Minnesota leaders respond to removal of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Walz and Ellison testify on fraud

Minnesota was the focus of two congressional hearings this week. A Senate committee discussed the actions of federal immigration agents in the state, and a House committee discussed fraud in some federal programs administered by the state.

On Tuesday, March 3, the Senate Judiciary Committee met and questioned Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem about Operation Metro Surge and other management decisions she made during her time leading the department. On Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced Noem’s removal from the role. The House Oversight Committee met on March 4 and 5, and discussed the fraud and misuse of federal funding and the subsequent investigations in Minnesota.

Department of Homeland Security

As DHS has begun withdrawing federal agents from Minnesota, attention has turned to the impact that Operation Metro Surge had on the Twin Cities and the greater Minnesota communities in which agents were the most active. Also under scrutiny is the response from department leadership that followed the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were shot and killed by immigration agents in January.

During the Judiciary Committee hearing, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar asked Noem about the assertion by DHS that Good and Pretti were “domestic terrorists.” Noem said that she never called Pretti a domestic terrorist directly, and instead said that he was engaged in domestic terrorism at the time he was killed.

Klobuchar also said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents violated the constitutional rights of Minnesotans, citing several interactions between federal agents and both local law enforcement and private citizens which, she said, point to racial profiling by federal authorities.

In the wake of the killings of both Good and Pretti, federal investigators took on leading the investigations. In both cases local law enforcement and investigators were barred from accessing evidence. When Klobuchar asked about their exclusion, Noem responded that because the FBI was leading the investigation, that question should be answered by the FBI.

Other members of the Judiciary Committee also called Noem’s leadership during Operation Metro Surge into question, and criticism came from both sides of the aisle. Though some Republican members voiced their support for the immigration crackdown, others expressed skepticism of the operation, and some also questioned how Noem spent DHS funds.

Two days later, Trump announced that Noem had been removed from her role as DHS secretary, and would instead serve as a “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.” Some elected officials from Minnesota have reacted to Noem’s removal.

Response to the change

Sen. Tina Smith wrote on X, “Kristi Noem led a lawless and violent agency that wreaked havoc on our state and killed two Minnesotans. Her firing is welcome news, but it is much too late.” Her statement continued, “Until Congress passes meaningful restraints to rein in ICE’s terror, nothing will substantively change. ICE will take its reckless and dangerous behavior to whichever city or town the President decides to target next.”

Gov. Tim Walz also took to X, writing, “Kristi Noem has done a stunning amount of damage and it’s good she’s gone. But this doesn’t change the fact that we need a complete overhaul of DHS, impartial investigations into the killings of two American citizens, and information on children that were taken from Minnesota.”

State Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy released a statement calling for further consequences for those who led Operation Metro Surge. She said, “This is the beginning of Noem’s accountability, not the end. She lost a job title and access to a private jet. Minnesotans lost their freedom, lost family members, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti lost their lives. Reassigning Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino does nothing to heal the harm they’ve done. I look forward to them facing real consequences.”

Republican state Rep. Isaac Schultz expressed his support for the DHS leadership change. “We want to see immigration enforcement be more effective and done better at protecting people’s constitutional rights,” he said. “I believe that the best ability for the president to execute his mission is if we do this work better. And I think that’s what the president is committed to.”

House Oversight Committee hearings on fraud

The hearing focusing on DHS came during a week in which the House Oversight Committee also held hearings about the fraud and resulting investigations in Minnesota.

Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison both appeared before the committee to talk about the instances of fraud in the state that resulted in the misuse and theft of federal funding.

Senate Republicans questioned why the fraud was not discovered earlier, and why the response was not swifter after initial whistleblower reports. Others drew connections between the state’s Somali immigrant population and the fraud.

While several large-scale investigations have focused on fraud allegedly perpetrated by Somali immigrants, there is no evidence that there is widespread fraud within the larger Somali community.

Walz and Ellison defended the state’s response and the investigations that have taken place over the past several years, with Walz saying that the state was committed to prosecuting those suspected of fraud. Walz and Ellison, along with some Democratic members of the Oversight Committee, also questioned what they described as a lack of federal oversight during Operation Metro Surge, saying it caused chaos in the Twin Cities and undermined the work of state offices working on fraud investigations.

“Under the guise of combating fraud, the federal government has flooded Minnesota with masked, untrained, and unaccountable agents who are wreaking havoc in our communities on the streets of Minnesota,” Walz said.

In his opening statements, Ellison said that the federal immigration action has impacted the state’s ability to investigate fraud. He pointed to the resignations of 14 prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, many of whom cited pressure to investigate Good’s widow instead of federal agents after Good was killed on Jan. 7. He added, “The remaining staff should be spending their time prosecuting fraudsters and criminals. Instead, they are drowning in immigration related petitions resulting from Operation Metro Surge.”

Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer attended a portion of the hearings, though he is not on the committee. During the hearing he asked Walz and Ellison questions, though did not give them time to answer. He addressed Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican, saying that he did not believe Ellison and Walz to be answering the questions of when they knew about the fraud that was occurring, and what they knew about it.

Kirsten Wisniewski March 6, 2026