As Donald Trump appears to pull back from his immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, Axios reported on Tuesday that he was privately disparaging his top officials over their "callous" reactions to recent events.
The Department of Homeland Security has, in recent weeks, been mounting what it touted as the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history in Minnesota's Twin Cities area, dubbed "Metro Surge." Following weeks of reports about ICE and CBP agents targeting lawful immigrants and U.S. citizens, as well as the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, the operation has become increasingly toxic for the Trump administration, souring the U.S. public on his mass deportation agenda.
In the wake of Pretti's killing by CBP officers this weekend, Trump ordered Tom Homan, one of his top immigration advisers, to Minnesota to get a handle on the situation, a seeming rebuke of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who has received a considerable amount of the blame for the situation in the Twin Cities. Greg Bovino, the one-time "commander-at-large" for CBP forces on the ground in Minnesota, was also removed from his position in the fallout and remanded back to his previous sector chief position in California, from which he is expected to retire soon.
Speaking with anonymous sources in the administration, Axios reported that Trump had privately "lamented" the poor handling of Pretti's death. He reportedly bristled against the "callous" reactions to the situation Noem and Bovino had during press conferences, in which they made claims about Pretti brandishing his legally-owned firearm at CBP agents with the intent to shoot them, a characterization heavily disputed by available footage of the incident.
"It's f——d," one source, an administration adviser, told Politico. "And POTUS knew he needed to unf——k it."
Sources also decried Homan's brute-force approach to the operation, saying that it made "a mess" of things, necessitating his removal.
"He's a cowboy, and it was a mess. It was only escalation, and no one was going to back down," a source close to the operation told Axios. "Homan going is a good thing. Someone needed to step in."
There is hope in the administration that a change in strategy could avert new political headwinds brought on by the killings of Good and Pretti. Democrats in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said that they would pull support for a government funding bill in the works that included more funding for DHS, increasing the threat of another government shutdown.
"A career immigration official who served under President Obama and Trump during his first term, Homan has a measure of credibility with the Democrats who run Minnesota that Noem — a committed Republican partisan — does not," Axios explained.
