Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced $10 million in state taxpayer money Thursday to prop up businesses reeling from federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis — businesses whose workforce, by definition, included people who were never authorized to work in the United States.

Breitbart reported that the announcement came the same day White House advisor Tom Homan said he is withdrawing most ICE officers from Minneapolis after arresting more than 4,000 illegal immigrants in the city. The operation is winding down. The governor's response is just ramping up.

Walz framed the enforcement not as law being applied, but as destruction being inflicted. He wants Washington to foot the bill.

"They left us with economic ruin."

"The federal government needs to pay for what they broke here."

What the federal government "broke" was a labor arrangement that depended on people working illegally. Walz is now asking taxpayers — in Minnesota and, ideally, across the country — to make those employers whole.

The Governor's Plea

Walz stood at his podium Thursday and delivered what amounted to a love letter to illegal immigration dressed up as economic policy. His economic development manager, Matt Varilek, laid out the damage in stark terms:

"Many Minnesota businesses – especially small businesses — are facing economic hardships that may prove insurmountable."

Varilek described massive reductions in foot traffic and revenue, driven by workers and customers who no longer feel comfortable showing up. The question Walz never addressed: why wouldn't legal residents feel comfortable showing up to work or go shopping?

The answer, of course, is that they aren't all legal residents. The businesses hardest hit are the ones most dependent on an illegal workforce and an illegal customer base. The $10 million isn't disaster relief. It's a subsidy for an economic model that was never lawful to begin with.

The Human Stories — and What They Actually Reveal

Standing alongside Walz was Henry Garcia, a Colombian migrant who manages a grocery store in St. Paul. Garcia's story is sympathetic on its face — sales fell by half after ICE operations intensified late last year.

"My customers are afraid to go shopping."

Think about that sentence. His customers are afraid — not of crime, not of violence, but of encountering immigration enforcement. Lawful residents and citizens do not typically fear a trip to the grocery store because ICE is in town. Garcia's lost customers aren't avoiding his store because the neighborhood got dangerous. They're avoiding it because they're here illegally and they know it.

Then there's Oscar Murcia, who arrived in St. Paul from El Salvador in 2000 and built a restaurant and bakery called El Guanaco into a four-location operation serving mostly Latino customers.

According to The New York Times, Murcia said four of his 64 staff members were detained — and that they had work permits and pending asylum applications. His Minneapolis location saw traffic plunge 80 percent as ICE activity intensified in December. He's since closed it, cut hours and staff at his remaining stores, and asked landlords and bankers for relief.

Murcia's story is the one Walz wants you to see: a hardworking immigrant building something real, now suffering because of federal enforcement. But even Murcia's own numbers tell a different story.

If only four of 64 employees were detained, why did foot traffic collapse by 80 percent? Because the customer base — not just the workforce — was built on a population that cannot withstand the mere presence of law enforcement.

That's not an economy. That's a house of cards.

Walz's America: Immigration Is "the Core of Who We Are"

The governor went further than economic arguments. He dove headlong into the kind of rhetoric that treats immigration — legal, illegal, all of it — as America's defining trait rather than one thread in a much larger tapestry.

"Immigration is the core of who we are."

"There is no Minnesota without our immigrant community."

"I want to speak directly to Minnesota's immigrant community, by extension, America's immigrant community. We see you, we hear you, we value everything that you bring … We believe in those words. 'Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be breathe free.'"

He even praised illegal immigrants for having created what he called "a food scene across this state that is second to none."

Not a word about the 275 million American citizens whose wages, housing costs, and economic prospects are shaped by the labor market illegal immigration distorts. Not a word about whether those Americans — the ones paying the $10 million — might have their own claims on the American Dream.

Walz described immigrant small business owners as the "epitome of the American Dream," invoking the classic image of someone who arrives with nothing and builds something to be proud of. It's a powerful image. It's also one that depends on a critical distinction Walz refuses to make: between immigrants who came legally and those who didn't.

When you erase that line, you don't elevate illegal immigrants. You devalue legal ones.

The Economics Walz Doesn't Want to Discuss

Minneapolis in 2024: average incomes sat at $52,000 while rent spiked to $16,500. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, it takes three full-time minimum-wage jobs to afford a two-bedroom apartment in the city. In 2023, Minnesota ranked fortieth among states in growth of median household income.

These are not the numbers of a thriving economy supercharged by immigration. These are the numbers of a state where working people are being squeezed — where the cost of living devours modest wages and upward mobility stalls.

Flooding the labor market with illegal workers who will accept lower pay and worse conditions doesn't help the Americans stuck in that squeeze. It tightens the vice.

Walz wants $10 million to cushion businesses from the consequences of enforcement. He has never proposed $10 million to cushion American workers from the consequences of the cheap-labor model those businesses relied on.

RestaurantBusinessOnline.com reported in January that wages in the restaurant sector are expected to accelerate from 3.7 percent this year to 5.6 percent by 2027, according to Oxford Economics — a direct result of tighter labor markets as deportation policy takes hold. For American workers, enforcement isn't economic ruin. It's a raise.

Sanctuary Logic, Meet Reality

The pattern is now familiar. Sanctuary jurisdictions build local economies around illegal labor. They look the other way on employment verification. They cultivate entire commercial districts that depend on a population living outside the law. Then, when the federal government enforces the law, they call it an attack.

Walz insisted Thursday that his government be allowed to participate in a federal investigation into Somali-operated fraud of federal taxpayers. The irony is breathtaking — a governor who spent years shielding illegal immigrants from federal enforcement now demanding a seat at the table when federal investigators come looking at fraud.

This is the contradiction at the heart of the progressive position on immigration: the law is an obstacle when it removes illegal workers, but a resource when it might deliver federal dollars or political leverage.

Homan is pulling most ICE officers out of Minneapolis. The arrests — more than 4,000 — represent the largest enforcement action the city has seen. The immediate disruption is real. Businesses that depended on illegal labor are hurting. Communities built around populations with no legal right to be here are contracting.

But disruption is not destruction. It's correction. President Trump laid out the broader vision in an interview with Breitbart News:

"We're going to need robots … to make our economy run because we do not have enough people. So we have to get efficient … we'll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically—it's going to be robotically … It's going to be big. Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots. The whole thing, it feeds on itself … we're going to streamline things. We need efficiency."

The choice is between an economy that runs on exploitable illegal labor and one that invests in its own citizens — through innovation, productivity, and wages that reflect actual market demand rather than an artificially suppressed labor pool.

Tim Walz chose the former. He's spending $10 million of Minnesotans' money to prove it.