St. Paul officials disclosed ICE detained a legally authorized snowplow driver, saying he was targeted over his national origin

On January 17, 2026, St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw and Street Superintendent Jericho Huggar publicly disclosed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained one of the department's snowplow drivers despite the man's federal work authorization, a valid state commercial driver's license, and a clean criminal background check the city itself had run. Kershaw said ICE detained the man "purely based on his country of origin" while he was outside a work site, and called the detention "illegal" and "a detention that never should have happened." The man was taken to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis before being transferred to a detention facility in El Paso, Texas. Neither report establishes the exact date ICE detained him.

Kershaw and Huggar organized a GoFundMe to support the man's wife, who they said was left without income and was afraid to go to work; more than $15,000 of a $20,000 goal had been raised within days. The man has a serious, recently diagnosed medical condition requiring specific medication and diet; the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and U.S. Rep. Angie Craig were working to ensure he received proper care, and as of the disclosure he had access to medicine but not the required food.

The disclosure came amid a large federal immigration-enforcement surge into the Twin Cities that began in December 2025. Kershaw noted the same El Paso facility had recently held a Nicaraguan man arrested in Minneapolis who died in ICE custody, and said the case undercut official characterizations of the enforcement operation as targeting people with criminal records or without legal status. Neither DHS nor ICE had publicly responded to the allegations as of the disclosure.