President Donald Trump’s efforts this week to “de-escalate” controversial deportation tactics in Minnesota in the face of widespread public dismay have caused a new wave of blowback from his base of hard-line anti-immigration advocates.
The president is caught between competing interests: a loyal base of voters who elected him on a campaign promise of “mass deportations,” and a broader electorate that is increasingly uncomfortable with an aggressive approach that has led to the shooting deaths of two American protesters by federal agents this month.
The conflicting viewpoints are evident within the administration, too, with advisers divided along similar lines and offering opposing feedback on whether and how drastically to shift Trump’s immigration strategy, according to people aware of the conversations.
Trump is also navigating a collision of his own instincts: his desire for flashy roundups of foreign-born criminals, and his recognition that the broader public, including business leaders he identifies with who rely on immigrant labor, have soured on the expansion of those roundups to noncriminals in workplaces.
The conflict has put the normally resolute Trump in an unusual spot, needing to tread carefully on an issue that he has previously plowed ahead on with threats and swagger. The result has been mixed signals from the White House — and fresh evidence of the difficult task Trump faces in a midterm election year of appeasing both his MAGA base and a broader swath of voters.
Earlier this month, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow him to send the military to Minneapolis — and suggested that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING.” He also sharply criticized two Minnesota Democrats, Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, calling them “useless” earlier this month.
This week, however, the president characterized conversations with Walz and Frey as positive and productive. He told Fox News that he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” and that his talk with Walz “couldn’t have been a nicer conversation.”
Yet Trump has not articulated a clear shift in immigration strategy, leaving the public unsure of where he actually stands or what comes next.
He sidelined Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem from the Minnesota operation — a tacit but rare show of disapproval toward a Cabinet member. He has not taken parallel action against senior aide Stephen Miller, who is widely viewed as the architect of Trump’s immigration policies — and who advised Noem on how to respond publicly to the shooting death of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, both Miller and Noem labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” Miller also called him an “assassin.” Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have not defended the officials’ rhetoric but also have not publicly criticized their job performance.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Miller said the initial information he received about the shooting from the Department of Homeland Security was “based on reports from CBP on the ground.” Miller said the White House is now working to determine why Customs and Border Protection at the time of the incident was not using the extra personnel that DHS had sent to Minnesota for “force protection.”
Noem asked for a meeting with Trump on Monday evening — after Trump announced that his border czar, Tom Homan, would be taking over operations in Minnesota. The gathering lasted for hours, according to two people who spoke anonymously to describe a private meeting. Noem and her top aide, Corey Lewandowski, joined the president and other aides to discuss issues including the border wall and Minneapolis, one of the people said. Separately, Lewandowski and Homan, who have previously clashed, have spoken and agreed to work together, the person added.
The White House’s efforts to make adjustments on tactics have not stanched the bleeding in public opinion.
The most recent flood of criticism has come from pro-Trump users online and top influential MAGA commentators. Some called Trump’s pivot a “betrayal.” Others warned, as they have about other issues for months, of the risk that the base could sit out November’s elections.
Fresh public polling showing increased “anti-ICE sentiment” and “increased support of sanctuary cities” makes clear that the administration must change its deportation tactics, said Mark Mitchell, head pollster at the conservative Rasmussen Reports.
An Economist/YouGov poll released this week — with most respondents answering after the Pretti shooting — found that 55 percent of Americans have little confidence in ICE, an increase of 10 percent since mid-December. The decline in trust for ICE has been most pronounced among independent voters, the poll found, with 67 percent now saying they have little confidence in the immigration agency, compared with 49 percent last month.
By contrast, 60 percent of Republicans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in ICE, highlighting the gap between Trump’s own party and independents and Democrats.
And the president’s sudden interest in cooperating with Walz and Frey and his suggestions about going easy on longtime immigrant workers have amounted to a “rug pull” for the base in his rhetoric, Mitchell said. While polling hasn’t yet showed Trump’s base punishing him, the midterms already look increasingly problematic for the GOP, Mitchell said, and concern remains about declining enthusiasm among Trump supporters. Mitchell met with Trump in November to warn him of frustration within his populist base.
“Ten years, this has been the core part of his platform — ‘They all have to go home … Build the wall,’” Mitchell said. Trump talking about only focusing on removing violent criminals sounds like he has “caved on the major campaign promise.”
Within the MAGA base, the president’s supporters want as aggressive an offense as Trump can conceive.
“This is an inflection point — you blink now and you’re going to blink forever. You bend the knee now, you’ll bend the knee forever,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and influential MAGA commentator, said on his show Wednesday as he continued urging the Trump administration to ramp up deportations and to not “de-escalate” or draw back federal agents from Minnesota. “I don’t care how many people I’ve got to deport. I don’t care.”
Some prominent Trump supporters are also concerned about the actions by some members of Congress, possibly emboldened by Trump’s recent change of tone, to renew efforts to pass immigration reform.
The White House has pushed back on the notion that Homan’s elevation amounts to a dialing back of deportations. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, said the administration has “not wavered” in its deportation mission, but Trump doesn’t want to see Americans injured because of clashes with immigration officials.
In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration “will never waver in standing up for law and order and protecting the American people.”
“Any left-wing agitator or criminal illegal alien who thinks Tom’s presence is a victory for their cause is sadly mistaken,” she said.
This isn’t the first time in Trump’s second term that the MAGA base has erupted over his comments on immigration policy, which have consistently revealed his sensitivity to the concerns of business leaders and average conservatives put off by the deportation of otherwise law-abiding immigrants.
In late spring, after hearing complaints from friends and donors about deportation roundups at farms, hotels and restaurants hurting operations and scaring off workers, Trump announced that “changes are coming” to spare the agriculture and hospitality fields.
Trump’s base similarly went off on him. Even some top advisers were blindsided, privately insisting that no such policy changes were in the works and chalking up the suggestion to Trump’s habit of trying to smooth public conflicts with rhetoric.
Miller at the time raised concerns to the president about his stated plans for “changes” to protect migrant workers, according to a person who spoke anonymously to describe private conversations. Miller had been calling for a drastic increase in deportation numbers to keep up with the administration’s aggressive goals. Homan told The Washington Post soon after Trump’s announcement that he had not discussed any such changes with the president and wasn’t a part of crafting a policy to carve out workers.
During a speech a few weeks later in Iowa, Trump acknowledged he had gotten “into a little trouble because I said I don’t want to take people away from the farmers,” before describing supporters who were unhappy with his comments as “serious radical-right people.” The comment further inflamed tensions, with influential MAGA commentators including Bannon and Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA shot dead later last year, accusing the administration of preparing to offer amnesty to some illegal immigrants.
A number of Republicans in Minnesota said they were glad to see Trump shift course this week. They said they welcomed the arrival of Homan and the apparent truce between Trump and local leaders.
“I’m just grateful that we’re moving in a direction to get back to being sensible,” said Jim Abeler, a GOP state senator in Minnesota who worried that federal agents were violating people’s rights. “There are people afraid, there are citizens afraid to leave their homes, to go buy groceries because of their skin color or their nationality. … It’s past time.”
Yet on Wednesday, the president also signaled that he was aware of the latest criticism from within his base. A day after speaking favorably of his conversation with the Minneapolis mayor, Trump posted on Truth Social that Frey was “PLAYING WITH FIRE” by saying he would not enforce federal immigration laws.
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