A month of chaos in Minneapolis — where federal agents shot and killed two people during the Operation Metro Surge enforcement campaign — has forced President Donald Trump into a rare retreat on immigration as widespread disapproval threatens to turn his signature issue into a political liability.
But whether the White House is genuinely reconsidering its approach or simply managing political fallout has become a critical question — one with far-reaching implications for immigration policy, Trump’s divided political coalition and the limits of his hardline mandate.
White House border czar Tom Homan suggested Thursday that the administration might reduce the number of ICE officers deployed to Minnesota if state officials increased their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Trump himself acknowledged the shift this week, saying his administration was “going to de-escalate a little bit” after removing Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino from the state. Even White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, known for his hardline views, has backed away from the tone he initially struck after the killing of Alex Pretti, acknowledging that the officers on the scene “may not have been following” protocol.
One White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics told MS NOW that in the days following Pretti’s killing, Trump received a handful of calls from Republican lawmakers urging him to consider recalibrating immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. The conversations specifically focused specifically on public perception and how the killing had spurred bipartisan outrage.
Yet the signals of retreat remain muddled. Trump himself, on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night, flatly told a reporter “No, no, not at all” when asked whether he was pulling ICE officers out of Minnesota. And at 1:26 a.m. on Friday, Trump posted on social media that Pretti was an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist” whose “stock has gone way down” in light of a new video showing him clashing with federal officers and kicking their vehicle 11 days before his killing.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon dismissed any notion that the president should pull back. “There is no pivot,” Bannon told MS NOW in an interview. “Don’t back down; double down. Surge a ‘whole-of-government’ solution for mass deportations and to break the insurrection.”
Those comments are inline with the sentiments of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, which has urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy armed forces against protesters in Minneapolis.
Inside the White House, though, growing consensus has emerged that a de-escalatory strategy is necessary to prevent further political damage to the administration. A Fox News poll released on Wednesday found that 59 percent of voters say ICE is too aggressive — up 10 points since July. And while more than half of voters still approve of Trump’s handling of border security, his broader handling of immigration is far underwater.
Still, it remains unclear whether the White House’s reconsideration of its strategy will amount to substantive changes or just cosmetic adjustments.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans are divided over the best approach, with opinions ranging from calls for military deployment to demands of Cabinet resignations. At least two Republicans — Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to step down over Pretti’s death.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered what may become the preferred escape hatch for Republican lawmakers: the problem isn’t overly aggressive enforcement, but rather sanctuary city policies forcing ICE into these confrontations.
“I’m willing to entertain some reforms to make sure that we rein in ICE appropriately and make it more professional, but the cancer that we’re dealing with is sanctuary city policy,” said Graham. Homan’s own remarks Thursday morning suggested the limits of any pullback. After raising the possibility of reducing ICE officers, he emphasized that the crackdown would continue, warned that protesters who interfered with federal officers could face consequences, and offered no timeline for reducing the federal presence. Bannon emphasized the conditional nature of Homan’s proposal to draw down ICE’s presence, and said he doubted that state officials would start cooperating with federal enforcement operations. In a statement to MS NOW, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said that “Tom Homan is a patriot with decades of experience effectively protecting American communities and deporting criminal illegal aliens. Any left-wing agitator or criminal illegal alien who thinks Tom’s presence is a victory for their cause is sadly mistaken.” Hardline immigration advocates argue that the administration’s move to hold officers accountable for potential misconduct shouldn’t require scaling back the broader enforcement mission. They argue that Trump hasn’t overstepped his mandate; the problem is optics, not policy. George Fishman, a Center for Immigration Studies fellow and former DHS lawyer under Trump, said voters aren’t rejecting enforcement itself, but “the chaos — and most certainly, the two deaths of U.S. citizens.” “It’s less a rejection of the need to enforce immigration laws, but more about what people are seeing on television,” Fishman told MS NOW. The fallout has reached government funding negotiations. Senate Democrats struck a deal with Republicans and the White House to fund most of the government for the rest of the year, including a temporary stopgap measure that will fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks while negotiations over guardrails for ICE officials continue.
Jacqueline Alemany is co-anchor of "The Weekend" and a Washington correspondent for MS NOW.
Jake Traylor
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW. Recommended
