No, ICE isn’t ‘retreating.’ It’s loading up to invade your town.

It was understandable and probably justified when a surge of roughly 3,000 masked and gun-toting federal agents into greater Minneapolis was described in martial terms, as a kind of modern-day Battle of Stalingrad fought in a snowbound U.S. prairie metropolis.

Watching the icy slips of the clumsy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and the remarkable pushback from whistle-blowing neighbors braving sub-zero cold, the writer Margaret Killjoy quoted a friend: “ICE made a classic Nazi mistake: they invaded a winter people in winter.” So when border czar Tom Homan stood at a Minneapolis podium last week and declared an end to “Operation Metro Surge,” many in the media raced to cast the move as a major pullback.

“The Occupying Army Retreats,” proclaimed the American Prospect, in a tone that was echoed across numerous outlets: “The announcement of ICE’s withdrawal from Minnesota, like that of the British from Boston 250 years ago, marks a victory for people power.”

But the smell of victory didn’t travel the nearly 1,200 miles east to the South Jersey suburb of Lindenwold, where on the very same morning that Homan announced the end of the Minnesota surge, residents were shocked by an ICE raid that targeted a bus stop for an elementary school in a district that is 60% Latino.

A Ring video from the Woodland Village Apartments, where about 44 kids were waiting for the bus, captured the alarming scene as fourth- and fifth-graders — some screaming “ICE! ICE!” — ran away from the masked agents in tactical gear who’d pulled up in unmarked vehicles. School officials believe no child was apprehended, although there were conflicting reports on whether any adult was arrested. But the suburban community some 15 miles southeast of Philadelphia was shaken to its core.

In a video recorded during an emergency “Ice Out” demonstration in town, a bearded white man with a large American flag slung over his shoulder tried to give voice to the community’s anguish.

“I never protested before in my entire life but...,” he said, choking back tears. “I watched fourth- and fifth-grade kids run away from our own government. I never want to see that again.”

Unfortunately, America is all but certain to see this again. While Homan’s public proclamation of a drawdown in Minnesota seemed a small concession to crumbling political support for ICE, what happened in Lindenwold was a window into a dystopian near-future of more immigration raids — not fewer. This would allow an undeterred authoritarian Donald Trump regime to fill a $38 billion gulag archipelago of coast-to-coast warehouses with newly handcuffed human beings.

Even Homan said as much last Thursday, if you listened closely. “And let me be clear, mass deportations will continue, and we’re not rolling back,” he said. “President Trump promised mass deportations, and that’s exactly what the American people are going to get.”

Let’s also be clear. What happened in Minneapolis since the start of the year really was a landmark victory for democracy and the notion that everyday Americans can defend their neighbors. At the cost of two lives, the great personal risks taken by Minnesota’s ICE resisters ended in both an unforgettable moral triumph and some real tangible gains.

The actions taken by ICE watchers — who blew their alert whistles, recorded the government’s maneuvers on their phones, or volunteered food and rides to help immigrants stay safe indoors — prevented the arrests of scores and maybe hundreds of law-abiding neighbors. The courage of their resistance drove a huge shift in public opinion against the immigration raids, forcing rare concessions from the Trump regime. This heroism probably did cause ICE to scale back its Minnesota operations sooner than planned, and even pressured the Justice Department to investigate two agents whose version of a shooting didn’t fit reality.

But Trump’s mass deportation drive — with an inexorable inertia created when Congress threw a whopping $170 billion toward this effort last year — refuses to obey the normal laws of political gravity.

For starters, the Department of Homeland Security has lied repeatedly to the American people, which means there’s no way of truly knowing to what extent the Minnesota surge has even ended. The day after Homan’s announcement, a St. Paul-based journalist noted 100 reports of ICE activity, still more than any other state.

But even more importantly, a flurry of reports last week about a massive ICE expansion for the rest of the year with many more agents in the field, more offices to support them, and more detention camps to hold thousands of new arrestees showed that what happened on the streets of Minneapolis was not the beginning of the end.

It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The fact that ICE is ending its surge in Minneapolis — similar to what happened in 2025 in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans, albeit on a smaller scale — seems less significant than the fact that the agency has, under Trump, more than doubled the number of field agents from 10,000 to 22,000, with many just hitting the streets.

Indeed, the drive to recruit new agents isn’t letting up. A Times of London reporter described the push as “a breakneck operation” as he watched officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which also had its biggest hiring year in a decade — work the crowd with promises of a $50,000 bonus at a sold-out professional bull-riding event in Salt Lake City.

Can we really celebrate a “retreat” from Minneapolis when WIRED reported last week that ICE is also rushing to close leases on as many as 150 new offices in every single state, to house its growing roster of agents and the attorneys and other back-office staffers needed to process the thousands of new arrestees?

For example, multiple outlets confirmed last week that Homeland Security just inked a lease for high-end office space in the Westlakes Office Park in Berwyn in Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs, reportedly to house ICE attorneys and related personnel. A planned office in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, at 801 Arch St., is also listed by WIRED.

Indeed, the regime’s glum vision for the future of mass detention in America is laid bare by news that DHS is currently spending $38 billion from last year’s legislative windfall to buy as many as 23 massive warehouses that critics see as concentration camps on U.S. soil.

» READ MORE: From Big Lots to warehousing humans: ICE plan sparks fear in Schuylkill County | Will Bunch

Experts say the logistics of converting these rectangular behemoths — like the 1.3 million square foot warehouse in Schuylkill County, Pa., that used to distribute cheap consumer goods for Big Lots that DHS claims can house up to 7,500 detained immigrants — into even remotely humane facilities is daunting if not impossible. Yet DHS is plowing ahead with stunning speed, clearly expecting a pending spike in arrests.

In rural Social Circle, Ga., ICE is claiming it will convert a 1 million square foot warehouse into a detention site for as many as 10,000 people — double the town’s population — as soon as two months from now. Project Salt Box, which is tracking the rapid gulag expansion, says DHS is using a legal maneuver to fast-track bidding to allow large private firms like the Geo Group to run these detention centers.

Neither Trump’s plunging approval rating, nor the rapidly rising level of ICE resistance from everyday citizens like that flag-waver in Lindenwold, nor the Democratic demands for major reforms that have caused a DHS shutdown (with, ironically, no impact on ICE or Border Patrol) have put a dent in this unyielding drive toward rank inhumanity.

A newly bloated ICE wants to create a Minneapolis in every state even as more and more Americans are willing to take considerable risks to stop them. What we are witnessing just over one year into the Trump regime is less a retreat and more an escalating game of chicken — with the forces of democracy and fascism headed for a dangerous collision.

If you’re part of the growing American majority who is disgusted with what ICE is doing in our streets, now is the time to get your whistle, attend a training session on what to do when the secret police arrive at your kid’s bus stop, attend a protest like the next “No Kings” event on March 28, and join the movement to protect your neighbors.

In the spirit of John Paul Jones and the revolutionary American founders, we have not yet begun to fight.

» READ MORE: SIGN UP: The Will Bunch Newsletter