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US federal officials are working on a plan to “draw down” the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota if state officials grant access to local jails, Donald Trump’s border tsar has said.
Tom Homan told a press conference on Thursday that he had made “a lot of progress” since he was deployed to Minneapolis following last weekend’s fatal shooting of nurse Alex Pretti in the state’s biggest city.
“I have staff from CBP and ICE working on a drawdown plan,” he said, also referring to US Customs and Border Protection.
Homan’s comments mark a decisive shift from the hardline tactics of the Trump administration to the president’s flagship immigration policy after Pretti’s death triggered outrage across the political spectrum.
Homan suggested a more “targeted” approach from ICE — which has launched sweeping immigration enforcement raids across the US — but he also defended the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and described ICE agents as “American patriots”.
He also suggested that the drawdown would be contingent on an agreement with local officials, saying that access to jails “would allow us to draw down the number of people we have here”.
Homan said that Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney-general, had “clarified” that county jails could notify ICE about the release of detainees, but called for greater access to local prisons.
“This is common sense co-operation that will allow us to draw down on the number of people we have here,” Homan said. “Yes, I said it: draw down the number of people here.”
Homan’s comments come as President Donald Trump seeks to defuse outrage, including from within his party, over the shootings by federal agents of Pretti and Renée Good, a mother of three, following immigration officials’ surge to the Midwestern city in recent weeks.
The border tsar on Thursday appeared to acknowledge the furore over the agents’ actions, saying: “I’m not here because the federal government has carried out this mission perfectly.”
US senator Susan Collins also said on Thursday that ICE had ended its “enhanced operations” in Maine after calls from local officials for federal immigration officers to leave the state.
“There are currently no ongoing or planned large-scale ICE operations here. I have been urging secretary Noem and others in the administration to get ICE to reconsider its approach to immigration enforcement in the state,” Collins said, referring to Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary.