officer shot and killed<\/a> U.S. citizen Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m not here because the federal government has carried out this mission perfectly,\u201d Homan said Thursday. \u201cNothing\u2019s ever perfect, and anything can be improved on. And what we\u2019ve been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient, by the book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Homan added: \u201cPresident Trump wants this fixed, and I\u2019m going to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Homan arrived in Minnesota, he has met with a range of Democratic officials, including Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and and Minnesota Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison. <\/p>\n
\u201cBottom line is you can\u2019t fix problems if you don\u2019t have discussions,\u201d Homan said. \u201cI came here to seek solutions and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Homan said that Ellison had agreed that county jails \u201cmay notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risks\u201d so ICE can take them into custody. If local officials agreed to allow ICE access to jails, Homan said, the Trump administration would deploy fewer agents in communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore agents in the jail means less agents in the street,\u201d Homan said. \u201cThis is commonsense cooperation that allows us to draw down on the number of people we have here.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Ellison disputed Homan\u2019s account of their conversation, saying in a statement he did not \u201cnegotiate \u2026 come to any agreement, or offer any compromise on the goal of keeping Minnesotans safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellison said he stressed to Homan that existing Minnesota law requires state and local authorities to share information with federal immigration authorities regarding noncitizens convicted of felonies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also explained that county sheriffs, not the attorney general, run county jails and are also covered by the same state law,\u201d Ellison said. \u201cI did not make, and could not have made, any agreement with him about how sheriffs share with ICE information about people in their county jails.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Mr. Homan and I agree no Minnesotan wants actual violent criminals on our streets, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status,\u201d Ellison statement\u2019s continued, \u201cI firmly expressed to him that right now, Minnesotans\u2019 foremost concern for their and their neighbors\u2019 safety is the overwhelming presence and brutal tactics of federal immigration agents on those streets that are disrupting everyday life in our communities and doing harm to our neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom called Homan\u2019s remarks a \u201cstale and tired distraction to hold American cities hostage while they continue to terrorize our neighbors, families and businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCalifornia cooperates with federal authorities when there are serious, violent crimes involved,\u201d Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. \u201cWhat we don\u2019t do is turn state or local police into an extension of a political agenda that undermines trust in our communities and actually makes everyone less safe.\u201d <\/p>\n
ICE has long conducted targeted operations of criminals. However, in the first year of Trump\u2019s second term, federal agents began to broaden their focus, conducting sprawling raids that picked up non-English speakers and brown people in parking lots of Home Depots and car washes, or operating vendor cards on the streets.<\/p>\n
Gil Kerlikowske, a former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Trump officials\u2019 backs were against the wall as some Republicans had joined Democrats in opposing funding for the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t their usual posture, which is to double down in the face of criticism,\u201d Kerlikowske said. \u201cSo even to go as far as they\u2019re going right now is a step in the right direction, but there\u2019s still a lot more to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Border Patrol should not be involved in going into cities and trying to do law enforcement when they don\u2019t have any training, experience, knowledge and the right leadership to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While attempting to position himself as a moderate on Thursday, Homan, a former acting ICE director under Trump, blamed the escalation in confrontations on demonstrators, saying he had begged for months for de-escalation. <\/p>\n
\u201cI said in March, if the rhetoric didn\u2019t stop, there\u2019s going to be bloodshed, and there has been,\u201d Homan said. \u201cI wish I wasn\u2019t right. I don\u2019t want to see anybody die \u2014 not officers, not members of the community and not the targets of our operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite presenting himself as a leader in restraint who can calm tensions, the 64-year-old career immigration official has historically been at the forefront of many of the Trump administration\u2019s most contentious policies.<\/p>\n
During Trump\u2019s first term, Homan threatened to prosecute politicians who adopt sanctuary city policies and warned that undocumented immigrants \u201cshould be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was a key proponent of Trump\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d family separation policy that separated migrant families at the border, put children in caged lockups and prosecuted the parents. The policy was criticized on both sides of the aisle, but Homan defended the stricter policy as a necessary step to deter illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
In 2024, as Trump ran for a second term, Homan vowed: \u201cI will run the biggest deportation operation this country\u2019s ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent days, the Trump administration has faced harsh rebuke from top judges in Minnesota, who have accused federal immigration agencies of repeatedly violating court orders.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Patrick J. Schiltz, the chief federal judge in Minnesota and a George W. Bush appointee, accused ICE of defying more court directives over the last month than \u201csome federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.\u201d He presented the agency\u2019s acting director, Todd Lyons. with a list of 96 court orders ICE had ignored and warned Lyons he could be found in contempt unless the agency begins following court decisions. <\/p>\n
\u201cICE is not a law unto itself,\u201d he wrote. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, another federal judge ordered the agency Wednesday to stop its deportation of refugees in Minnesota that had lawful status in the country. The Trump administration has said it would reevaluate thousands of cases of refugees granted legal status under the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cRefugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully,\u201d wrote the Clinton-appointed judge, \u201cand importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Homan said federal immigration officers were performing their duties in a challenging environment and \u201cwere trying to do it with professionalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t, they\u2019ll be dealt with,\u201d he said. \u201cLike any other federal agency, we have standards of conduct.\u201d <\/p>\n
Homan said he had also urged local law enforcement leaders to work with the federal government to keep immigration agents safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chiefs I\u2019ve talked to are committed to responding to 911 calls when protesters turned violent, agents are in a dangerous situation and there\u2019s assaults,\u201d Homan said. \u201cThey have committed to upholding public safety and responding to the needs not to enforce immigration law, but to keep the peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Homan said that people in Minneapolis have threatened and assaulted federal agents. \u201cIf you don\u2019t like what ICE is doing, go protest Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
More than 3,000 federal immigration agents have been working in Minnesota under the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive enforcement, Operation Metro Surge.<\/p>\n
Homan spoke as an internal memo reviewed by Reuters showed ICE officers operating in the state were directed on Wednesday to avoid engaging with \u201cagitators\u201d and target only \u201caliens with a criminal history.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS,\u201d Marcos Charles, a top official in ICE\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, instructed officers via email, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n
Times staff writer Michael Wilner contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump\u2019s border policy advisor, Tom Homan, said Thursday that federal authorities would wind down immigration crackdowns in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4329,179,9977,4420,2871,14,14367,48,52,51,47,50,49,4226,1556,6843,592,6283,225,52777,1695],"class_list":["post-156440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-access","tag-community","tag-federal-agent","tag-federal-officer","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-jail","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-minnesota","tag-mission","tag-operation","tag-people","tag-president","tag-state","tag-tom-homan","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}