Governor Rhoden’s Weekly Column – Operation: Prairie Thunder

Operation: Prairie Thunder
By: Gov. Larry Rhoden
August 1, 2025

Strong, Safe, and Free. Our state is all three of those things, and it’s my mission as your Governor to keep it that way. When it comes to safety, one of our biggest opportunities to move the needle is in Sioux Falls – and that’s what my administration will accomplish with Operation: Prairie Thunder.

Sioux Falls has seen impressive growth, especially in the last few years. Our strong economy and focus on freedom opened the door for that opportunity, and the city has managed that growth well. But there are challenges associated with that growth, and any growing city is going to have to work harder to keep crime under control.

Operation: Prairie Thunder has two main initiatives:

• Enhanced anti-crime and drug enforcement operations in the Sioux Falls metro area; and
• Support for ICE in their deportation efforts across several state agencies statewide.

The targeted anti-crime initiative will focus on drug interdiction, investigating gang activity, holding parole absconders accountable, and deterring lawlessness like the street racing issue  in our biggest metro area.

This will be accomplished through saturation patrols over the next five months. Twice a month, we will dedicate 10 to 15 additional Highway Patrol troopers to the Sioux Falls metro and leverage aerial assets like the Highway Patrol plane and our National Guard’s Lakota helicopters, which specialize in drug interdiction. I recently had the opportunity to take a ride in one of those Lakotas, and I was blown away!

These efforts will be coordinated with existing local crime task forces. We won’t be reinventing the wheel. The law enforcement folks in Sioux Falls are doing great work – Operation: Prairie Thunder just gives them some extra juice to get the job done. If this initiative is successful, it’ll give us a good model to apply to other communities, as well. I’ve already had discussions along those lines with the Mayor of Rapid City.

The second initiative of Operation: Prairie Thunder is support for ICE across my administration. The South Dakota Highway Patrol is already working alongside ICE to arrest criminal illegal aliens and hand them over to custody. Shortly after I made that announcement, I had a conversation with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and we came up with a couple ideas to go further.

I am deploying six South Dakota National Guard soldiers to support ICE – three in Sioux Falls and three in Rapid City. They will provide administrative support in both ICE offices for the next six months.

The South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) will also support ICE with transport needs to and from immigration court in the Twin Cities, as well as identifying potential criminal illegal aliens in our prisons. We’re already working to parole several criminal illegal aliens to ICE custody to be deported out of our country.

There’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s very simple: Highway Patrol will support ICE with arrests; the National Guard will support ICE with processing and administrative functions; and DOC will support ICE with transportation, identifying illegal immigrants in our prisons, and getting them paroled to ICE custody.

Over the last six months, I’ve had the distinct honor leading the greatest, freest state in America. As long as I am your Governor, we will keep it that way. And Operation: Prairie Thunder will be a crucial part of keeping our state safe for the future.

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