The Trump administration’s pullback of federal immigration agents from Minneapolis was a political retreat that showed there are limits to what Americans will accept as the president pursues his deportation agenda.
The withdrawal came on the eve of a funding shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, with a drumbeat of polls showing public opposition to President Trump’s immigration tactics that rose after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents last month.
As Republican lawmakers increasingly worry about their midterm prospects, a few began to offer critical statements on the issue. Others warned that Democrats had been successful at stoking the backlash.
“This is a highly organized, highly coordinated effort of resistance — it’s highly effective,” Senator Ron Johnson, a Trump ally from Wisconsin, said in an interview on Thursday. “The left is very effective at organizing this. They exploited and used their martyrs effectively, and the Trump administration is reacting to that.”
In a hint of the new Republican wariness on the issue, Mr. Johnson suggested that Immigration and Customs Enforcement resources would be better deployed in cities and states with leaders and citizens who would cooperate with federal deportation efforts and be less likely to foment protests.
In recent weeks, a slow but steady trickle of Republicans have found space to oppose parts of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who faces a tougher re-election challenge than any other Republican in the chamber, took credit for persuading ICE to leave her state. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi was one of several Republicans to publicly oppose new ICE detention centers in their states. And Republicans in Congress agreed to Democratic demands to split off homeland security funding from the rest of a government funding package — a move that paved the way for parts of the department to shut down this weekend.
News also emerged this week that the Trump administration had quietly withdrawn National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., after dispatching them last year to help with federal immigration operations.
Still, Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, said on Thursday that the removal of federal immigration agents from Minneapolis was not an indication that the administration had changed its position on immigration enforcement.
But as Republicans begin to contemplate a post-Trump future, other pushback to the party’s leader has emerged. A few Republicans in the House and Senate have broken from their party to vote against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and the MAGA base has shown impatience with his handling of the Epstein files.
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But the Trump administration’s suddenly defensive posture on immigration, long a strength for Republicans, has been particularly striking.
“Most people thought you don’t want to be on the wrong side of a 70-30 issue — that’s what you’re doing,” said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and frequent Trump critic who is retiring. “It was an issue that wasn’t working well for the president. Even a lot of Republicans were dismayed by what they were seeing.”
Chris Madel, a Republican who ended his campaign for Minnesota governor last month in protest of the surge of federal agents in Minneapolis, said Mr. Trump and national Republicans were making it “really impossible” for the party to prevail in his state.
“This had very little to do with public policy and a lot to do with trying to bring retribution upon the governor and the citizens of Minnesota,” Mr. Madel said on Thursday. “The entire exercise was an unmitigated disaster.”
Other Republicans are looking forward.
Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and Trump ally who has occasionally split with the president on civil liberties issues, said at a Senate committee hearing on Thursday that the administration had chosen “de-escalation in a diplomatic way.”
“We need to have answers here,” Mr. Paul said, “and there needs to be an announcement: These are the new policies. This is how we’re going to interact with the public.”
Democrats, demoralized for much of last year, appeared newly hopeful of their ability to slow Mr. Trump’s agenda. The public pressure in Minneapolis and other major cities, they argued, forced the Trump administration to back down and can be repeated in the future.
“Trump is a populist. He’s not an ideologue. He doesn’t believe in anything except himself,” said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, a Democrat who is running for the state’s open Senate seat. “When that resistance and those protests actually made his policies tremendously unpopular, he relented. And I think it’s a lesson that we should apply elsewhere when he engages in outrageous activities.”
In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis insisted they had made no concession to Mr. Homan to secure the departure of the federal agents.
Mr. Frey said his constituents’ opposition had led to the federal withdrawal.
“You saw a federal government and an administration that thought that they were going to break the people of Minneapolis down,” Mr. Frey told MS Now on Thursday. “They thought that we were going to back down and sort of kowtow to whatever it is that they were looking to get done, not just locally in Minneapolis but nationwide.”
And still other Democrats insisted that they would not trust that Mr. Homan would remove federal immigration agents from Minneapolis until they were gone from the city.
“In God we trust,” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware wrote on social media. “All others bring proof.”
Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting.
Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.
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