Trump Downplays Changes In Minnesota Amid Uproar Over Shootings

President Donald Trump on Tuesday minimized the extent to which his administration plans to tone down its immigration operations in Minnesota amid outrage over the killing of two people by federal agents.

Trump said in an interview there would be only minor changes to an enforcement campaign that sent approximately 3,000 agents to Minneapolis to apprehend non-citizens.

“I don't think it's a pullback, it's a little bit of a change,” he told Fox News.

The remarks came a day after the president said he had positive conversations with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and dispatched White House border czar Tom Homan to oversee the operation in the face of mounting criticism, even from Republicans.

"We have Tom Homan there now, we put him in there, he's great, and they met with the governor, the mayor and everybody else,” Trump said on the Will Cain Show. “We're going to de-escalate a little bit."

Trump pushed back on the suggestion that his administration is retreating from its aggressive deportation operation.

“I haven't heard that at all, because it's just the opposite,” Trump said.

In addition to sending Homan to Minneapolis, the administration also pulled Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who was supervising the operation, out of the state as he drew intense criticism for aggressive tactics and remarks about the victims of the two recent shootings.

“Bovino's very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy, and in some cases that's good. Maybe it wasn't good here,” Trump said.

He praised Homan’s ability to “get along” with governors and mayors, just hours after both Walz and Frey said they had productive conversations with the border czar. Still, the mayor said in a statement he told the border czarthat “Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws.”

The comment made it clear there’s still a wide divide between Minnesota Democrats and the White House, which suggested on Monday it would pull Customs and Border Patrol from the state if local authorities cooperated more fully with immigration enforcement.

Trump also said he doesn’t want nor need guardrails around his administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown as Democratic lawmakers call for DHS to be reined in, telling Cain: “guardrails would hurt us.” Congress is barreling toward a partial government shutdown, with Senate Democrats demanding Republicans join them in stripping out funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a six-bill appropriations package.

While Trump called the shootings of both Alex Pretti and Renee Good “terrible,” he also criticized Pretti for carrying a firearm — despite the fact that the 37-year-old nurse had a permit to do so — and suggested that Good may have been “radicalized.”

The president also expressed frustration with the attention the shootings have attracted.

"We take out 25 murderers, we take out drug dealers, we take out a whole group of people by the thousands, and if we get one person a little bit wrong: headlines,” he said.