Full Transcript of J.D. Vance Answering Questions In Minneapolis Regarding Anti-Ice Protest At Minneapolis Church

“First of all, I want to give a shout out to the annunciation school shooting families because, you know, the last time I was in Minneapolis, it was, of course, to meet with some of those families. I understand, but a couple of the students have made near miraculous recoveries and just, that was a very special moment for me to be invited into that community at a time of grief, and I hope that all of them know that though I didn’t get to see them this particular time, I’ve been thinking about them and their families quite a bit.

Now, to talk about what I am, I am here to do, which is federal law enforcement, to enforce our immigration laws. I want to say just a few things. First of all, I wanted to meet with business leaders, with ice officers, with local law enforcement, to try to understand a little bit better what’s going on so that we can tone down the temperature a little bit. reduce the chaos, but still allow us, as a federal government, to enforce the American people’s immigration laws.

That is the purpose of my visit. Now, this is, you know, step one or step two of that process. There’s gonna be a lot of work that follows through from here.

I’m happy to talk about that, but I think I learned a few things that were very important. So number one, one of the things I learned is that the guys behind me are doing an incredible job, and, frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job that they do every single day. Now, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasionally stories out there.

There are occasionally videos out there 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 that these people are under an incredible amount of duress, an incredible amount of chaos, and because of a few very far left agitators, a lot of these guys are unable to do their jobs without being harassed, without being doxed, and sometimes without being insulted. That is totally unacceptable.

And that’s one of the things that I want to send a message to is, yes, come out and protest, protest me, protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully, if you assault a law enforcement officer. The Trump Administration and the Department of Justice are gonna prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. And I wanted to show some support for these guys who, frankly, are operating in a very, very tough environment.

I heard a lot of stories today about that, that I think drives home just how chaotic the environment on the ground here has already gotten. For example, did you know that within the last, I think, week or so, maybe even more recently than that, you got a couple of ice officers who were off duty, who had been doxed online, who were sitting and having a meal at a restaurant in Minneapolis, when a bunch of agitators showed up, locked the door, made them feel like they were in danger for their lives, and then, of course, it was federal law enforcement officers who had to come up. lower the temperature on the situation, and actually get those two off duty officers to appoint a safety. Now, imagine, if you would, your life and your perspective on law enforcement, if you can’t even go to a restaurant without some agitators locking the door and making you feel like your life is in danger.

That is the environment that has been created, I think, by a lot of very, frankly, far left people, but also by some of the state and local law enforcement officials who could do a much better job in cooperating and working. And by the way, I’m not talking about the cops. These guys told me, you know, the cops are very sympathetic to what they’re dealing with.

I’m about to pick local elected law enforcement officials who could do a lot better job in making their lives a little bit easier, and in the process, they would make the lives of all Minneapolis residents easier, and that’s what we want. We want to be able to enforce the immigration laws on the one hand, while, on the other hand, we want to make sure that people in Minneapolis are able to go about their day. I want to say just one last one last point on this.

So, I heard from a business leader today, told me a very tough story, and I think so much of what’s gone wrong in Minneapolis is people not trying to understand the perspective of somebody else. Try to understand what somebody else is experiencing, whether they’re a officer or anybody in the community here in Minneapolis. So, they told me a story about this manufacturing facility where an illegal immigrant was being arrested, and as these employees are going into the manufacturing facility, all of a sudden, an illegal immigrant shows up, they don’t know it’s an illegal immigrant, and then a bunch of ice officers descend.

Now, these people just want to go to work. They want to go to work safely, and now all of a sudden, there’s a major law enforcement operation happening right outside their place of business. Now, from one perspective, I certainly understand why a business leader or why an employee would say, Well, what’s going on?

It’s a little scary, no matter your position in life, if a bunch of cop cars show up, and they’re arresting somebody. Now, the additional context is that we know that people online have been encouraging illegal immigrants, that one way they can evade arrest is by showing up at a legitimate place of business, making it impossible for these guys to actually enforce our immigration laws. So while I can understand the perspective of somebody who doesn’t want to see an arrest happen at their place of work, I can also understand the perspective of our immigration enforcement officers who have to do their job and can’t allow a heckler’s veto over our immigration enforcement.

And so much of what’s gone wrong is the failure to do that. And here’s the point. We can do a good job of enforcing our immigration laws without the chaos, but it actually requires the cooperation of state and local officials.

If you look at blue cities and blue states, red cities, and red states, you go to Austin, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee. You go to the state of Texas, obviously, a very red state, or the state of Tennessee, a very red state, but you got blue cities within those states, you do not have this level of chaos. The reason why things have gotten so out of hand is because of failure of cooperation between the state and local authorities and what these guys are trying to do.

We have a ton of resources, a ton of ice agents in this city right now that I would rather us not have. I’d love to send those guys home. They’re not even doing targeted immigration enforcement.

They are trying to protect ice officers who are doing immigration enforcement, because when a crowd surrounds them, and these guys call 911, the local officials, the local cops have been told to stand down. So we have people here who aren’t even doing immigration enforcement. They’re doing force protection, so that if a rioter tries to ruin the life or assault an ice officer, they’re actually protected.

Now, why doesn’t it make more sense for the local cops to get involved in that situation? Why not just have the mayor or the local officials tell the police officers, you know what? If an ice officer is being assaulted by a far left agitator, you are invited.

You should actually help them. That’s what would work out in any normal situation, and that’s what happens in nearly every jurisdiction, red or blue in the United States of America. The reason it hasn’t happened here is because the local authorities have been told, Stand down.

Do not help ice, promote, promote the agitation, but don’t do anything to lower the temperature and lower the chaos. That’s a problem. Here’s another example of how the lack of cooperation between state and local officials makes it harder for us to do our job.

Turns up the temperature. Let’s say, for example, we have a criminal migrant who is a sex offender, and let’s say that we’ve got to go and arrest that person who, Democrat or Republican, wants a sex offender living in their community, I would assume I would hope that most people don’t. But because they’re an illegal alien, we don’t know their last address.

We may have known their address three years ago, but we don’t know their address now. What we’d like to do is talk to local officials and say, You know what? According to the Medicaid rolls, where was the last person this person, or where was the last address this person was domiciled?

Or, according to a snap application, a food stamps application, maybe that could give us insight to where this person is today. Or maybe they had some local court trouble. We could go to the local courthouse, or even the local jail, and try to find where this criminal sex offender is today.

The local authorities have been told, Do not cooperate. So these guys are trying to go out and enforce the law. They’re trying to arrest sex offenders, but they’re trying to do it in an environment where local officials have been told, Do not help them, do not provide intelligence about where these sex offenders might be.

This is disgraceful. And there are a lot of things that all of us could do better to lower the temperature, but the number one thing that I learned today is the best way to facilitate reasonable enforcement of the law, but also to lower the chaos in Minneapolis would be for state and local officials to cooperate. Now, I will say, on one final positive note, I actually think that there’s some hope, some reason to think that there’s gonna be better cooperation in the weeks and months to come.

I think that because I’ve talked to some of the local officials here. I think there are reasons to believe that these people are gonna step up and actually ask the cops to protect our ISO officers when they’re being assaulted. You are gonna ask the local courts to cooperate with getting criminal sex offenders out of our community.

That’s a good thing. That’s the good news, and that’s something I’m gonna work on when I get back to Washington. But please, if you’re a local official, if you’re the mayor of this town, if you have any influence over those people, just tell them to cooperate.

Because we could have immigration enforcement operate as smoothly and without the chaos that we see in Austin, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee, or even rural parts of the state of Minnesota, all we need is a little cooperation. I guarantee you, we’re gonna do the best to be professional, to respect people’s rights, to not do anything that we don’t have to do in order to enforce immigration laws, but it would make our lives a lot easier. It would make our officers a lot safer, and it would make Minneapolis much less chaotic if we had a little bit of cooperation from the state and local officials.

With that, I’ll shut up and take some questions. Thank you guys.

A local school district here in I detained a five year old after preschool on Tuesday.

We’ve also seen a couple of requisitions, and, uh, last 5 US, 6 weeks. Are you proud of how your administration is conducting this immigration crackdown here in Minnesota right now?

Well, I’m proud of the fact that we’re standing behind law enforcement, and I’m proud of the fact that we’re enforcing the country’s laws, but, you know, you asked a question about this five year old kid.

I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming, too many Annapolis. We just left Toledo, Ohio, this morning, for an economic investigation event. And I see this story, and I’m a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy, and I think to myself, oh, my God, this is terrible.

How did we arrest a five year old? Well, I do a little bit more follow up research. And what I find is that the five year old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien, and then when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.

So, the story is that ICE detained a five year old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five year old child freeze to death?

Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America? If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated laws because they have children, then every single parent is gonna be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn’t make any sense.

No one thinks that makes any sense. Now, you, you know, there are so many of these cases like that where, if you just understand the context, there have been a number of situations that I’ve looked into personally, where I say, Wait a second. We don’t want ice and arresting American citizens.

They’re supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws against illegal aliens. So then I look into it, and I find out that the American citizen who was arrested took a swing at an ice officer, you can’t have that happen. And, of course, they have to defend themselves, and, of course, they have the right to detain somebody who assaults a law enforcement officer.

Now, this is my point. Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic?

No, we don’t. These guys want, at least of all, but if we had a little cooperation from local and federal, excuse me, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community. it is. Good.

After the Renee Goods shooting, sir, the administration seems to… Yeah, you can go next.. No, that’s fine.

I’ll take both. After the relationship, sir, the administration seems to do. After the Rene Good shooting, the administration seemed to suggest that ice officers enjoyed near complete immunity, but today you told the Washington examiner that when appropriate, the administration might take disciplinary actions against ice agents.

So is that a change of opinion? And if so, why would you be Tony? No, I didn’t say, and I don’t think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity.

That is absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into. We don’t want these guys to have kangaroo courts.

We want them to actually have real due process, real investigation, because, again, sometimes they’re accused of wrongdoing, and it turns out when you learn the context, they didn’t actually do anything wrong. But, of course, we’re gonna investigate these things. Of course, we’re investigating the Renee Good shooting, but we’re investigating them in a way that respects people’s rights, and then ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they’re gonna face disciplinary action, but we’re not gonna judge them in the court of public opinion.

I’ve spoken at length on this particular case. I think that Renee Goode’s death is a tragedy. I also think that she rammed an ice officer with her car.

So, there are the tragedy here is multi-layered. The tragedy is that there was a misunderstanding. The tragedy is that Renee Goode lost her life.

The tragedy is that you have, ice officers, who are going into communities, where they’re worried that if they call 911, no one’s gonna come to help them. That is what produces this terrible situation, and it’s something state local officials here in Minnesota could solve. Yes, sir.

Give us a message. Your life tomorrow is just for regarding this cooperation and family values. It’s a shame the kids have to get caught up in all this.

And, uh, you know, towards, towards that fair. Well, you know, it is a shame that kids have to get caught up in this. I am speaking of March for life tomorrow.

I am pro-life, and I’m very excited to speak there. I want to talk about local law enforcement, but, you know, I mean, look, I am… As a child, I saw people in my family get arrested.

It’s terrible. It’s heartbreaking, it’s chaotic, it’s traumatic for the kids. I could recognize, and I could recognize that we got to support these kids while, on the other hand, saying that just because you’re a parent doesn’t mean that you get complete immunity from law enforcement.

And I think we have to hold both of those thoughts in our head at the same time. We’ve got to be sympathetic to the kids who are caught up in some of these enforcement actions. We’ve also got to say, we have to enforce the law without bias, with fairness, but we’ve got to enforce the law.

Did you vice president? There was a class in St. Cloud for roughly a week ago, and their marriage said they haven’t heard about ice being in the city.

And how does ice kind of reactively work with these local agencies? What are those policies and what’s your response to that? You said there was an altercation in St. Cloud.

Yeah, I mean, The incident, the mayor said that I just did not communicate with them, that they were in the city for a major operation. The police chief did not know about the operation at the time.

So can you talk a little bit about proactive communication with local law enforcement?

Yeah, it’s one of the takeaways. I talked with these guys before we came on the stage, but during our round table, and some of the other conversations we’ve had, communication, we absolutely want to ensure there’s good communication between federal officials and state and local officials, and I’m sure that we can do better on that.

We absolutely want to make sure that we are communicating, but that also requires a two way street, and that’s the point that I make about state and local officials. These guys will absolutely communicate with state and local officials. They tell people if, if, they have to do an enforcement operation in a particular municipality, but part of that is they also want to ensure that if they’re communicating about their whereabouts, that’s not being used as a weapon against them.

Sometimes they tell people where they’re going, and then they find out that their agents’ faces are on the, you know, on Reddit or on some social media threat, saying, Here’s this guy. We know he’s gonna be at this place at this exact time. So that communication has got to be a two way street.

These guys are gonna communicate with business leaders, with local officials, with state officials, but we also need the local officials and state officials to do a good job of protecting people when they’re in their communities. We’re not asking, by the way, I don’t want any police officer, in this community, in this state, to help us do immigration enforcement. We’ve got that.

But if, but if a protester shows up, and that protester turns violent against our immigration officers, we really, really need the cooperation of our local partners. We haven’t gotten it yet, but I think if we do, we really can lower the temperature.

This week. Probably get the Washington Post recording today that an ice memo allows agents to enter people’s houses without a judge’s warrant.

What do you say to people who say who are concerned about this violating the Constitution, and how much is the tactic being used?

Yeah, so, I saw that story, and the story is, like, so much that I read in the mainstream media, it’s missing a whole lot of context, and we appreciate the context. It makes sense.

No one is saying, I mean, look, there are exceptions. For example, a crazy exception. If somebody is fired at from inside a house, they don’t need a warrant to go inside that person’s house.

There are very narrow exceptions to the warrant requirement. where law enforcement officers don’t need, you know, a warrant if, for example, they’re an imminent threat of their lives. But what we’ve said and what ICE proposed, what the Department of Homeland Security really has proposed to the Department of Justice, is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law. Now, it’s possible, I guess, that the courts will say, No, and of course, if the courts say, No, we would follow that law, but nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant.

We’re talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system. Typically, what happens, not always, but typically in the immigration system, those are handled by administrative law judges. So we’re talking about getting warrants from those administrative law judges, and then, of course, with other cases, you get judges, or you get warrants from a judge.

That’s very consistent with the practice of American law. I’m sure the courts will weigh in on that, but we’re never gonna enter somebody’s house without some kind of a warrant, unless, of course, somebody’s firing on an officer, or they have to do something in order to protect themselves. I follow up on that.

Do you believe that you can forcibly enter with an administrative warrant, or would that be a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

Well, our understanding is that you can enforce the immigration laws of the country under an administrative order, if you have an administrative warrant. That’s what we think.

That’s our understanding, the law, that’s our best faith attempt to understand the law. Again, this is something courts will weigh in on. I will speak to that, but yes, most immigration law in our country is not done through the criminal system with the judge.

It’s done through the administrative law system. We’re gonna continue that practice just as they did in the Biden administration or any other administration. Was there anything that you heard or saw today that would cause you to counsel the president to invoke the Insurrection Act?

And then also, did you meet or talk to the ice agent who was involved in the Renee Good incident? I did not talk to him today. I talked to some of his colleagues.

Um, you know, your question on the Insurrection Act is interesting. I’ve tried to understand this as well as I possibly could. And my understanding is what the insurrection act, what invoking the insurrection act, would allow the federal government to do, is that it would allow the federal government to use the military for local law enforcement operations.

Right now, we don’t think that we need that. Now, the president could change his mind, of course, things could get worse, but right now, we think that federal law officers could do the job of federal law enforcement. Now, what I do worry about, again, is if the chaos gets worse, if more and more ice agents assaulted if other law enforcement officers start getting assaulted, that would be a real problem.

But again, we have so much federal law enforcement resources here right now. We have so many people here that we do not want to have here. I do not want so many ice officers in Minneapolis right now.

I mean, good Lord, it’s really, really freaking cold outside. But they’re here, not even to enforce immigration laws, but to protect the people from the rioters, that’s an absurd state of affairs, and we wouldn’t need it if we had a little bit more cooperation from the Minneapolis Police Department. Again, the Minneapolis Police Department, my understanding is that the actual beat cops on the ground, they would love to help out, but they’re being told by somebody.

I don’t know if it’s Mayor Frey. They’re being told by somebody not to cooperate at all. What kind of a person tells their local police don’t protect somebody if they’re being assaulted by a rioter? It’s crazy, and it’s got to stop. Yes.

Honestly, earlier this week, local law enforcement used federal agents of racial profiling. Why are there so many U.S. citizens being caught up in this operation?

Well, I think your question assumes something that’s not necessarily in evidence, which is that when there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer.

They’re not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws. They’re being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer. That is a totally reasonable thing.

Now, to the accusation of racial profiling, you know, look, it’s something that we take very seriously. We will take accusations of racial profiling back to Washington will certainly look into them as they come up. But this is not a group that’s going around and looking for people who violated the law based on skin color.

They’re looking for people who violated the actual law, the law of our immigration system in this country, and so long as we had more cooperation, I think they could do these things in a much more targeted way. They would actually know where some of the bad guys are. I mean, you hear things that are hard to believe, but I’ve confirmed that they are true.

Sex offenders, sex offenders, who were trying to get off the streets, who the local officials won’t tell us their last known address. So then the local officials say, Oh, my God. These guys are doing widespread targeted enforcement operations when, in reality, we would love to just go to one house.

The local officials won’t tell us which one house to go to.

You’re my vice president. Mr. Vice President, to that question, the local police chiefs have said their own off duty officer. So police officers are being targeted because they are a person of color and asked to show their papers. Is that a concern of the administration and the Department of Homeland Security? Of local law enforcement says their own officers are being targeted, and they described it as, quote, civil rights violations in our streets.

So, I saw one story about this, and one book, the police officer who said this, and, look, certainly is a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not.

And then if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation, of course, if somebody violated the law, if somebody racially profiled, if somebody violated the rights of one of our fellow citizens, that is something we will take very seriously. What I also would say is that many of the most viral stories of the past couple of weeks have turned out to be, at best, partially true. So we want to try people based on reality, based on the truth, based on context.

We’re not gonna prejudge people just because of viral social media story that turned out to be half false. Your question. About the round table, you just had, I presume, that happened.

Did you invite anybody with an opposing point of view to get an idea of why people are upset here? And just as a quick follow up, have you reached out to Governor Waltz at all in an attempt to turn down the temperature? So I haven’t talked to Governor Walls on this particular trip.

A number of members of our administration, I believe, our chief of staff, spoke to the governor, and has been in constant contact with his staff over the past week. We’ve been at my office in constant contact with people here on the ground in Minneapolis. There were certainly people at a round table with opposing views, and, look, I don’t even know, you know, whether it’s public, but, yes, we met with people with opposing views here at the Round Table.

I wanted to get a perspective from everybody, but also, of course, offer my opinion, with a little bit more cooperation, we could lower the chaos. We’re gonna keep on doing that if Governor Walsh wants to call me, uh, we’ll absolutely continue talking. I will say that my sense of this situation, having talked to these guys for a long time, is, this is primarily a law enforcement issue.

This is the attorney general. This is the local mayor. This is all of the organs of local and state law enforcement.

That who we focus on, but we’ve certainly been in communication with the governor and his office, as well. president. Yeah. So, well, unfortunate, obviously.

Now, with the agents who’ve been assaulted repeatedly, what’s the plan if nothing changes there here locally, and this operation has attracted thousands of agents? Are there any plans to go to any other cities from here?

Well, right now, we’re focused on Minneapolis because that’s where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws, and that’s also, frankly, where we see the most assault of our law enforcement officers.

Our plan is very simple. If you assault a federal law enforcement officer, we’re gonna do everything that we can to put you in prison. It’s very simple, and most of these protesters, as much as I may disagree with their politics, most of them have been peaceful, but a lot of them have not been peaceful.

And if you go and storm a church, if you go and insult a federal law enforcement officer, we are gonna try very hard. We’re gonna use every resource of the federal government to put you in prison, respect people’s rights. Respect people’s rights to worship, respect people’s rights, to do their job without being assaulted.

If you follow that basic principle, the Trump administration will do everything that we can to protect your rights. But if you go after somebody, if you assault somebody, if you make a nine year old girl cry because you walk into her church and harass her, we’re gonna go after you with every single toll that we have. Okay, let’s go with NBC news sir.

Your administration has said repeatedly. This is about safety, about making Americans feel safer. So what do you say to people here in Minnesota who say, It’s the overwhelming presence of ice officers and federal officers, and their tactics that are making them feel less safe?

Well, one thing I would say is, first of all, we saw, in 2025, the biggest one you’re dropping murder is in the history of the United States of America. Significant reductions in violent crime. The reason why we have less of violent crime is really two reasons.

Number one, because we’re enforcing the immigration laws and getting very violent criminals out of our country. And number two, because we’re enforcing our criminal laws and putting guys who assault and murder behind bars. This is part of a broad effort to make us safe, and the chaos that people are seeing, and I understand there is frustration of the chaos, I’d say that we’re doing everything that we can to lower the temperature, and we would like federal and local, excuse me, state and local officials to meet us halfway.

So much, so… Are you saying that they’re not perceiving it correctly? Are you saying that they’re not seeing that it’s the tactics or the presence of the officers?

Look, I’m sure that people are seeing a lot of things that would make any member of our national community feel very upset, but I also think that if you understand this in context, this is the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided that they’re not gonna cooperate with immigration enforcement at all. In fact, they’re gonna aggressively not cooperate. So here, I mean, here’s a basic illustration of this.

If you are an ice officer, and you have to arrest a person who’s committed assault and is also an illegal alien, but the state and local officials won’t help you identify that person, Many of the things that people in Minneapolis are seeing, that give them pause, that frustrate them, that worry them, that make them feel like things are too chaotic. Many of these things are coming from the fact that there’s no cooperation with state and local law enforcement. And I guess what I would tell people, again, many of whom are justifiably concerned and worried about what they’re seeing in their communities is, why are we not seeing it anywhere else?

We’re seeing this level of chaos only in Minneapolis. L.A. and Chicago, we had some problems there. Pretty much every jurisdiction where these guys are operating, you don’t see the same level of chaos.

You don’t see the same level of violence. You don’t see the problems that we’re seeing in Minneapolis. Maybe the problem is unique to Minneapolis, and we believe that it is.

And it’s a lack of cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. Uh, ICE has been operating here for years with less pushback than we’re seeing right now, and even the St. Paul Police chief recently said, is there not a way to find common ground without scaring the hell out of people in the community?

Those were his words. And I just wonder, with this operation Metro Surge, is any part of it meant to send a form of political message to the leaders here in Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota? I know you talked about you’ve been in touch with the governor’s offices and the mayor’s offices.

But why have you not been able to speak to them directly? Have they not been willing to do so? Well, look, I have spoken to some of the people in Minnesota directly.

I spoke to some of them today. I spoke to others in the past, and again, our staff has been in very direct contact with pretty much every official with any influence or any power in Minneapolis, but no, we’re not trying to send a political message. We’re trying to enforce the law.

And unfortunately, what has happened is that as we’ve enforced the law, there’s been this weird reaction, again, you need to this city. This is not a common thing across the United States of America. There’s been a very unique, very Minneapolis specific reaction to our enforcement of federal immigration laws.

What I’m trying to do here today is understand why that is. What is it about Minneapolis that has become so chaotic? What are the specific types of cooperation that we need?

Look, I don’t need Tim Walls or Jacob Frey or anybody else to come out and say that they agree with J.D. Vance or Donald Trump on immigration. I just don’t need that. What I do need them to do is empower their local officials to help our local or help our federal officials out in a way where this can be a little bit less chaotic, and it can be a little bit more targeted.

Like, if we’re trying to find a sex offender, tell us where the guy lives. Simple things like that, simple changes in how they’re approaching immigration enforcement would make this work a lot better. It would make Minneapolis’s streets a lot safer, and it would make this whole thing a lot less traumatic this community.

I’ll take one more question.

You said that it’s time to turn down the temperature. Does that include changes to both ice and CBP tactics that we’ve seen employed on the streets, including less than lethal tactics, pepper spray, pepper balls. Beyond that, what is the federal government’s role in turning down the temperature, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections says that its own officers have been cooperating with ice all along, handing over criminals once they serve their sentences to ice officials. Can you concede that there is some cooperation with the states?

Yeah, look, if I was gonna list the five agencies locally and statewide that I’m most worried about, I wouldn’t put the Department of Corrections on that list. I think that while there are certain things, we’d like to see more from them, they’ve hardly been the worst offenders. You agree with that, guys.

That’s a fair assessment. Um, but I think when you talked about tactics, you talked about the response to things. Look, we don’t want to employ tactics that…

We don’t employ the kind of tactics that are only necessary when violence is committed against officers. That is these guys’ directive, and that’s what we’re gonna try to do. And again, you see, the president said this a couple of days ago.

Whatever you have a law enforcement operation, even if 99.99% of the guys do everything perfectly, you’re gonna have people that make mistakes. That is the nature of law enforcement. What I do think that we can do is working with state and local officials, we can make the worst moments of chaos much less common, and all they’ve got to do is meet us halfway.

These guys want to communicate with them. They want to talk to the local business leaders. Many of these guys, many of the people standing behind me, are members of the Minneapolis community.

Many the officials that I met today who work in federal immigration enforcement, this is their home. They love this place. These are their neighbors.

They want this to work a lot more smoothly. I think that we can get there. We just got to work out a little bit, and we need some cooperation from state and local officials.

Last thing that I’ll say is, I just hope they give it. This is a beautiful city. I’ve only been here a few times.

I love it, even in this weather. I love Minneapolis. We could do a lot better, we could do a lot more with more cooperation.

The Trump administration, the directive that I got from the president of the United States, is Meet These Guys Halfway. Work with them so that we can make these immigration enforcement operations successful without endangering our ice officers and so that we can turn down the chaos a little bit, at least. I think a lot, actually.

But for us to do that, we need some help from the state and local officials. We will keep on working with them, and so long as they’re willing to work with us, they will always find a partner in public safety and law enforcement in the Trump administration. Thank you all.”

Categories: Robert Clifton Robinson