The count out of Minnesota is in, and it's a big one. More than 1,000 Somali asylum-seekers have been ordered deported since February, the product of continued follow-through on the federal enforcement action that rolled through the state last winter. MSN has the story.

For readers who don't live in this world, a deportation order is what a judge signs after a case moves through immigration court. The alien either gets their day in court on the merits or loses by default for skipping the hearing. Once the judge signs, the alien is on the clock to be removed. The order itself is the paperwork. Getting the person on a plane is the enforcement, and that part comes after.

For years a lot of folks operated under the assumption that immigration law was something that happened to other people in other states. Last winter's enforcement action disabused them of that notion, and the deportation orders kept stacking up after the arrests stopped making headlines. More than 1,000 orders since February. That's a steady drumbeat, and it's the part of the operation that matters most. An arrest is a headline. A signed order is a case closed.

I've watched this beat long enough to say enforcement works in two phases. The first is the arrest, and that's what gets the cameras. The second is adjudication and removal, and that's where past operations fell apart. Cases used to sit. Signed orders used to gather dust. I never saw evidence anyone was in a hurry to change that. What's different now, based on this Minnesota number, is that arrests from last winter are turning into signed orders. Whether those orders turn into actual removals is the next test, and I'll be watching the count on that too.

The asylum angle deserves a plain-word explanation. Filing an asylum claim gets you into the system and buys you a hearing. It does not get you asylum. If the judge finds the claim fails, the alien gets ordered removed. Claiming asylum and winning asylum are two different things, and the gap between them is exactly where these more than 1,000 Somalis landed. That's not cruelty. That's a courtroom doing its job.

Expect the usual voices to call this a tragedy. They said the same thing about every enforcement surge I ever covered, and they'll say it about the next one. A judge heard these cases. A judge signed these orders. The system functioned, and that's refreshing to write.

The scoreboard: more than 1,000 deportation orders for Somali nationals in Minnesota since February. Orders signed, cases adjudicated, removals pending. The count keeps climbing.