A former instructor at an ICE training facility in Georgia spoke before a congressional hearing Monday afternoon and shared what training efforts have looked like as DHS rapidly scales up its number of recruits. “…Even in the final days of training, the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics or the law required to perform their jobs,” Ryan Schwank said during the hearing organized by congressional Democrats. Schwank resigned “in protest” less than two weeks ago, CBS News reports, and his testimony “will likely fuel Democrats’ refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to a number of reforms for ICE, including a prohibition on agents wearing masks.”
A group of Minnesota clergy sued the Department of Homeland Security on Monday for repeatedly blocking their visits to immigration detainees at the Whipple Federal Building. “To be able to receive pastoral care is incredibly important. For individuals to be treated with humanity instead of being treated like inventory,” Irina Vaynerman, the CEO of Groundwork Legal and one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in an interview with MPR News.
The former FBI agent tasked with exploring the causes of fraud in Minnesota released a 57-page report Monday that “faulted the state for ignoring warnings about decades of poor oversight of taxpayer dollars before recent scandals thrust the issue into the national spotlight,” The Minnesota Star Tribune reports. “Since the 1970s, he said, governors and legislators have consistently failed to heed warnings about vulnerabilities in social services.”
Sahan Journal caught up with three Minnesota Somali immigrants who were detained by ICE last month despite having abided by legal requirements. All three, who have since been released, described their experiences in overcrowded, unsanitary Texas detention facilities. Two were arrested outside of their immigration check-in appointments. “I kept asking them what I violated, because I was worried they might have confused me with someone else, but they refused to tell me, and it turns out there was no violation — they were just lying.”
The number of farmers in Minnesota and across the Midwest who filed for bankruptcy was up in 2025 compared with previous years, reports Minnesota Reformer. “This is something that we’re watching with a fair bit of anxiety…we’re hearing from our members that farms are looking at a second year in a row of negative margins,” said Anne Schwagerl, vice president of the Minnesota Farmers Union.
