President Donald Trump announced Monday morning that he and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) discussed over the phone a possible off-ramp for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minnesota.
The call came two days after Border Patrol agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the second U.S. citizen killed by federal immigration enforcement personnel in the city in just under three weeks.
“It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote Monday morning following his call with Walz. “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.
Trump said Walz was “happy” with the president’s decision to deploy Homan, the White House border czar, to Minnesota to take over command of Operation Metro Surge.
Trump conceded that crime in Minnesota had been steadily dropping even before he surged ICE officers to the state late last year but added that “both Governor Walz and I want to make it better!”
Previously, in a Sunday evening post to Truth Social, Trump said he would scale back ICE operations if local and state officials began allowing federal immigration assets access to jails to take criminal illegal immigrants into federal custody.
Walz’s office referred to the call as “productive” and added that the governor pressured Trump to allow independent investigations into the killings of Pretti and Renee Good, demands to which Trump agreed.
An aide for Walz said the president “also agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.”
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“The Governor reminded President Trump that the Minnesota Department of Corrections already honors federal detainers by notifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a person committed to its custody isn’t a U.S. citizen,” Walz’s office wrote in a statement. “There is not a single documented case of the department’s releasing someone from state prison without offering to ensure a smooth transfer of custody.”
Trump’s latest comments on Walz mark a significant departure from the way he has described the Democratic governor in recent weeks. The president has suggested that Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) were complicit in the billion-dollar fraud scheme of Minnesota’s social services programs, with many defendants being of Somali descent.