MANKATO, Minn. – A foreign student at the Mankato state university was snatched from his off-campus residence by federal deportation agents. The arrest occurred Friday, said Edward Inch, the university president. Inch said that agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the arrest. The agency, he said, did not make an advance courtesy alert to the university or local police that it was in town. Inch said that the agency has ignored questions about why the arrest was made. Inch said he learned through other sources that the student was taken 60 miles to the Freeborn County jail in Albert Lea — one of only three jails in all of Minnesota that cooperates with ICE to hold its detainees. Consistent with student privacy protocols, Inch did not release the student’s name nor the degree the student was seeking nor the student’s country of origin nor ethnicity. There was doubt that the arrest was part of an ICE crackdown on foreign college students as part the Trump ethnic-cleansing pogrom. Since Trump took office in January, ICE has made 32,800 arrests nationwide, although a focus on college students has been only in recent weeks. Inch said he has contacted elected officials to assist in “stopping this activity within our community of learners.” Of MSU-Mankato’s 10,000 students, 1,000 are foreign nationals from 100 countries.

Earlier: University denies any part in deportation arrest

Earlier: Trump immigration agents take UM student away

Earlier: How many Duluth alien arrests? ICE won’t say

Earlier: ICE jailing immigrant detainees in Albert Lea

Inch. President of Minnesota State University Mankato since 2021. In higher education 36 years.

Verbatim

Inch:  “Our international students play an important role in our campus and community. They are a valued part of our campus culture. This action hurts what we try to accomplish as a university—support all learners to receive the education they desire to make the impact they want in their communities.”

ICE profile

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has 20,000 employees in 400 offices in the United States and 53 countries. Upper Midwest operations are from the fortress-like Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling in Bloomington. The agency is within the cabinet-level Homeland Security Department. Most ICE operations are secret with virtually no local accountability. The ICE director, Todd Lyons, reports through a chain of command to President Trump, who has called him a “favorite.” Lyons holds a master’s degree in criminal justice from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.