Katie Britt's Sad Confusion about and Complicity in Misallocation of HSI - emptywheel

Monday, DHS submitted declarations in a lawsuit trying to make Stephen Miller’s goons adhere to the Fourth Amendment in Minnesota.

Plaintiffs seek injunctive relief to halt three unlawful policies and practices. First, federal agents are stopping people to question them about immigration status without reasonable suspicion of removability—and particularly targeting those they perceive to be Somali or Latino. Second, federal agents are arresting people for immigration reasons without warrants and without probable cause to believe that they are removable, outrageously including U.S. citizens (who plainly cannot be detained for civil immigration purposes) and individuals with immigration status. And third, federal agents are making warrantless arrests without probable cause to believe the person is a flight risk. The constitutional guarantees of the Fourth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and federal statutory law, prohibit these kinds of police-state tactics.

The filings were submitted in response to Judge Eric Tostrud’s questions about whether the lawsuit has been mooted by the claimed drawdown in DHS goons.

The declarations are from:

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Director for St. Paul, Sam OlsonDirector of Border Patrol Field Operations in Detroit, Marty Raybon

At their most basic level, the declarations provide some official accounting of the size of the surge.

On the ICE side, the St. Paul Office went from 190 ERO officers covering Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa, of which 80 focus on the Twin Cities, to “approximately 3,000 additional ERO officers and HSI agents.” As of Monday, there were “270 ERO officers and 700 HSI agents” in the St. Paul office. After today that’s supposed to drop to “approximately 107 ERO officers.”

I’ll come back to the HSI officers.

On the CBP side, Raybon only describes what happened after he was brought in on February 3 to clean up after Greg Bovino (though he doesn’t mention Bovino). On that day, there were “approximately 1029 CBP employees” assigned to the invasion of Minnesota. In his declaration submitted February 23, Raybon said the last remaining 67 surged into Minnesota would be demobilized.

So aside from people working at ports of entry, the surge went from 80 officers to more than 4029 back down to 107.

The declarations seem to offer dramatically different levels of candor. Raybon — the guy CBP had to bring in from Michigan to clean up after Bovino’s mess — describes the invasion included some actions purportedly enforcing Title 18, crimes. “These enforcement actions primarily involved immigration enforcement authorities granted under Title 8 of the U.S. Code but may have also involved enforcement of certain portions of the U.S. criminal code under Title 18.”

Olson, the local guy, was far less forthcoming. He offered an explanation for the invasion that doesn’t make logical sense in ways that are directly relevant to this lawsuit: “Operation Metro Surge was an exclusively federal operation which mission was to significantly increase ‘at-large’ arrests of illegal aliens in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, focusing on criminal aliens and individuals with executable final orders.” Why would you seek to arrest known criminal aliens or those with deportation orders via “at-large” snatches? He claims, “During Operation Metro Surge, ICE successfully arrested more than 4,000 illegal aliens.” Except the huge surge in habeas corpus petitions that plaintiffs catalog — along with 54 petitions filed between August and November last year, 1,071 in total — suggests that many of those arrests were problematic, if not altogether erroneous (indeed, many were focused on people with legal status as refugees).

Between December 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, 56 petitions were filed. Between January 1, 2026, and January 31, 2026, 585 petitions were filed. Between February 1, 2026, and February 11, 2026, 276 petitions were filed. Since the announcement of the end of Operation Metro Surge and associated “drawdown” on February 12, 2026, 100 habeas petitions have filed.

And Olson lists the Scary Immigrants the goons arrested with no names or dates — a rather telling omission, since this declaration was submitted under penalty of perjury.

Operation Metro Surge led to the successful arrest and apprehension of criminal aliens, including aliens with convictions for murder, aggravated assaults, domestic abuse/violence, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, identity theft, robbery with a dangerous weapon, sexual assault and rape convictions.

These resemble the same claims that MN Department of Corrections already corrected to show that these defendants had been turned over by state and local authorities, not arrested by the goons Stephen Miller used to invade Minnesota.

Examples

(screenshots taken from website links below)

Jose Eliborio Ocampo-Leon (Moose Lake)On January 22, 2026, at approximately 9:05 a.m., DOC transferred Jose Eliborio Ocampo-Leon from the Moose Lake facility directly to ICE custody, following standard detainer procedures. The following day, DHS falsely claimed this transfer as an ICE “arrest.”

[Video]documentation confirms the custody transfer.[DHS Highlights More Worst of the Worst Including Pedophiles, Sexual Predators, and Drug Traffickers Arrested Yesterday in Minnesota | Homeland Security]

Heydi Aguilera-Bustillo (Shakopee)On January 6, 2026, at approximately 7:42 a.m., DOC coordinated with ICE and transferred Heydi Aguilera-Bustillo from the Shakopee facility directly to ICE custody. DHS later falsely claimed this transfer as a federal arrest tied to enforcement operations.

[Video]documentation confirms the custody transfer.[wow.dhs.gov/Minnesota]

Jaime Tirado-Hernandez (Lino Lakes)On January 8, 2026, at approximately 7:05 a.m., DHS coordinated with ICE and transferred Jaime Tirado-Hernandez from the Lino Lakes facility directly to ICE custody. DHS later falsely claimed this transfer as a federal arrest tied to enforcement operations. Video documentation confirms the custody transfer.

[wow.dhs.gov/Minnesota]

Mauricio Morales-Morales (St. Cloud)DOC records show that Mauricio Morales-Morales (#270523) is currently in state custody serving his state sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-St. Cloud. On June 2, 2025, at the request of federal authorities, DOC coordinated transfer for Mr. Morales to a court hearing on a writ, which is a judicial order allowing a defendant to be moved temporarily for legal proceedings.

Mr. Morales was returned to state custody following the hearing on September 24, 2025. He was not “arrested” in the community. Despite this, DHS has falsely claimed that he was arrested by federal agents and is currently in ICE custody, when he remains in DOC custody in St. Cloud. DHS continues to mislabel routine, lawful custody movements as federal arrests.

[wow.dhs.gov/Minnesota]

So there are numerous indices of unreliability in Olson’s declaration (which would be fairly normal for declarations from DHS).

And that’s why I’m interested in his focus on HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, which is an overlooked subpart of ICE. Normally, HSI focuses on transnational crimes, including but not limited to sex and drug trafficking.

Katie Britt, who as Chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, plays a central role in funding DHS, has been ranting about the effect of the shut down on HSI.

While Britt is right that In Normal Times™, HSI plays a key role in policing transnational child sex trafficking (indeed, HSI played a role in both iterations of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, as well as the Ross Ulbricht investigation, but somehow Britt forgot to mention any of that), some of the cases she cites are largely ridiculous:

• The 2024 arrest of Sean Combs, did credit HSI. For now,Trump has saidhe won’t pardon him, but he has entertained doing so in the past. - The 2014 arrest of Chapo Guzmán, under Barack Obama,did credit HSI for its role. - Likewise, the 2024 arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, under Joe Biden, credited HSI. - And as with the other Sinaloa busts, HSI also played a role in the 2024 arrestof Joaquin Guzmán Lopez. - The 2008 arrest of Viktor Bout, under George W Bush, was significantly a DEA sting;the arrest press releasedid not credit HSI. - HSI was involved in the arrest of alleged MS-13 leader Francisco Javier Roman-Bardaleslast March, one of three of the ten criminals Britt identified arrested in any of the five years of a Trump presidency. But almost immediately after his extradition, DOJ started,, to dismantle much of the conspiracy prosecution in which he was charged as part of a bid to help Nayib Bukele cover up his ties to MS-13.in secret - While EDNY’s Gangs team chargedKeith Raniere, for crimes significantly perpetrated in NDNY, in 2018, after sentencing Seth DuCharmecreditedHSI for its role in the investigation. - HSI played a key role in the 2018 arrestand conviction of R Kelly. HSI did play a rolein the 2021 arrest, under Joe Biden, of Josh Duggar. The timing was probably particularly important, given the chummy ties Duggar hadwith broad swaths of the GOP political world, especially Mike Huckabee.- The 2015 arrest of Jared Fogle, under Barack Obama, did not credit HSI.

It’s not just that in her list of ten prosecutions in which HSI played a part, she listed at least three — Diddy, MS-13, and Duggar — in which Republicans have or might yet tamper. It’s not just that Britt ignored other key HSI successes, like Epstein and Ulbricht, that are problematic for Trump for other reasons.

It’s that Britt is misinformed — or more likely, given her role overseeing how DHS spends its money — lying about what has sidetracked HSI.

There have been reports, for months, about the frustrations of HSI officers who would normally hunt child sex predators who instead got reassigned to hunt brown grannies and day laborers.

Homeland security investigators worked approximately 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases from February through April compared to their average in prior years, according to a Times analysis of data obtained through the F.O.I.A. lawsuit.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Hany Farid, a

[computer scientist]who helped create software used by law enforcement and technology companies to detect child sexual abuse material. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children.”

The guy who carried out Todd Blanche’s order to kidnap Newark’s Mayor, Ricky Patel (and who will be easily discredited as a witness if LaMonica McIver ever goes to trial)? A senior HSI officer showing off for Kristi Noem.

One of the guys who assaulted David Huerta, Ryan Ribner, after saying that protesters exercising their First Amendment rights were “vicious, horrible people”?

He’s supposed to be supervising cyber financial investigations.

The guy who took time away hunting for child sex predators to avenge this poor Border Patrol officer who got spat on? HSI Special Agent Ryan Hudson.

1. I have been employed as a Special Agent (“SA”) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) since 2023, and I am currently assigned to the Child Exploitation Investigations Group in Orange County. Prior to my employment as a Special Agent, I was employed as a Border Patrol Agent with USBP from 2018-2021. My responsibilities as a Special Agent include investigating crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors, including, but not limited to, offenses involving travel in foreign commerce to engage in sexually explicit conduct with minors, and offenses involving the production, possession, distribution, and transportation of child pornography.

That pattern has continued in Minnesota.

The guys who took time away from narcotics, sex, and child trafficking investigations to charge protestors with felony spitting in Minnesota? HSI Special Agents Bronson Day and Richard Berger.

Even the guy who shifted from IRS investigations to HSI last year, Timothy Gerber, who appears to focus on doing someone’s dirty work and who wrote the affidavit in the Don Lemon case, also lists child exploitation among the cases he investigated before shifting to investigating Trump’s enemies.

The guys involved in a snatching in the vicinity of a daycare that led to a violent confrontation with Alex Pretti, 11 days before he was shot dead by CBP officers? Still anonymous HSI officers.

Max Shapiro had also recorded the interaction on Jan. 13. He was tipped off by Signal chats and friends in the area about Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at the intersection and went because his son’s day care center was nearby.

“As I approached, it appeared that Mr. Pretti had kicked out a taillight, and then, as you see in the video, an agent grabs him and throws him on the ground,” Shapiro told NBC News.

Shapiro said he spoke to Pretti once three federal vehicles pulled out of the area.

“I went up to him and I gave him a half-hug. I had my phone in one hand, and I sort of hugged him with the other,” he said.

“I asked him, ‘Are you good, are you OK?’ He says: ‘Yep, I’m good, I’m OK. Are we all OK? Are we safe? We OK?” Shapiro said. “He was making sure that everyone was safe.”

It’s not Democrats defunding DHS who are taking HSI away from their jobs hunting child sex traffickers.

*Stephen Miller already did that. *

And that’s why I’m interesting in the equivocations that Sam Olson, who is not all that forthcoming, made about HSI’s role in Minnesota’s surge.

1. During Operation Metro Surge, approximately 3,000 additional ERO officers and HSI agents were detailed to the St. Paul Field Office. These details have come at different times and for varying lengths of time. Typically, the ERO St. Paul Office is staffed with approximately 190 officers covering the five states of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. In the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, ERO has approximately 80 officers.

2. As of February 23, 2026, there are approximately 270 ERO officers and 700 HSI agents on detail to the St. Paul Field Office.

3. After February 25, 2026, approximately 107 ERO officers will remain on detail to the St. Paul Field Office. HSI anticipates that there will be approximately 300 agents on detail to the St. Paul Field Office by March 2026.

To be fair, he’s only reporting what HSI tells him to report; he’s in ERO, a parallel organization to HSI.

But if HSI are and possibly were such a big component of the Minnesota invasion, making up almost 3/4 of the deployed officers into this week, then why not have HSI do a declaration as well?

As of Monday, more than a tenth of the 6,000 HSI agents nationwide remained in Minnesota, possibly indicating that Kristi Noem is, as she has done consistently, trying to excuse the unmitigated violence of her goons, including the murders of Pretti and Renee Good, by criminalizing those they target. Hundreds of people who could be out hunting sex traffickers remain in Minnesota doing goddess knows what.

Katie Britt wants HSI officers back on the beat hunting down child sex traffickers.

Great! We can agree on that.

The problem is that, under Katie Britt’s oversight, they’ve already been taken off that job and sent to help kidnap children, often unlawfully. She’s a central part of the problem.