On May 7, 2026, a Reuters review of federal court records found that the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, in which about 3,000 agents swarmed Minneapolis starting in December, sharply slowed other federal criminal enforcement in the state. Between January and the end of April, federal prosecutors charged eight people with gun or drug offenses, compared with 77 in the same period the year before. Overall, prosecutors charged 90 people with felonies, about half as many as a year earlier.
Reuters linked the slowdown to staffing. Two people familiar with the office told Reuters that departures left the U.S. Attorney's Office with about half its usual complement of about 50 attorneys, and five of the six supervisors in its criminal section left, according to those two people and a third source, all speaking anonymously. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty told Reuters that federal agents have started bringing complex cases to her office instead, a rare tactic for federal investigators.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in February that federal prosecutors had asked to dismiss at least six criminal cases, almost all drug cases, over about 10 days as the office grappled with more than a dozen resignations. In one, no prosecutor appeared at a hearing after the assigned lawyer resigned. “This, I think, is a pretty good indication of an office in crisis,” said Bradford Colbert, a state public defender.
Trump touted the operation as an urgent crime-fighting effort targeting violent offenders. The Justice Department disputed the Reuters findings: spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre said “assisting our partners with immigration enforcement has not impacted our ability to investigate and swiftly prosecute other crimes.”
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry previously stated as fact that the drop was caused by diverting capacity to immigration arrests rather than by any fall in crime; that is now attributed to Reuters' reporting, with the Justice Department's denial. We removed a paragraph of related figures not supported by this entry's sources: 5,000+ DEA and FBI agents reassigned, the closure of the immigration detention ombudsman's office and a 37% rise in detention use of force, a 70% loss of Civil Rights Division attorneys, and a 5,500-person DOJ exodus. The Reuters citation now carries the article's published headline.