EXCLUSIVE — The first action that former My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell plans to take if elected Minnesota governor is turning over all illegal immigrants in state jails and prisons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
Just days ahead of the state’s primaries on Aug. 11, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate shared a long list of ways he intends to help the Trump administration go after illegal immigrants in the blue state and rein in activism he said was allowed to get out of hand last winter, during a conversation with the Washington Examiner.
“On day one, here, take these and ship them out,” Lindell said in a phone call, the same day he stepped down from his business to focus on his campaign. “We’ve got to get them out of our state.”
Minnesota’s elected Democratic leaders have staunchly fought the Republican administration in Washington as ICE targeted the state, and the White House has gone after billions of dollars of fraud from state programs.
In the mind of Lindell, 65, the state has a long way to go, but he has a plan to make significant headway by alleviating the financial cost of holding illegal immigrants in prison and jail, forcing county sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, enforcing existing laws that pertain to protests, and jailing employers who hire illegal workers.
The plan is a harsh crackdown on illegal immigration, unlike comments he made to the Washington Examiner in a separate interview last month. Lindell provoked criticism from figures on the MAGA right for his proposal, in which he proposed a six-month window, effectively an amnesty, in which illegal immigrants could apply for conditional work visas.
The Department of Homeland Security has claimed Minnesota had 1,360 illegal immigrants incarcerated, a figure that Lindell pointed to as proof of the state’s lack of cooperation with Washington in carrying out federal immigration laws.
“We have 1,400 illegals in our prisons that have committed the most atrocious crimes ever,” Lindell said.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections has maintained that it has only 200 people in custody whom ICE has requested to be detained through custody transfer.
Lindell intended to give county sheriffs statewide not just permission but instruction to work with ICE and immediately involve the federal agency when they have arrested someone whose immigration status is in question.
Using a line that White House border czar Tom Homan has frequently used in interviews, Lindell noted that it would be far easier to let ICE make arrests of people already in jail or prison than not cooperate and leave them to find individuals with criminal histories in neighborhoods and communities.
“The big lie here is that, ‘Oh, ICE comes in, they’re going door to door, and every illegal in this country is going to get out,’” Lindell said. “There’s 50 million illegals. They’re there to get the low-hanging, terrible illegals out, the ones that are the criminals, the felons. That’s what they’re coming for first.”
Cooperation between the state and Washington would help ICE avoid fatal encounters, such as the two deadly shootings of U.S. citizens who were on the street alongside federal officers in Minneapolis last January, he added.
One way to address this issue going forward is to fully enforce what Lindell described as “some of the strictest protest laws in the United States.”
“I’m all for protesting, but you do not commit crimes while you’re protesting,” he said. “… About eight, nine years ago, our officials let Black Lives Matter block off an eight-lane highway, 35-W. My employees couldn’t even get to work from Minneapolis. These protest laws have to be enforced. They’re already in place.”
Lindell pointed to a decision by the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission in June to pardon an illegal immigrant from Laos who had been convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old child as an example of the state’s refusal to work with ICE. A DHS spokesperson said Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) pardoned him “in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country.”
“It doesn’t even make sense here why we’re not cooperating with their government,” Lindell said. “That’s one of the reasons I’m running for governor. We’ve got to hit, we’ve got to get rid of these guys, these Walz and [Attorney General] Keith Ellison and [Rep.] Ilhan Omar.”
The big ticket to addressing illegal immigration is focusing on the pull factors or the reasons that immigrants come to the United States in the first place, as well as enforcing immigration and employment laws for American companies.
“Employers that are employing these illegals, are going to be put in jail,” Lindell said. “I’m going to jail them immediately, and take away their business licenses. These employers that are enabling them and doing this and stealing from our, from our taxpayers, I’m going to arrest every one of them.”
Walz chose not to seek reelection this year, but was not concerned by Trump’s endorsement of Lindell and potentially seeing a Republican control the state.
“The president wants loyalty,” Walz said. “So, folks in Minnesota will — Republicans will respond on August 11, I guess — and everyone else will get a chance in November.”
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The latest July poll by SurveyUSA of likely voters in the GOP primary found that Lindell was the most favored candidate among the seven Republicans seeking the nomination. He has grown his lead from 1 percentage point to 9 percentage points since January.
General election polling pits Lindell against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and shows Klobuchar with an advantage over Lindell.