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Donald Trump is withdrawing 700 federal agents from Minneapolis, following a sweeping backlash to his aggressive immigration enforcement raids that included the killing of two US civilians.
Tom Homan, the president’s border tsar, announced the move on Wednesday, saying federal enforcement operations would now focus on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records from jails.
Homan said a mix of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol would be withdrawn from the city.
While the drawdown will only remove one-third of the roughly 3,000 agents that were dispatched to the city as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, it reflects mounting pressure on the White House to ease its hardline deportation tactics and curtail raids on the streets and workplaces that risk clashes with protesters.
“President Trump sent me here to help de-escalate what was going on,” Homan told reporters in Minneapolis. “We’re not surrendering our mission. We’re not walking away from our mission. We’re just making this more effective and more smart.”
Asked about the crisis in Minneapolis later on Wednesday, Trump told NBC News he had “learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch”.
But he added: “You still have to be tough . . . We’re dealing with really hard criminals.”
Trump took credit for the decision to remove 700 officers from Minneapolis, but said: “We are waiting for them to release prisoners, give us the murderers that they’re holding, and all of the bad people, drug dealers, all of the bad people.”
Public polling recently has shown that the president’s hardline immigration policies, championed internally by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have gone from having public support to becoming a political liability for him and congressional Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections.
The backlash has increased sharply in recent weeks after federal agents last month killed two US citizens who were protesting the raids in Minneapolis. Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman, was shot in her car by ICE agents early in January, while Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old man, was surrounded on the street and shot by CBP agents later in the month.
The shootings heightened tensions between Trump and local Democratic officials, including Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey.
But Trump has since sought to soften the administration’s approach, at least partially, replacing Greg Bovino, the federal “commander at large” in charge of the Minnesota immigration operation, with Homan, who negotiated the drawdown with local officials.
Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, who has faced pressure from critics on Capitol Hill to step down after the killing of Good and Pretti, has announced that agents will be wearing body cameras to increase the transparency of their actions.
During the 2024 presidential run, Trump campaigned heavily on his pledge to carry out “mass deportations”, but officials insisted the actions would start by targeting criminals, which the Minnesota operation will now focus on.
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor in Washington
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