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Donald Trump has signalled a shift in his administration’s immigration crackdown as the US president seeks to quell the growing furore over the killing of a man this weekend by federal agents in Minnesota.
The president on Monday said he was deploying border tsar Tom Homan to Minnesota, in a move that was widely seen as a rebuke of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, who has overseen Trump’s aggressive campaign to detain and deport immigrants.
Trump also dialled down his rhetoric about Democratic leaders in Minnesota, saying in a social media post that he had spoken to the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, in a “very good call”.
“We, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote. The president has previously described Walz as “grossly incompetent” and a “stupid, low-IQ governor”.
The apparent pivot came amid a spiralling crisis over the killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, who was shot by federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday.
The shooting has prompted outrage from both sides of the political aisle and laid bare divisions within the White House and the wider Republican Party between immigration hardliners and those calling for a more measured approach to deportations.
The incident came less than three weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Recent opinion polls suggest the public approval rating for the president’s immigration enforcement tactics is at an all-time low, as the race towards this November’s midterm elections accelerates. The shootings have also prompted sweeping protests across US cities, with many local and state leaders asking the president to remove immigration agents.
Walz’s office described the governor’s call with the president as “productive”, and said Trump had agreed to let state authorities conduct independent investigations into Pretti and Good’s killings.
The governor’s spokesperson also said the president had “agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more co-ordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals”.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday that Homan, the border tsar, is “tough but fair”. Homan — who served under Democratic president Barack Obama — has long been at odds with Noem.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Monday said Noem “still has the utmost confidence and trust of the president of the United States”. But she added: “Border Tsar Homan is in a unique position to drop everything and go to Minnesota to continue having these productive conversations with state and local officials.”
Leavitt also distanced the president from comments made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s flagship immigration policies, who referred to the protester who was killed over the weekend as a “would-be assassin”.
“This has obviously been a very fluid and fast-moving situation,” Leavitt said. “As for President Trump . . . he has said that he wants to let the investigation continue and let the facts lead in this case.”
Leavitt’s remarks came after senior White House officials had insisted at the weekend that Pretti threatened agents with a firearm, despite video footage that contradicted those claims.
Several Republican lawmakers and state governors have publicly expressed concern about the shooting, calling for a full investigation and suggesting Ice should cease operations in Minneapolis.
Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota, suspended his campaign with a broadside against the president and his own party on Monday, saying: “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”
Even Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas and a staunch ally of the president, on Monday said the Trump administration needed to “recalibrate” its approach to Ice.
“That’s not an easy task, especially under the current circumstances, but I know that [the White House] are working on a game plan to make sure that they are going to . . . recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to get what they wanted to do to begin with, and that is to remove people from the country.”
The president has for months been engaged in a war of words with Democratic state and local leaders in Minnesota, including Walz, who abandoned a re-election bid this year as public scrutiny grows over a scandal involving a group of Somali migrants alleged to have fraudulently accessed the state’s public welfare system.
Despite the softer tone from Trump on Monday, Leavitt continued to blame Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey for what she described as “chaotic scenes” in Minnesota, and accused the Democratic state and local leaders of “deliberate and hostile resistance” to federal authorities.
Leavitt also set the stage for another battle with Democrats on Capitol Hill, reiterating Trump’s calls for Congress to pass a law banning so-called sanctuary cities that do not co-operate with federal immigration authorities.
The White House appears unwilling to engage with Democratic lawmakers who have refused to sign up to more funding for the Department of Homeland Security and threatened to shut down the federal government as soon as Friday in protest.
Leavitt said “policy discussions on immigration in Minnesota” were “happening”, but said they should “not be at the expense of government funding for the American people”.