Vance acknowledges Minnesota Department of Corrections cooperating with ICE

Minneapolis — In his visit to Minnesota Thursday, Vice President JD Vance appeared to acknowledge that the Minnesota Department of Corrections, overseen by Gov. Tim Walz, was cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Look, if I was going to list the five agencies locally and statewide I’m most worried about, I wouldn’t put the Department of Corrections on that list,” Vance said in a news conference when asked by CBS News if the state was cooperating. “I think that while there are certain things we’d like to see more from them, they’ve hardly been the worst offenders.”

His acknowledgement came after he implored state leaders to help deescalate the situation in Minneapolis.

“What I do think that we can do is working with state and local officials, we can make the worst moments of chaos, much less common, and all they’ve got to do is meet us halfway,” Vance said in a news conference.

A top Homeland Security official echoed Vance’s appeal – asking local authorities to turn over dangerous criminals.

“Please honor our immigration detainers that we’ve lodged against criminal illegal aliens in Minnesota in the state’s jails in prison,” Marcus Charles, the head of ICE’s deportation branch, said Thursday in a separate news conference.

But in an interview with CBS News Wednesday, Paul Schnell, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, said that is exactly what is happening.

“As they approach their release date, several weeks before, our staff coordinates directly with the local ICE office,” Schnell said. “Staff do this on a routine basis. They make arrangements for the transfer of custody of that individual.”

Charles also later acknowledged that the Minnesota Department of Corrections has been cooperating with the federal government to notify ICE when undocumented criminals are released from state facilities, but argued county officials don’t always.

“We pick individuals up from the state, it’s the counties that do not honor our detainers,” Charles said.