Operations
The ongoing immigration operation has had substantial impacts on the regular workings of Dakota County programming, from ICE vehicles following and stopping case workers to staff and residents not coming to service centers because of ICE regularly stationed in service center parking lots.
At the time of the Tuesday morning meeting, Tom Novak, director of Dakota County Public Services and Revenue Division, mentioned that ICE was currently in the Dakota County Western Service Center parking lot in Apple Valley, and had been seen there many times in the past month.
“We’ve had a number of cancellations of reservations for programs, but this is the stated reason for the cancellation: that they are uncomfortable coming to our sites,” said Georg Fischer, Dakota County Director of Physical Development Division.
According to Novak, there haven’t been any incidents within county sites, but the regular appearance of ICE within county building parking lots has had a “direct effect” on programming at those sites.
“The fact is, this a huge interruption to what we’re able to deliver to the taxpayers of Dakota County,” said Commissioner Laurie Halverson.
“I also think it’s important to call out this isn’t affecting our staff equally. It’s much more difficult, and I think, more fearful for people of color,” said Welsch.
Novak also expressed concern regarding the Feb. 3 primary caucuses: “I’m very concerned this could really impact the voters,” with either fewer voters coming out to caucuses due to fear of immigration officials or ICE outright going into caucuses for immigration operations.
“I think it’s just a matter of time until something happens,” said Novak.
Another concern was the scheduled work at Lake Byllesby Dam in March. The contractor is international, and has been “asking a lot of questions about, is it safe for them to come? […] We’re hoping that we can convince them it is safe to be here,” said Fischer.

Pushback and discussion
The update on the effects of the federal immigration operations in Dakota County was directly preceded by a surprise resolution brought forth by Commissioner Joe Atkins that requested the “federal government stand down Operation Metro Surge in Dakota County and refrain from invoking the Insurrection Act,” according to the resolution.
“Operation Metro Surge is no longer producing the public safety benefits that were promised in Dakota County while the costs and consequences continue to grow,” said Atkins.
Other commissioners were “blindsided,” as Commissioner Liz Workman put it about the resolution and eventually failed to vote to suspend the rules that would have allowed a vote on a resolution with a vote of 3-4.
Commissioners Workman, Hoberg, Slavick, and Droste were the dissenting votes.
To Atkins’ references of community fear, shuttered businesses and absenteeism, “Much of what he said could have been said six years ago during Covid when our governor shut down the state,” said Workman, calling Atkins’ resolution “an emotional appeal,” rather than an objective one.
For Commissioner Mike Slavick the issue of the resolution was to “Stay in our lane.”
Commissioner Mary Liz Hoberg agreed: “I don’t like it when they tell us how to handle our business. And I as a matter of principle for decades, have really tried to avoid telling other elected officials how to do theirs.”
Slavick didn’t “necessarily have an opposition to what is written” in the resolution but was wary of moving the resolution just moments before the group would hear from department heads and county staff about the specific ICE impact in Dakota County that the resolution was responding to.
“I do believe the information that we want to get is happening in our next meeting,” said Slavick.
The politicization of the conversation, which sprawled from voter suppression to racial profiling to law enforcement interference missed the mark for Workman:
“Part of me gets so frustrated because we’re forgetting or we’re omitting, or we’re not acknowledging the reason why we came here to begin with: because of the chaos that was going on. Our taxpayer dollars were flying out of the state. We know about the fraud. Our current administration couldn’t or wouldn’t control it.”
“I think we are at the point where the issue is political no matter what,” said Hoberg about the impacts of ICE when asked if the conversation was overly political.
For Atkins, the message was simple: “The feds very much came in our lane, not us going into theirs.”
Details on the special session vote will be in the next edition of the Hastings Journal.