The Trump administration says it will withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minnesota after getting “unprecedented cooperation” from local authorities in the wake of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s departure from the state.
Border czar Tom Homan made the announcement on Wednesday, taking a veiled swipe at Noem, his longstanding rival who led the charge in Minneapolis as tensions escalated following the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti last month.
“I brought a different set of eyes to this; I’ve done this a long time,” said Homan, who was sent in by Trump last week to “defuse the chaos” in Minneapolis.
“We made this operation more streamlined, and we established a unified chain of command so everybody knows what’s going on… This is smart law enforcement, and smart law enforcement makes us safer.”
Under the changes announced on Thursday, 700 immigration agents would be withdrawn from Minnesota, with a further 2,000 remaining.
Homan said his goal was to end the surge of federal agents as much as he could, but it would depend on residents also ending what he said were “illegal” and intimidating actions against ICE.
“We will not draw down on personnel providing security and responding to hostile incidents until we see a change in what’s happening,” he said.
The withdrawal was nonetheless notable given a massive deportation operation had been taking place across the state for months, pitting local residents and state and city authorities on one side, while federal officials were on the other.
But Homan said federal agents had been allowed to go into local jails and the state prison system to pick up dangerous individuals, which had given them the scope to draw down.
In a significant shift in rhetoric, Homan even thanked Democratic governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, declaring: “I think we all accomplished great things in Minnesota.”
“We currently have an unprecedented number of counties communicating with us now, allowing ICE to take custody of illegal aliens before they hit the streets,” he said. “Unprecedented cooperation.”
Trump’s decision to sideline Noem and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino in favor of his border czar took place days after a veteran’s affairs nurse, Alex Petti, was shot and killed in Minneapolis after filming an immigration incident on his phone.
Both had spent the weekend of his death hitting the airwaves trying to justify the shooting as an act of self-defense and painting Petti as a “domestic terrorist” intent on harming law enforcement, despite videos and witnesses saying otherwise.
The Homeland Security secretary had previously been at odds with Homan, who prioritized deportations of “the worst of the worst” criminals and gang members.
In contrast, insiders say, the cosplay-loving Noem wanted broader public round-ups and the theatrics of promoting them, often bypassing Homan in the process.
But the blame game soon erupted within Trump world, as Noem, facing pressure to quit or be impeached, pointed the finger at Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s deportation strategy.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” the Homeland Security secretary told one source who relayed her comments to Axios.
Like Noem, Miller had also portrayed Pretti as a “domestic terrorist”, even going so far as to describe him as a “would-be assassin” who wanted to “massacre” law enforcement.
Pretti’s death took place about two weeks after Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was also killed in Minneapolis by a federal immigration agent.
On Wednesday, her brothers Luke and Brent Ganger held back tears as they spoke about losing her, telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill they had initially taken “consolation” that her death “would bring change in our country.”
“It has not,” Luke Ganger said during a hearing about the Department of Homeland Security’s operations.
During the hearing, vile text messages were also read out in which a Border Patrol agent bragged about shooting 30-year-old Marimar Martinez in Chicago last year.
“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys,” said one text.
“Oh well, it is what it is,” said another text, followed by a third: “S— happens.”
Democrat Robert Garcia described the texts as “disgusting and shameful.” On Thursday, he said the decision to pull out 700 federal agents wasn’t good enough.
“They should be withdrawing them all,” he told MSNBC.
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