{"id":450646,"date":"2026-02-05T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/450646\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:32:08","slug":"trumps-border-czar-takeover-does-little-to-calm-minneapolis-tensions-the-agenda-is-still-the-same-minnesota-ice-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/450646\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s border-czar takeover does little to calm Minneapolis tensions: \u2018The agenda is still the same\u2019 | Minnesota ICE shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his clearest attempt yet to \u201cde\u2011escalate\u201d tensions in Minneapolis<\/a>, Tom Homan, Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s \u201cborder czar\u201d, announced on Wednesday that the administration will draw down 700 federal immigration officers as the statewide crackdown continues.<\/p>\n

The Twin Cities remain on edge, waiting to see whether the fear will ease.<\/p>\n

When Homan arrived in Minneapolis more than a week ago, his task was to bridge the widening gulf between local officials and federal law enforcement. Trump dispatched Homan, whom he called \u201ctough but fair<\/a>\u201d, abruptly, to replace senior border patrol official Gregory Bovino, as the immigration operation in Minnesota spiraled into crisis.<\/p>\n

The reshuffle came amid mounting outrage over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in late January \u2013 the second killing of a US citizen in as many weeks<\/a> \u2013 and a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol officers that has galvanized resistance across the Twin Cities. Trump downplayed the move as \u201ca little bit of a change\u201d, even as he acknowledged Bovino was \u201ca pretty out\u2011there kind of a guy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Homan\u2019s background running ICE \u2013\u00a0where agents are expected to investigate criminal records and addresses rather than rely on broad street sweeps \u2013 could, in theory, lower the temperature. But experts warn that any shift depends entirely on whether he reins in the tactics that have colored the operation so far. \u201cIt\u2019s too soon to say if immigration enforcement has dialed back its demographic profiling while targeting immigrants,\u201d said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, while noting that ICE is \u201ccontinuing its aggressive and reckless behavior towards protesters and other observers\u201d. Homan told reporters Wednesday that roughly 2,000 federal immigration officers remain in Minnesota<\/a> \u2014 far more than the 150 typically stationed in the state.<\/p>\n

Before Homan\u2019s takeover, Bovino\u2019s aggressive raids in parking lots, on streets and in homes \u2013 often captured on camera \u2013 had drawn widespread backlash. After Pretti\u2019s death, he echoed<\/a> homeland security secretary Kristi Noem\u2019s baseless claim that Pretti was brandishing a gun and obstructing officers. Noem, now facing calls to resign or be impeached, later said she was relying on \u201cthe best information we had at the time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Homan, Trump\u2019s foremost immigration policy whisperer, has insisted he didn\u2019t come to Minnesota for \u201cphoto ops or headlines\u201d, and has touted what he describes as productive conversations with the state\u2019s governor, Tim Walz; the Minneapolis<\/a> mayor, Jacob Frey; and the state attorney general, Keith Ellison.<\/p>\n

When addressing the press, he has avoided mentioning Renee Good, who was fatally shot in early January, or Pretti by name, but has conceded the enforcement surge hasn\u2019t been \u201cperfect\u201d. He maintained the operation is focused on \u201cpublic safety threats\u201d, despite multiple cases of people with legal status and no criminal convictions being caught in the dragnet.<\/p>\n

One of Homan\u2019s longstanding goals for boosting deportation numbers nationwide is gaining access to local jails. On Wednesday, he said the recent ability to scale back federal immigration officers was due to \u201cunprecedented collaboration\u201d from county sheriffs. According to Homan, some jails have already agreed to notify ICE when they release an undocumented immigrant. Many sheriffs across Minnesota \u2013 including those in the state\u2019s largest counties, Hennepin and Ramsey \u2013 generally limit working with ICE.<\/p>\n

Homan, however, did not elaborate on Wednesday on which counties are now cooperating. Dawanna Witt, the Hennepin county sheriff, did not return the Guardian\u2019s request for comment, nor did Bob Fletcher, the sheriff of Ramsey county.<\/p>\n

Minnesota state law says that jails cannot hold someone past their release time so agents can take custody \u2013 a practice known as an ICE detainer. \u201cWe\u2019re not asking anyone to be an immigration officer. We are not asking any state or local official to do immigration enforcement activity,\u201d Homan said, while insisting that no jail had been asked to keep people \u201cone minute past when they normally would\u201d.<\/p>\n

His argument that \u201cmore agents in the jail means fewer agents in the street\u201d has drawn significant pushback from immigrant\u2011rights advocates, who say the offer amounts to coercion and argue that Walz, Frey and Ellison must hold the line.<\/p>\n

But Homan is no stranger to this kind of brinkmanship. A taciturn hardliner with decades of experience in immigration enforcement, he served as director of ICE\u2019s enforcement and removal operations under Barack Obama before becoming acting ICE director during Trump\u2019s first term. He helped design some of the administration\u2019s most draconian measures \u2013 most notably family separation, a strategy reportedly deemed too severe<\/a> by officials in the Obama White House, but later central to Trump\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

During his tenure leading ICE, Homan frequently argued that any undocumented immigrant was fair game for removal. Before re\u2011joining the Trump White House, he telegraphed<\/a> his aims at a national conservatism conference in 2024. \u201cI\u2019ll be on [Trump\u2019s] heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,\u201d he said. \u201cThey ain\u2019t seen shit yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homan has consistently lambasted so\u2011called \u201csanctuary\u201d policies, claiming that cities unwilling to cooperate with immigration agents are harboring criminals and endangering public safety. \u201cWe know that the end game is to try to tell people how to evade law enforcement,\u201d he said<\/a> at CPAC last year.<\/p>\n

In Minneapolis, he underscored that his mass deportation effort hadn\u2019t changed, whether people have criminal convictions or not. \u201cIf you\u2019re in the country illegally, if we find you, we will deport you,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

Experts say Homan\u2019s takeover may change the tone, but not the mission. \u201cThe goals here are the same,\u201d said Bier. Bovino\u2019s background in border apprehensions, he said, is inherently less targeted and more reliant on profiling. Prior to Homan\u2019s arrival, the federal strategy of \u201cgetting in random people\u2019s faces and demanding to see their papers\u201d has only fueled pushback.<\/p>\n

Democratic officials in Minnesota have repeatedly said their state is being targeted for reasons unrelated to immigration. If they change their policies now, Bier warned, there\u2019s \u201cnothing stopping\u201d the administration from returning, threatening more raids and demanding more concessions. He also remains unconvinced that violent interactions will subside. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to arrest people who, for the most part, are living their life, not causing problems, and have families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Javad Khazaeli<\/a>, an immigration and civil\u2011rights attorney and former national security prosecutor at ICE, said the biggest difference is stylistic. \u201cHoman is more polished than Bovino. He knows how to talk to the press better, and they realize portions of this operation have blown up in their face because they went on TV and lied repeatedly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Khazaeli noted that if local law enforcement begins working with ICE, trust between police and immigrant communities will erode. \u201cThe moment you start taking local officers who are not trained in this and making them antagonistic to their community, it hurts public safety. They stop cooperating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This week, there have been glimmers of concession from federal officials. Homan announced that the Trump administration will plan to issue body-worn cameras to immigration officers nationwide \u2013 a demand from Democrats as they negotiate guardrails <\/a>as part of a full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Meanwhile, in an interview with NBC News, Trump said that watching the Minnesota crackdown unfold taught him that he might require a \u201csofter touch\u201d when it comes to immigration enforcement. But he continued to repeat misleading claims<\/a> about the state\u2019s department of prisons, which already works with ICE to facilitate the transfer of people convicted of felonies to federal custody.<\/p>\n

For his part, Walz said that while the scaling back of officers in Minnesota is \u201ca step in the right direction\u201d, he needs to see a \u201cfaster and larger drawdown of forces\u201d as well as state-led investigations into the killings of Pretti and Good.<\/p>\n

On the ground in Minnesota, protesters from the Bishop Whipple federal building to the governor\u2019s mansion say the atmosphere is febrile. Frigid temperatures have proven no match for residents\u2019 anger. Demonstrations persist, mutual\u2011aid networks grow, observers continue to blow whistles to alert neighbors to immigration agents and clashes with federal law enforcement continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no assurances that our neighbors, our students, the families we serve and our relatives are safe,\u201d said Marcia Howard, president of the Minneapolis teachers\u2019 union. \u201cSome people may have breathed a sigh of relief when Bovino was pulled and replaced by Homan, but many educators did not \u2026 The agenda is still the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, at one of the near\u2011nightly vigils at Pretti\u2019s makeshift memorial on Nicollet Avenue, votive candles burned in the cold and carnations held their color against the wind. \u201cWe\u2019re still not safe,\u201d an activist told the crowd, as those assembled nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his clearest attempt yet to \u201cde\u2011escalate\u201d tensions in Minneapolis, Tom Homan, Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cborder czar\u201d, announced on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-450646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}