Walz says Trump pledged to ‘do things differently’ on ICE surge
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Gov. Tim Walz said that President Donald Trump pledged to “do things differently” on the federal immigration surge during a 10-minute Monday morning call.
“Whether it was morality or bad optics and poll numbers, whatever has happened here there’s a definite change of tone. There’s definitely a more collaborative tone. I’m going to take them for their word right now,” since Saturday’s killing of Alex Pretti by a federal agent in Minneapolis, Walz told MPR News host Clay Masters Monday afternoon.
He said Trump agreed to consider reducing the number of immigration enforcement agents in the Twin Cities and ensure the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension could conduct independent investigations into the killings of Pretti and Renee Macklin Good.
Walz said he planned to talk to Tom Homan, the federal “border czar” that Trump has ordered to oversee operations. Homan’s expected to arrive in the Twin Cities Monday night. Walz said he’s been told that Greg Bovino, commander at large for the Border Patrol, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will not be returning to the Twin Cities during the surge.
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Bovino and Noem had called Pretti a domestic terrorist. Video and eyewitness testimony contradicts what federal officials are saying about Pretti’s killing.
“This is not about border security,” Walz said. “We’ve laid out the case that we do the right thing. We don’t want criminals here but we also recognize that someone coming here to find a better life should be treated with dignity, that Americans shouldn’t be fearing for their lives to go out of their house just because of the color of their skin.”
“I think Donald Trump understands it, too,” he added. “That horrific scene that played out Saturday morning. You could tell there was no professionalism to that.”
Walz said videos of Pretti’s killing set against Noem’s comments about what happened “finally maybe broke the fever.”
The governor said he’d met with some of Pretti’s colleagues at the Minneapolis VA hospital where he worked as an intensive care nurse. He said they were traumatized but also wanted the world to know he was the coworker everybody liked. “Alex was the guy who would take your shift for you” or tell you to “go eat lunch, I’ll watch your patient.”
He was an “outdoor guy, a mountain biker, liked to shoot firearms but cared deeply about rights” and had a “rigid moral compass,” Walz said Pretti’s colleagues told him.
Watching the video just before he was shot and killed, his colleagues knew that once the federal pushed a woman, “they knew that Alex would step between.”
‘I don’t think President Trump knew’
Following the morning call, Trump took to social media and described it as “a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength” on the federal immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities.
He described crime in Minnesota as “way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!”
In the MPR News interview, Walz said he would talk later with Homan and that his message would be “get these folks (agents) out of here now. Go back to targeted enforcement and coordinate with us. We’re willing to work with you on a task force.”
He and other state officials have said that Minnesota’s prison system does turn over those detained by ICE once they complete their sentences — cooperation that a top ICE official recently acknowledged.
Walz suggested that the president was getting bad or false information from his people about the level of cooperation between state authorities and federal immigration officials.
“I don’t think President Trump knew that we honored detainers from folks leaving prison. I truly don’t believe, and I think once he heard that from me, he’s like, ‘Well that’s helpful.’ So I think now maybe the president is saying, ‘Look I don’t know if Minnesota’s, you know, not what we were saying they were doing, they actually are doing it.”
Later in the afternoon Monday, Trump posted, “I just had a very good telephone conversation with Mayor Jacob Frey, of Minneapolis. Lots of progress is being made! Tom Homan will be meeting with him tomorrow in order to continue the discussion.”
White House press secretary continues to blame Walz, Frey; says no commitment yet to cooperating with local investigators
While Walz said Trump had pledged to “do things differently,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt continued to blame Walz and Frey for “actively inhibiting efforts to arrest violent criminals.” And she laid out some of Trump’s demands.
“Governor Walz, Mayor Frey and all Democrat leaders should turn over all criminal illegal aliens currently incarcerated in their prisons and jails to federal authorities, along with any illegal aliens with active warrants or known criminal histories for immediate deportation,” Leavitt said in a press briefing.
Leavitt also said the Trump administration is not yet committing to cooperating with local officials on the investigation into the fatal shooting of Pretti Saturday during an immigration enforcement action.
“The president spoke about this with Governor Walz and said he would have a discussion about it. He did not make a commitment, and so therefore I won’t make that commitment here,“ Leavitt said.
