A representative of Minneapolis Police talks to the people gathering at a makeshift memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
The New York Times reports President Donald Trump’s federal agents are forcing local law enforcement officers to reckon with the prospect of treating U.S. government authorities as adversaries.
“It’s breaking down not only, obviously, on the immigration side, but to the point where the [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] brand becomes so toxic that the state and locals don’t feel like they can cooperate even on the things where there would be widespread public support,” said John Sandweg, who served as acting director for ICE during former President Barack Obama's administration, “My answer is, we all lose.”
Turf wars among federal and local agencies are not new, but the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics, combined with this weeks fatal shooting of a Minneapolis mother and subsequent sequestering of investigation materials from local law enforcement is now pitting local and federal law enforcement agencies against each other.
“I don’t know that we, at least in the United States, have lived this history before,” said Craig Futterman, who directs the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project at University of Chicago Law School. “This isn’t normal.”
After this week's killing of Renee Good, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey ordered ICE to leave the city, claiming the agency was harming his constituents and threatening public safety. The Times reports in Philadelphia, district attorney Larry Krasner has warned ICE agents who intended to commit crimes to “get the eff out of here” or be prosecuted. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, has slammed Trump’s “masked men snatching people in broad daylight,” and he characterized military operations in U.S. cities as “an assault on our values.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, however, suggested Minnesota authorities focus on preventing violence and fighting fraud and stay out of the federal government’s way, and claims local authorities lack jurisdiction to investigate any ICE-related deadly shooting of their citizens.
But local law enforcement leaders say they fear brutal ICE tactics, hostility and its lack of training are tainting the public’s opinion of law enforcement. The Times reports Sheriff Rochelle Bilal of Philadelphia called immigration agents “made up, fake wanna-be law enforcement because what they do is against not only legal law but the moral law.”
The Times further reports Charley Wilkison, former executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, slammed “newly recruited, masked” immigration agents, complaining in a Facebook post that they “damage and destroy the reputations of our proud and professional officers.”
Read the full New York Times report at this link.
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