Trump is making leadership changes and starting to play nice with Minnesota Democrats.
Following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti over the weekend, politically conscious immigration hawks were hoping that President Trump could find a way to shift the narrative on the White House’s increasingly unpopular enforcement strategy.
Late Monday morning, Trump made clear he’s listening.
Trump announced that he was sending his border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, emphasizing that the experienced immigration official will report “directly to me.” He also called Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and said the pair “seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” and Trump said later Monday he also had a “good telephone conversation” with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who, like Walz, has spent recent days urging Minnesotans to resist federal immigration enforcement officials in the wake of multiple shootings in the state.
It’s unclear how the situation will play out on the ground over the next few days as Trump weighs his next steps and Minnesota’s Democratic leaders demand a retreat of federal immigration enforcement. Frey, for his part, suggested in a thread on X that Trump had already agreed to a partial drawdown and stridently insisted that the city has not changed its stance on helping ICE enforce immigration law, saying that “we will not participate in unconstitutional arrests of our neighbors or enforce federal immigration law.”
Regardless of whether Frey’s version of events comes to pass, it’s clear that changes are being made at the top. As Homan arrives in Minnesota, DHS announced that Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino is on his way out — welcome news for Democratic critics who attributed ICE’s aggressive tactics to Bovino’s leadership.
The president’s conciliatory moves were widely interpreted as a strategic effort to de-escalate the situation as polls continue to suggest that the president is losing ground on the issue that vaulted him to a second term. While voters applaud Trump’s quick success in stemming the flow of illegal immigration at the southern border, many American voters think immigration officers have gone too far in enforcing the president’s deportation agenda.
And despite the White House’s insistence to the contrary, elevating Homan to take charge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis was widely seen as a warning shot to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose leadership overseeing the White House’s immigration agencies has come under fire in recent months.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday whether the Border Patrol officer who shot Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti while he was filming deportation operations had acted appropriately, Trump said: “We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” the president added. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”
The president’s hesitation to reflexively defend the Border Patrol officers’ actions marked a notable shift from the much harsher and far more definitive rhetoric expressed by some of his immigration enforcement deputies in the shooting’s immediate aftermath.
Noem reacted to the fatal shooting by insisting that Pretti aimed to “kill” and “inflict maximum damage” because he had a semiautomatic handgun, even though video footage of the incident shows he never brandished his gun and local law enforcement confirmed he had a lawful concealed carry permit. And while he did not have his permit on his person at the time of the shooting, failure to carry a permit is a misdemeanor in Minnesota that’s typically dismissed once the person produces their permit in court. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller labeled him a “would-be assassin” who tried to “murder federal law enforcement.” Bovino insisted that Pretti intended to “massacre” federal immigration officers.
“You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple,” FBI Director Kash Patel said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.
“You don’t have that right to break the law and incite violence,” Patel added, enraging conservative Second Amendment advocates.
Pressed by a reporter during Monday’s briefing about the decision by Noem and Miller to label Pretti a domestic terrorist, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “I have not heard the president characterize Mr. Pretti that way.”
The rhetorical break between the president and senior law enforcement officials on the matter underscores the crisis in public relations playing out inside the administration over immigration enforcement and what might be done to turn things around ahead of the midterms.
As some Republicans see it, the aggressive nature of federal immigration enforcement has overshadowed the administration’s otherwise widely championed success in stemming the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. What could have been a “promises made, promises kept” public relations campaign heading into the midterms has now metastasized into an increasingly unpopular deportation agenda that GOP lawmakers are struggling to defend in interviews.
“Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now,” Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt told CNN’s Dana Bash over the weekend. “He’s getting bad advice right now. The president needs to let the American people — what is the solution? How do we bring this to conclusion? And I think only the president can answer that question, because it’s complicated. We have to enforce federal laws, but we need to know, what is the endgame? And I don’t think it’s to deport every single non-U.S. citizen.”
Over the next few months, the White House’s challenge is figuring out how to follow through on the president’s 2024 campaign promises on immigration while somehow tamping down suburban and independent voters’ concerns about ICE’s tactics. That tricky balance is at odds with the strategy preferred by immigration hawks like Stephen Miller, who believe that even mildly backing away from an aggressive deportation strategy risks caving to Democratic lawmakers who resist cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and emboldening progressive agitators who interfere with immigration enforcement operations on the ground.
Behind the scenes, immigration hawks see these latest developments in Minnesota as worsening the existing tensions between Homan and Rodney Scott on one side, and Noem, Miller, and special government employee Corey Lewandowski on the other. Whereas the former camp favors a more tactical approach to immigration enforcement that focuses deportation raids on violent criminals, the latter camp is focused on increasing deportations as much as possible, no matter the circumstances of the illegal aliens in question.
GOP lawmakers have spent recent days lamenting the Pretti shooting in public statements, calling for independent investigations into the matter, and criticizing some administration officials’ rhetoric.
“We must have a transparent, independent investigation into the Minnesota shooting, and those responsible—no matter their title—must be held accountable,” first-term Utah Senator John Curtis said in Monday afternoon statement.
“Officials who rush to judgment before all the facts are known undermine public trust and the law-enforcement mission,” he added. “I disagree with Secretary Noem’s premature DHS response, which came before all the facts were known and weakened confidence.
Senator Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is calling on the heads of ICE, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Customs and Border Protection to appear before Congress next month and testify in a public hearing.