{"id":441381,"date":"2026-01-27T20:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441381\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T20:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:02:14","slug":"you-could-see-trumps-ice-backdown-coming-a-mile-off-but-some-missed-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/441381\/","title":{"rendered":"You could see Trump\u2019s ICE backdown coming a mile off \u2013 but some missed it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/p>\n

January 27, 2026 \u2014 3:54pm<\/p>\n

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Television is Donald Trump\u2019s thing. It\u2019s how he came to national fame, it\u2019s how he consumes his news, and it informs how he thinks about the world.<\/p>\n

How do things look on TV? Armed struggles between American citizens and federal agents in the suburbs of American cities? Protesters being shot and killed<\/a> on the streets outside a raid? Live news conferences with a Border Patrol commander pouring petrol on the fire? Mass protests?<\/p>\n

Clearly, Trump has decided the images coming out of Minneapolis are not what he wants to see. And so Greg Bovino is gone, forced out<\/a> by the US president\u2019s decision to dispatch his border tsar, Tom Homan, to clean up the mess in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\"AA mass protest against ICE and the Trump administration in Minneapolis on Friday, January 23, the day before Alex Pretti was killed.Bloomberg<\/p>\n

It\u2019s startling to think that the arrival of Homan \u2013 a hardline Trump man who shut down the southern border with gusto \u2013 might be viewed by anti-ICE activists and Democrats as a positive circuit breaker. But that\u2019s where things stand. And to be fair, Homan is a respected career law enforcement official whose leadership was recognised in a prestigious award from Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\"WhiteWhite House border tsar Tom Homan is a respected law enforcement official. Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s big backdown in Minneapolis seemed to come quickly, but it had been brewing for a while. He never fully went along with the depiction of Renee Good as a \u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d, as she was labelled by senior administration officials on the day she was killed.<\/p>\n

Though Trump initially claimed \u2013 falsely \u2013 that the footage showed Good running over an ICE agent<\/a> with her car, he equivocated on that conclusion in subsequent interviews. Days later, he said he \u201cunderstood both sides\u201d and felt terribly about what happened.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Trump has been trying to shift the focus on to the violent criminals \u2013 \u201cthe worst of the worst\u201d \u2013 whom ICE is supposed to be detaining and deporting. A New York Times analysis in December found that across ICE\u2019s national operations, about a third of those arrested had no criminal charges or convictions. But in high-profile blitzes in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, that figure rose to about 60 per cent or higher.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t bode well for those responsible: Bovino, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and her close ally Corey Lewandowski. Not when the president wants the messaging \u2013 and the imagery \u2013 to be something different.<\/p>\n

Unlike Trump 1.0, this White House \u2013 under chief-of-staff Susie Wiles \u2013 wants to keep the show on the road and the personnel intact. It is reluctant to throw anyone under the bus or force them out on a whim. Michael Waltz, the former national security adviser, was quietly moved on after he embarrassed himself<\/a> with the Signal-gate group chat scandal.<\/p>\n

But, without fireworks, the White House has drawn a clear line in the sand on Minneapolis. Trump installed his own man and hit the phones to patch things up with Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey. He appears to have acquiesced slightly, with some federal agents set to leave the city within 24 hours, along with Bovino.<\/p>\n

And press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking from the White House podium, declined to defend Noem or even White House deputy chief-of-staff Stephen Miller in their descriptions of dead nurse Alex Pretti as a \u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d or a \u201cwould-be assassin\u201d intent on murdering ICE agents.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s political instincts have proven themselves pretty reliable over the years, and it is clear he could see the politics of this crisis changing rapidly. A slew of Republicans \u2013 not just the ones who regularly break with Trump \u2013 were alarmed and demanding an investigation. Major conservative media outlets were criticising Noem and saying the status quo could not continue. Even some MAGA podcasters felt things had gone too far.<\/p>\n

\"Trump\u2019sTrump\u2019s political instincts have proven themselves pretty reliable over the years, and his change of tone in Minnesota is no different.AP<\/p>\n

And Trump reads the polls \u2013 even the ones he dismisses as \u201cfake\u201d. On Monday (US time), the latest Reuters\/Ipsos poll found Trump\u2019s approval rating on immigration had fallen to a record low of 39 per cent, while 53 per cent of Americans disapproved. The poll was taken from Friday to Sunday, including before and after Pretti\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Where does that leave Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, and even Vice President JD Vance, who kept beating the drums against Pretti and Good and the \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d, even in recent days?<\/p>\n

For the most part, they have been following Trump\u2019s lead. They were out making the case, shifting the Overton Window, fighting \u201cthe enemy within\u201d, defending the indefensible. Until Trump changed course.<\/p>\n

But they should have seen it coming. America First is, at heart, a populist nationalist project led by a populist nationalist; when the country shifts, Trump will eventually adapt.<\/p>\n

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Koziol<\/a> is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"January 27, 2026 \u2014 3:54pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-441381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}