Minneapolis and St Paul, which together are known as the Twin Cities, are home to one of the largest Somali communities in the world.
According to local leaders, there are about 80,000 people living there who are originally from Somalia, and the vast majority are American citizens.
The operation is expected to begin this week, and include around 100 ICE agents, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the deployment of federal agents.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, declined to comment on the upcoming operation, and denied that some people will be targeted.
“Every day, ICE enforces the laws of the nation across the country,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement.
“What makes someone a target of ICE is not their race or ethnicity, but the fact that they are in the country illegally.”
The Trump administration has intensified its immigration crackdown in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC last week, which killed Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and seriously injured Andrew Wolfe, 24.
The suspect who has been arrested is originally from Afghanistan.
On Tuesday, Trump told his top aides that people from Somalia “come from hell and complain”.
“Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” he said.
He added that the US would “go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country”.
During the cabinet meeting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested her agency will target visa fraud in Minnesota.
Minnesota state Senator Zaynab Mohamed said in a statement on X that “when ICE agents interact with Somalis here, they will find what we’ve been saying for years: Almost all of us are US citizens”.
Somalia is one of the poorest nations in the world, and many of the migrants who fled for the US left in the 1990s during the country’s decades-long civil war.
Local leaders has condemned Trump’s plan as “racist” and an attempt to distract the public.
“We welcome support in investigating and prosecuting crime,” said Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election and who has been sparring with the president in recent days.
“But pulling a PR stunt and indiscriminately targeting immigrants is not a real solution to a problem.”
