The Minnehaha County Jail in Sioux Falls on May 15, 2025. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
Two federal agencies had to move 35 people from the Minnehaha County Jail in the run-up to a state-funded saturation patrol late last month in Sioux Falls.
Minnehaha County officials asked federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service to transport the inmates, whom the county is paid to house, to other regional facilities to make space for a surge in local inmates.
“These troopers are very good at what they do,” said Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead, who had advance notice about the operation. “If 15 or 20 troopers show up, they’re going to make arrests.”
State corrects record: 78 people arrested during ‘Operation Prairie Thunder’ saturation patrol
The saturation patrol ran on three days leading into Labor Day weekend as part of “Operation Prairie Thunder.” The branded campaign is a two-part initiative from Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden, meant to address crime in Sioux Falls — where some crimes have hit five-year lows — and help federal immigration agents detain people suspected of being in the U.S. without authorization.
The Rhoden administration has said the operations won’t impact the Highway Patrol’s budget, but the movement of inmates points to other costs associated with the campaign.
ICE agents moving inmates aren’t on the street enforcing immigration law, said Milstead. The county jail, meanwhile, lost the revenue it had earned by housing federal inmates, and the federal agencies incurred the expense of transporting them to other facilities.
The first of what are meant to be monthly saturation patrols over the next six months put 15 additional Sioux Falls-area state troopers on the city’s streets.
On top of tickets for drunken driving and speeding, the troopers arrested 78 people on drug charges. Twenty-seven of them were booked at the Minnehaha County Jail and released on their own recognizance, but 51 stayed through the weekend to await a bond hearing with a judge.
Milstead said he supports the enforcement efforts, but that supporting it meant making room at the jail to brace for the impact.
“As another operation approaches, we’ll need to do the same thing,” he said.
Courts, public defenders also impacted
The court system also felt an impact. Two judges hear bond arguments and set release conditions for inmates in two separate courtrooms the afternoon after a typical weekend. The courthouse was closed the Friday before Labor Day and on the holiday, however.
Between the extra days and the extra arrests, the courthouse needed to pull another judge into service in a third courtroom to manage the overflow.
It’s not the first time that’s happened, though, according to Second Judicial Circuit Court Administrator Karl Thoennes. The Tuesday after the holiday was “busy, heavy, but not unusual necessarily” after a four-day weekend in the state’s largest metro area.
Minnehaha County Public Defender Traci Smith said her office saw a “significant uptick” as a result of the operation.
“Our concern is that these are typically non-violent, nuisance-type offenses and outstanding warrants,” Smith wrote. “Dedicating substantial attention to these cases diverts limited resources away from our ability to prioritize the most serious cases — those involving victims awaiting resolution and matters that directly impact public safety.”
Federal inmate movement
The movement of federal inmates was meant to insure there would be space for local inmates, who take priority over inmates from other jurisdictions.
Sheriff Milstead said his jail asked ICE to move 16 of its detainees to other facilities, and for the U.S. Marshals to transfer 19. The federal agents had to drive some as far as Sisseton.
“They’re moving some of them 150, 200 miles away,” Milstead said.
‘Operation Prairie Thunder’ will assist with deportations and boost Sioux Falls law enforcement
Some of the transferred inmates will likely need to return to Sioux Falls, at least temporarily. That’s because the federal government has prisons, but it doesn’t have jails.
People incarcerated as they await trial on federal charges typically stay in local jails, and the federal government pays a fee — $114 per day, per inmate in Minnehaha County — to house them. Jails also collect fees for housing ICE detainees before they’re transferred for appearances in regional immigration courtrooms.
The jail in Sioux Falls didn’t stop taking federal inmates after the transfer. Eight people were arrested on immigration violations during the saturation patrol and were booked at the jail, filling half the beds ICE detainees had left before the operation began.
ICE did not immediately respond to questions from South Dakota Searchlight about the situation.
Barry Lane, a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Marshals Service, said it’s not uncommon for federal inmates to be moved out of local jails to make space when things get busy. Transporting inmates, he said, is “one of the most expensive things we do.”
Lane, who works in the Washington, D.C., area, said he wasn’t aware of any particular difficulties for marshals in South Dakota.
“Whatever’s going on near you, it may or may not be unusual,” Lane said.
Locals would like to see permanent commitment
Milstead expects the “roller coaster” of jail movement to continue with Operation Prairie Thunder, but he’d like to see a more permanent response from the governor’s office.
He and Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum have had conversations to that effect with Rhoden’s office since the first saturation patrol. Their hope is to embed a state trooper permanently in one of the area’s joint task forces. There are three: one for violent offenses, another for the service of felony warrants and another that targets drug trafficking.
Those task forces, he said, help explain why the city’s been able to hold the crime rate largely steady as the population has grown, and to see some offenses drop to five-year lows.
Thum said he appreciates the state helping out by patrolling the streets for the same reason he sees the task forces as important. His patrol officers frequently attend to calls for service and are less able to target traffic enforcement, like troopers do, or dive into long-term investigations, as the task forces do.
“The day-to-day operations of the city tie up a lot of our resources,” Thum said.
But Thum said the idea of welcoming a task force trooper, with specialized training in drug interdiction, may be more hopeful than pragmatic in the near term.
Hiring officers has grown difficult statewide, the chief said. Thum’s department is authorized to have 302 officers. He has 294. The Highway Patrol, he said, “is dealing with the same thing we’re dealing with.”
“We’re perpetually playing catch up at this point,” Thum said. “Once agencies get to be a certain size, you’re just constantly in hiring mode.”
Steve Long, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said the Highway Patrol has a 12% vacancy rate at the moment, but there are trooper recruits heading soon to the state’s law enforcement academy.
Long didn’t say how many troopers the state’s authorized to hire, but legislative documents offered in January put the figure at 201. At that time, there were 21 vacancies.
Josie Harms, spokeswoman for Rhoden’s office, said the administration is amenable to the idea of adding a trooper to a Sioux Falls task force.
Harms confirmed that the governor’s office has been in discussions with Sioux Falls officials about it, and wrote that “it is certainly a possibility, though nothing has been finalized.”
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