On Friday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did morning drop-off for his two daughters, Frida Jade, five, and Estelle Bloom, six months. “One of the more stressful parts of my day is just figuring out how to carry all this crap into daycare along with two kids,” Frey, 44, told me by phone.
Going to work, however, comes with another kind of weight. Almost six years after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, Frey again finds himself a local leader on the front lines of a national crisis. The mayor is facing off against President Trump as Trump makes Minneapolis ground zero for his aggressive immigration crackdown, unleashing ICE’s largest-scale operation ever: an estimated 3,000 masked agents raiding homes and even schools, detaining residents (including children like five-year-old Liam Ramos, still toting his Spider-Man backpack), and using deadly force to shoot and kill Renée Good, then Alex Pretti, in the street.
Neither battle-scarred Minneapolis nor its mayor are having it. Frey famously ordered ICE to “get the fuck out.” More than 50,000 residents—including Frey, in a hooded parka—took to the streets last week in subzero temperatures. And earlier this month, Minneapolis sued the Trump administration in federal court, alleging the ICE onslaught is unconstitutional (a judge is expected to rule imminently). A week later, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Frey, along with Gov. Tim Walz and other local Democratic leaders critical of ICE, federally investigating them for unspecified offenses.
Frey said the White House didn’t respond to his request for an in-person meeting with the president, but in a tenuous bit of progress, Frey confirms he had a “positive conversation” with Trump this week. “On the phone, he was affable,” Frey told me, even “flattering at first”—though Trump has since said that Frey was “playing with fire” for stating that Minneapolis police would not assist ICE, nor do they have any legal responsibility to.
When I traveled to Minneapolis to profile Mayor Frey for Vogue in late 2021, he told me that Floyd’s murder and its aftermath was “a time that changed me forever.” He’s approached this latest crisis thicker-skinned and with more experience.
In a phone interview, Frey spoke about his call with Trump, the anxiety of being the subject of a federal investigation, parenting his daughters in tumultuous times, and what it means to be a patriot now.
Vogue: Loaded question: How are you doing? Maybe it’s better to ask how you’re doing today.
Mayor Jacob Frey: Look, we keep moving. Me, personally, I’m no victim. There are people having their constitutional rights trampled. There are families that are getting ripped apart. There are businesses that have closed. There are people who are in our streets that have suffered and they’re the ones that deserve the real attention. Not to mention the tens of thousands of people in our city that are peacefully protesting and bringing people groceries that are afraid to go outside and standing guard at a daycare. On the one hand, I am buoyed by an incredible city. And at the same time, I’m getting investigated by a Department of Justice that is being weaponized against local leaders that simply disagree.
What is the status of that investigation, Mayor? Have there been any new developments since you were subpoenaed?
As in any legal case, there are deadlines that you meet. But unlike other cases, never in a million years did I think that I would be investigated criminally by the federal government, simply for carrying out one of my core responsibilities as mayor, which is to speak on behalf of my constituents and keep them safe. I know that their claims are complete garbage and unconstitutional and, at the same time, yeah, it is very disconcerting to have the federal government come after you. In addition to being mayor, I’m a husband [Frey is married to Sarah Clarke]. I’m a dad. I got a six-month-old—she’s one day away from six months old. And then I got a five-year-old, who you’ve met. I just dropped them off at daycare. One of the more stressful parts of my day is just figuring out how to carry all this crap into daycare along with two kids and making sure that one of them doesn’t get hit by a car.