US President Donald Trump warned Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey yesterday he was ‘playing with fire’ after the Democratic leader reiterated that his city would not help federal agents enforce immigration law, a day after the president said his administration would ‘de-escalate a bit’ in the city.
Tensions remained high in Minneapolis, where observers and activists say immigration raids appear to have been more targeted and less confrontational over the last 24 hours. The city has been convulsed by unrest after two US citizens were shot dead by federal officers, including Saturday’s killing of nurse Alex Pretti.
Trump’s administration has signalled it will soften its approach, dispatching border tsar Tom Homan to take over the operation from Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official whose aggressive tactics drew widespread criticism.
A senior administration official said Homan’s arrival would mark a shift to more traditional targeted operations rather than the broad sweeps Bovino has led in multiple cities. Yet it remained unclear how much would change in a city where federal agents have regularly clashed with protesters. Observers and activists told Reuters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity appeared to slow somewhat on Tuesday before resuming in full yesterday. They said there did now appear to be more of an emphasis on targeted exercises.
Yesterday, ICE agents were seen in several parts of the city rolling up to homes and businesses in caravans of three vehicles with six to eight agents in total, then knocking on doors and looking around, seemingly for a specific person. If that person was not found, observers said, the agents were seen leaving. In past weeks, agents might have begun randomly stopping people and demanding to see proof of legal status, a practice that has enraged community members and led to heated encounters.
It is difficult to know precisely how many raids are taking place. Authorities do not share that information, and volunteers who track ICE and Border Patrol vehicles say many of their encrypted communication chats have broken into atomised, hyper-local groups, partly to avoid infiltration by federal agents.
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