Morning Wire - "Operation Metro Surge” Ends & Colony Ridge Caves | 2.13.26

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

ICE is getting “out” of Minnesota as “Operation Metro Surge” ends, DHS funding is set to run dry on Saturday as democrats dig their heels in, and an alleged “illegal immigrant enclave” in Texas agrees to a $68 million dollar settlement. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2631- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Lean - Get 20% off when you enter code WIRE at https://TakeLean.com- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Trump administration pulls ICE out of Minnesota, declaring victory after thousands of arrests. Well, we're going to continue to enforce the immigration law. That's what American people are looking for. But it has to be a priority of criminals. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howl. It's Friday, February 13th. This is Morning Wire. Homeland Security faces a funding lapse as Democrats dig in amid a heated debate on immigration. They're not for the safety and the security of the American people. And a no vote today will continue. confirm that. And who pays the price? Well, the American people. And a development in Texas accused of being an illegal immigrant enclave agrees to a $68 million settlement with the Trump

administration. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You've probably heard about those weight loss injections that everyone's been talking about. And for good reason. The results can be pretty incredible. They work by helping regulate blood sugar and keeping your appetite in check. But here's the thing. Not everyone wants to deal with weekly injections, especially when you start hearing about some of the side effects that can come with them. That's where Lean comes in. It's a weight loss supplement developed by doctors, and people are seeing some really impressive results. The ingredients in Lean are backed by research, showing that they can help lower blood sugar,

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Morning Jenny. So a major announcement here yesterday. What do we need to know about the situation? Right. So Bordersar Tom Homan came out on Thursday at a press conference in Minneapolis. He's still on the ground there. He's been on the ground there since late last month. And he said that the drawdown that they had started a couple weeks ago of federal officers will be a complete drawdown in the end. Ice will still be in the area, but it's not going to be that sweeping effort like we've seen there and in other cities like Chicago or New Orleans. So is this a sign of something larger that the Trump's? Trump administration is actually backing away from the promise of carrying out its historic mass deportation campaign? No. This is something that Holman brought up, that there's been a lot of backlash about this, is that they're pulling out, you know, thousands of these federal officers and that there won't be this footprint on the ground. But he said they're still going to have that existing ICE office in the Twin Cities.

And that's about 150 ICE officers who were there before this all happened. They're base there. There's also going to be those Homeland Security Investigations agents on the ground investigating fraud. And then there's also federal officers who are there just trying to make sure that there's no anti-ice agitators going after their own. And Trump is supporting this. This is something that Holman brought up. He said that the president agreed with him that this drawdown should take effect and that they should pull back a little bit. But he also said that this doesn't mean the mass deportation effort is over.

here's Holman at a press conference Thursday talking about this. And in the next week, we're going to deploy the officers here in detail back to the home stations or other areas that country are needed. We're prioritizing those are the biggest threat to our community. The rapists, the murders, the child molesters, that's the right thing to do. But I'll say it again. President Trump made a promise of mass deportation, and that's what this country's going to get.

Well, as we've seen repeatedly, Trump and Homan are pragmatists when it comes to their policies. It sounds like that's what's going on here. Now, Democrats from the state have been asking for this all along, this withdrawal. What's been their response to Homan's decision? Right. So a lot of calls for victory here from Democrats on the city council and at other levels of government in Minnesota. This is something they're saying was caused by those ICE watch groups that went out and, you know, agitated and got in the way of ICE law enforcement and did so in the wake of the deaths of Alex Pready and Renee Good. And so they're saying that because ICE is still in the area, continue doing that, continue going out and trying to obstruct essentially. And they're saying, though, that they really had an effect on what the Trump administration was doing and that that was the reason that they're pulling out there.

Now, Holman said that the reason is because he brokered this unprecedented cooperation from local law enforcement and now is stationing ICE officers outside of local jail. so that those law enforcement at the local level can hand over illegal immigrants and they don't have to hold them any longer than they need to, but that they're willing to do so now. And so that's the reason for the drawdown in his words. So both sides are claiming victory here. Now, Senator Amy Klobuchar talked about this and she said that this will not be over until ICE is basically overhauled and essentially defunded. Listen to what she had to say. We did not blink. And yet, it is not over because, as you point out, there must be accountability, of course, for the deaths of Renee and Alex.

But there also must be accountability for all of the other damage they did economic harm to our state. And now, until they are overhauled, and until this enormous funding that they got changes, we do not know where they're going to go next. We've been tracking the situation in Minnesota for weeks now with you, Jenny. So it's a fascinating turn here. We'll see if things truly do deescalate. Thank you so much for reporting. Thank you. Homeland Security seems poised to experience a lapse in government funding on Saturday at midnight

amid an intense debate on immigration reforms. Daily Wire political reporter Cameron, Arcan, is here with the story. So, Cameron, we've been watching this deadline approaching, and now we have reached the point where we're expecting to see a DHS shutdown. What's the latest in Congress? So it looks extremely likely. this point that the Department of Homeland Security will face a lapse in federal government funding potentially up to the next week, maybe even longer. So on Thursday, there was a test vote,

as well as a push for maybe a stopgap funding bill to get this funding in place before the Friday deadline. But those efforts have failed, right? And so what we're seeing now is this negotiation process is going at a very slow pace. at this point. So it remains to be seen what could end up happening in terms of the actual federal immigration reform negotiations at this point. Democrats saying that they're not too pleased with what they've gotten from the White House, but we know very, very few details as to what those negotiations and what those potential reforms and room for compromises would actually look like at this point. We have almost no details that are public yet. What are Democrats asking for in terms of their negotiables? So they're looking at.

at they want an end to masking for ICE agents, no more roving patrols. Most importantly, this is going to probably become one of the key points of debate we're going to see soon is over the type of warrants used for immigration arrests. Right now, the federal authorities usually use administrative warrants to execute some of these arrests. Right now, Democrats really want to push for judicial warrants, which does make this a lot more difficult to make some of these key arrests. So what we're seeing right now is some of those demands being pushed, obviously, a lot of this centered on some of the tension that we saw in Minnesota and we saw a drawdown today of Operation Metro Surge. So we are seeing some changes from the Trump admin on the immigration front.

Now, to be clear, a DHS shutdown isn't going to have a ton of immediate impact on immigration because they're receiving funding from some other sources. Can you explain that? Correct. And a lot of people miss the really critical part of this is that the one big, Beautiful Bill funded the vast majority of Trump's immigration agenda with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol, right? So this was already funded. Now, the problem is some of the other agencies that Homeland Security has. TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard. People could be missing paychecks if this drags out, right? And these were not well-funded or properly funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, right? So that's what we're seeing with this now. So during the last government shutdown, we saw,

longer lines at TSA, people calling out sick. It was a 43-day-long shutdown. So when we talk about the direct impact on Americans, those are the things that we could be seeing in issues we could be encountering with this that aren't even related to immigration, but simply because this is a DHS shutdown, these are the agencies that would be most heavily impacted by this. There was a push from a Democrat to essentially say, hey, we'll fund the agency, but we're going to split it off on the immigration stuff. And John Barrazzo said yesterday, that is not happening. And he's the Senate majority whip. And he holds quite a bit of power in this process. Now, there was also some other major moves made in Congress this week, including with the Save America Act. That's a major

election policy bill. Can you tell us what the Save America Act would do? So the Save America Act would require not only voter ID nationwide, it would also require at the time when you registered a vote, Proof of Citizenship. And so that is a bit more strict than what you would maybe see in some states. Other states like Arizona already have laws in the books that are similar to this, where you basically have to prove that you are a citizen. Democrats have said that this is going to make it harder for some people to get certain types of documents. But obviously, as I said, this law or similar policies are already in the books in many states.

Now, what happened in Congress was the Save America Act did pass the House this week. And now there's a push in the Senate to get that through and ultimately to President Trump's desk. Well, certainly a busy week in Washington. We'll see how long the DHS shutdown lasts a few days. We'll be fine. But if it goes, you said more than a week or so, it'll really affect people. Cameron, thanks for reporting. Thank you.

A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit against Colony Ridge, the massive Texas development that became a magnet for illegal immigrants. Daily Wire editor-in-chief, Brent, sure has the story. Brent, great to have you back in the studio. So look, we've been tracking the... story all the way back from 2023 when Spencer Lindquist broke this story. What is the latest? This is the beginning of the end of this saga, or at least it could be. Some necessary background for what made Colony Ridge such a disturbing tale for the country is this place was massive. It was hailed by the developers as the fastest growing development in the whole United States.

There was projected growth of over 200,000 people. By geographic size, it was bigger than nation's capital, Washington, D.C. Why was it so controversial? It wasn't just a big development. The business model that the Daily Wire helped to uncover was that its marketing strategy was completely aimed exclusively at illegal immigrants, or at least foreign populations. It was all in Spanish. They were advertising to you that you could buy land in the United States. They advertised unconventional bank loans where you didn't need a social security number. I mean, the strategy was pretty obvious, and it worked. Illegal immigrants just poured in

in Texas. So after our reporting, and again, it was in 2023, there was just a ton of scrutiny on Colony Ridge. The Blaze did a great documentary on it. The Washington Post, the New York Times, they both sent reporters there to see what we saw. And ultimately, the Biden administration

saw the same thing, and they sued the development. But the interesting thing is here, the Biden administration brought the lawsuit. The Trump administration, their department of justice is the one settling this lawsuit with Texas's Republican Attorney General. So the settlement that they reached lays the groundwork not only to put an end to the scheme, but also to be a major boost for the surrounding communities around Colony Ridge who are really

hurt by this, you know, fastest growing ever development that brought 100,000 people right to their, you know, small little town in Texas. Now, this settlement has come out. We know the details of what was agreed to here. Can you walk us through that? The top line is that it's $68 million. Not in payments to anybody, but rather payments to fix what they created in Colony Ridge. $20 million will go to building a police center inside Colony Ridge with this massive influx of a foreign population.

The cartel came. It's been a hub for violent crime, for drug activity. It's really been a nightmare in Colony Ridge. Now they're going to have, they're going to hire. police force just for that area. So part of the settlement is to build that. The other 50 million or so dollars is to actually make infrastructure improvements inside Colony Ridge. We talked about the bad land that they were getting. Flood issues, just terrible land. They are now spending $50 million to fix that. And then with the provisions, it kind of makes interesting who's going to benefit from this.

because first of all, now to buy in Texas, you can't get an unconventional loan. It has to be a traditional loan. You have to have either a Texas issued ID, which illegal immigrants cannot get in Texas, or a legal visa issued since Donald Trump took office. That's a provision in there. It's a visa issued in 2025. So these are not going to go to an illegal immigrant population. All right.

So this is designed not just to fix the problems, but create a nice place for Americans to live. Yeah, and that's exactly how Harmeet Dillon, who led this settlement for the Department of Justice, that's how she's framing this. She pledged that her team will always go after schemes that encourage illegal immigration. Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, I mean, he was more focused just on the illegal immigration aspect of this. He hailed the deal and said that it halts the development of a de facto illegal immigrant community

in Texas. So yeah, I mean, this really may be a positive ending to a major problem in Texas. And to give us a shout out here, this really all began with Daily Wire reporting. It's amazing to see where this story went. Brent, thanks so much for reporting. Yeah, of course. Another story we're tracking, new developments in the Nancy Guthrie case. Here with more as Daily Wire reporter Lyndon Blake.

The FBI is now offering a reward up to $100,000 for any information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie or the arrest. of anyone involved in her disappearance. The suspect that was found on her ring doorbell footage is now being described as a man, approximately 5-9 to 510 with an average build. In the video that you see, he's wearing a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack. This is important to help identify him,

and the FBI says they are seeking any information that will help ID that person. Thanks for waking up with us. us. And if you're listening to the show, now you can watch for free on Daily Wire Plus. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.