Vance Strikes A Softer Tone Amid Growing Unease Over Ice Tactics

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday sought to reframe the national conversation around the Trump administration’s controversial immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota.

Appearing at a building in Minneapolis and flanked by ICE agents, Vance preached empathy for those protesting and allowed that ICE agents may make mistakes. Most of the conflict and consternation, he suggested, resulted from misunderstandings that could be solved if only local elected officials — and their police departments — would work with the federal government.

It was the second time Vance has addressed the public since an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month, and while some of the message was the same, Vance’s tone was markedly different. His message Thursday was less focused on scolding the media or berating protesters for encouraging assaults on federal agents, as he did during earlier remarks from the White House.

Vance on Thursday focused on public safety and crime, and his desire to lower the temperature and support law enforcement. He acknowledged the viral videos circulating on social media could concern many Americans even as he said they often don’t tell the whole story.

“It doesn’t mean there aren’t occasionally stories, there aren’t occasionally videos that suggest that these guys or at least some of the people who work for them are not doing everything right, but very often if you look at the context of what’s going on, you understand these people are under an incredible amount of duress, an incredible amount of chaos,” Vance said, blaming “far-left agitators and local and state officials’ lack of cooperation with the federal government.”

He added that the administration wants to enforce the country’s immigration laws, while also ensuring “people in Minneapolis are able to go about their day.” But, he said, some mayors and police officers refuse to help ICE agents under assault or federal officials locate allegedly violent criminals.

Spokespeople for Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who have repeatedly called for ICE to de-escalate their aggressive tactics or even leave the city, did not respond to requests for comment.

Vance’s trip to Minneapolis comes as Republicans struggle to coalesce around a message that explains their tactics to an increasingly anxious public uneasy with armed agents patrolling communities.

The vice president billed the trip as an opportunity to better understand why Minneapolis has devolved into chaos, and comes as hundreds of military police troops remain on alert for potential deployment if President Donald Trump decides to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move that Democrats warn will spur more unrest in the city.

“Right now, we don’t think that we need that,” Vance said. “The president could change his mind, of course things could get worse, but right now we think that federal law enforcement officers can do the job of federal law enforcement.”

His remarks also followed Trump’s appearance in the White House briefing room this week, when the president said his administration needs to do more to highlight the criminals they’ve arrested in Minnesota during their enforcement crackdowns. Trump, who said he felt sorry for Good’s family, spent several minutes showing photos of immigrants who had committed violent crimes, including murder, saying people “don’t know” who ICE is detaining.

And a new POLITICO poll found that nearly half of all Americans — 49 percent — say Trump’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, including one in five voters who backed the president in 2024, the poll finds. And more than one in three Trump voters say that while they support the goals of the president’s mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of the way he is implementing it.

The Trump administration’s surge in Minnesota has emerged as the focal point of the national conversation over ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics. The Trump administration has repeatedly had to explain why federal immigration agents have arrested U.S. citizens and attempt to justify agents’ actions captured in other captivating and controversial videos and photos, including one of a 5-year-old boy that circulated on the internet Thursday.

Vance, too, said he was struck by the image of the child, remarking that he is a father of a 5-year-old himself. But he said it’s a good example of the false narratives rippling through social media, and that when he did more research, he learned that the father was in the country illegally and ran from law enforcement, leaving the child behind. He said ICE stayed with the boy, though school officials claimed the boy was used as bait to lure in the father — a claim Democrats amplified and spread widely.

“Many of the most viral stories of the past couple of weeks have turned out to be, at best, partially true,” Vance said.