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Jessica Mendoza (4:07)

This morning we talked to our colleague Joe Barrett, who's in Minneapolis. He says that on Friday people had gathered for a planned demonstration against immigration officials.

Joe Barrett (4:16)

There was a huge protest on Friday. Thousands of people peacefully going down the streets to protest ICE's involvement in the city. And you know, everybody was feeling pretty good about the response and how well managed the whole thing was. They also closed down many businesses. Hundreds of businesses were shuttered just for the day and sort of what they were calling a general strike. And then Saturday morning everybody woke up to another ICE shooting.

Jessica Mendoza (4:42)

What has been the response to the killing of Alex Preddy in Minnesota?

Joe Barrett (4:47)

I mean, you know, people are angry, they're sad. They kind of feel like they've been saying something like this could happen. I mean, two weeks ago it was Renee Goode, another person trying to observe ice, who was shot in the head by an ICE agent. And now it happens again. So, yeah, people are very upset.

Jessica Mendoza (5:05)

Yesterday Joe went to the site where Preddy, a 37 year old ICU nurse, was killed. A commercial strip in Minneapolis residents had set up a memorial with flowers and pictures of Preddy. A saxophone played in the distance.

Joe Barrett (5:19)

So I just am getting to the scene of yesterday's shooting and the street here is still close at this point. You know, probably 100, 200 people just coming to pay their respects. Lots of media, lots of well wishers. The police are here to direct the traffic. People are bringing their dogs out. I saw one older couple. They had a framed photo of the victim and a camera.

Jessica Mendoza (5:59)

What did people at the scene have to say? What was generally the feeling there?

Joe Barrett (6:03)

Just sadness and anger. I mean, I saw a lot of people in tears. I spoke with people and it just doesn't take long for them to get to a real sense of hopelessness and sadness that somebody who had dedicated his life to helping other people and was, you know, gunned down in the street.

Jessica Mendoza (6:23)

After the shooting. The state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said its agents were blocked from investigating the scene by federal authorities. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the shooting, but Governor Walz demanded access for state law enforcement and said, quote, the federal government cannot be trusted to lead this investigation. State investigators sued the Trump administration on Saturday, and the judge ruled that the federal government could not destroy or alter evidence.

Joe Barrett (6:49)

The cooperation is still just not happening. And so the state's trying to launch their own investigation, but it's very difficult when they don't have access to the evidence like body cam footage or any of the forensics or anything else.

Jessica Mendoza (7:02)

When Joe arrived at the site of the shooting on Sunday, he saw some state agents trying to make sense of the crime scene.

Joe Barrett (7:08)

I mean, the integrity of the crime scene has been completely lost. But they were there, right in front of a business is where it happened. And they were knocking on the door to see if anybody inside had any information. There was a man being interviewed on tv and one of the investigators asked to speak with him afterwards and had the guy walk over and point where he had seen blood on the day of the shooting. There were flowers all over, but they were still trying to get a few photographs to see whether there, you know, was any markings of what had happened. I think they were probably looking for bullet casings too, but, you know, there just was nothing. It was all covered in flowers and memorials at this point.

Jessica Mendoza (7:53)

After visiting the scene of the shooting, Joe went to other parts of the city. He came across a protest in downtown Minneapolis.

Joe Barrett (8:00)

Probably 300 people on the street cornered, you know, just yelling, f ice. ICE out. Spoke with, you know, some of those people who had protested Friday and thought, you know, maybe they'd have the weekend off, but then ended up protesting again on Saturday and again again on Sunday.

Jessica Mendoza (8:18)

One of the people Joe spoke with was Matthew Steggeman, a 34 year old urban planner.

Joe Barrett (8:23)

He had on a placard over his chest saying, you know, peaceful observer. Do not shoot. So I'm here in support of our community members. Immigration is a close issue to me. I have close friends and family who have immigrated from other countries. And, you know, he's like a sort of typical Minnesota guy. He wants everybody to know that we're, you know, we're regular people. Nobody's getting paid to be here. And, you know, we're just, you know, trying to make this case and do it peacefully and hopefully, you know, get ice out of town. We are here because we have to be, and we are here for anybody else in the country who's going to face this next.

Jessica Mendoza (9:05)

Later in the day, Joe met Charlie Sellers, who works in tech, at a gathering in the neighborhood where Alex Preddy lived.

Joe Barrett (9:12)

I think a lot of us have been uncomfortable with how aggressive the administration has been with its tactics. But that aggression went to another level when our neighbors started getting murdered. And so regular folks like us have gotten off of our couches and felt compelled to do something about.

Jessica Mendoza (9:35)

And what's your sense of what the people of Minneapolis will do next? Do you expect to see more of these protests in the next weeks?

Joe Barrett (9:43)

Yeah, I mean, I think as long as it goes on, I don't think that they're going to be deterred. I mean, you know, ICE has ramped up its tactics and, you know, there are people who follow their vehicles around in cars. And, you know, we're hearing reports of those people getting boxed in by ice, their windows broken, people dragged away to jail or to the Federal Whipple center, where that's where they would take ICE detainees. But they're also taking people now who are protesters. And I think that they're more determined than ever at this point, even though it's clear what the consequence can be when they cross ICE in the wrong way.

Jessica Mendoza (10:20)

The Trump administration says observers hinder immigration authorities ability to do their job. Were there any ICE or Border Patrol agents around that you saw while you were there?

Joe Barrett (10:32)

No, I didn't see any activity at the places I was going. I mean, you know, they're not here to police the demonstrators, but they're being followed around when they're trying to make their apprehensions, and that's where these clashes tend to happen.

Jessica Mendoza (10:47)

On Sunday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, a Democrat, called on Trump to remove federal immigration officials from his state.

Host (10:55)

President Trump, you can end this today. Pull these folks back. Do humane, focused, effective immigration control.

Joe Barrett (11:04)

You've got the support of all of.

Host (11:06)

Us to do that.

Jessica Mendoza (11:08)

That same day, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, also a Democrat, said something similar. Here she is on ABC News.

Host (11:15)

My message is simple. ICE is making us not more safe. They're making us less safe, and they need to get out of our state.

Jessica Mendoza (11:25)

After the break, what Minneapolis reveals about the Trump administration's larger immigration policy.

Host (11:42)

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Jessica Mendoza (12:23)

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Jessica Mendoza (12:49)

The federal immigration push in Minneapolis is part of Trump's efforts over the past year to carry out his mass deportation pledge, especially in Democratic led cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. The spark in Minneapolis was a large scale welfare fraud scandal that was already unfolding in the state. Prosecutors alleged over a billion dollars of welfare funds had been misused by a network within the local Somali community. Here's our colleague Michelle Hackman. She covers immigration policy.

Host (13:18)

Over the last year, we've seen Trump basically target one city after another. It's really, it's part of a coordinated strategy to sort of take on liberal sanctuary cities. They think this is a fight that's worth having, that plays well for them. And so when this welfare scandal exploded in Minnesota, they thought it would be a great opportunity to go sort of take on the liberals in Minnesota and send a huge deployment of people.

Jessica Mendoza (13:48)

So it was sort of an opportunity in this welfare fraud case that was already playing out as a chance to say, hey, let's take on Minneapolis next.

Host (13:56)

Absolutely. And, you know, I should say from the start, like it didn't make sense on its face. Minnesota actually just has a relatively low percentage of people who are here in the country illegally. It's about half the national average and much lower than places like New York, California, Texas and Florida, which we have not for the most part seen the Trump administration target.

Jessica Mendoza (14:23)

But the Trump administration decided to deploy more federal immigration authorities to Minneapolis than it did to other bigger cities.

Host (14:31)

So I want to just give you a comparison. I think a lot of our listeners are familiar with what they saw happening in Chicago in the fall. That was a deployment of roughly 300 to 600 agents and officers to Chicago, which is a city of about 2.5 million people. You have 3,000 federal agents and officers sent to Minneapolis, which is a city of closer to about 450,000. So you can imagine, I mean, it's just so much larger proportionally that what you're getting is sort of like close quarters of all these agents all over the city running up against immigrants, but also protesters who are trying to resist them. What we're seeing in Minneapolis feels like a culmination of what this past year has been building up to. For the past year, we've seen ICE sort of change tactics. This administration has favored what I've been describing as a splashier, sort of more confrontational approach. They're out on the street, they're arresting people, and these huge deployments to cities are what's triggering protesters to come out and then clash with, you know, ICE or Border Patrol or whoever it may be, leading to even more confrontation.

Jessica Mendoza (15:55)

And so let's talk about these arrests. What is ice's goal when it comes to making arrests?

Host (16:02)

So ICE is operating under daily quotas. And this all started when, at the start of the administration, Trump said, we're going to deport a million people in our first year in office. And so they've created these quotas. They've. They've worked backwards and said, okay, in order for us to get to a million, we need to do 3,000 arrests per day. And those have been the set quota since the start of the administration. ICE has never come close to hitting those quotas. I mean, the high mark has been maybe 2,200 arrests in a day, but they really average closer to 1,000. The thing that you've got to understand, though, is that people. I mean, people's job performance is held up against these quotas. And so they are motivated to make arrests. And even if later on, you know, they arrest someone and later they find out, oh, my gosh, this person has legal status, we can't arrest them and let them go. It still counts as an arrest.

Jessica Mendoza (17:03)

Can you talk about the new tactics that ICE is using to identify or arrest people?

Host (17:09)

They've become much more aggressive. They've been using more militarized tactics. We've seen in numerous cases that when they want to arrest someone in a car, that they won't even pause before smashing a window to pull someone out of their car, for example. One of the biggest shifts we've seen this year is that ICE is using more profiling tactics to arrest people. They're out in the street looking for people to arrest, rather than sort of knowing specifically exactly who it is they want to go arrest. And they're using factors like, you know, does this person look Latino? Do they not speak English? Do they work in a profession that is associated with people in the country illegally, for example, are they standing in a Home Depot parking lot looking for work as a day laborer?

Jessica Mendoza (18:00)

ICE says that they're not allowed to make arrests solely on the basis of race, but that a couple of factors together, like not speaking English and running away from ICE can be used as a basis for reasonable suspicion.

Host (18:13)

Another really notable shift is one that just came to light recently, actually, that ICE sort of secretly came up with a new legal justification to force entry into people's homes without a warrant. So if they want to go arrest someone, in the past, ICE would actually have to stand outside someone's home for hours and hours and hours and wait for them to leave and make the arrest if someone was leaving to go to work or to drop their kids off at school. But now, in certain cases, in particular when an immigrant has a deportation order from an immigration judge, ICE has said, actually it is okay for us to break in without a warrant. They haven't explained why that's legal. And a lot of people are concerned that it's a pretty clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, which, which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure.

Jessica Mendoza (19:12)

Up until this point, Republicans and Trump supporters have broadly backed the President's approach to immigration enforcement. But after this weekend and the death of Alex Preddy, cracks have started to show.

Host (19:23)

I think it's partially influenced by how much the polling has soured for President Trump and for Republicans that you're seeing pretty conservative Republicans come out. For example, the governor of Oklahoma, you know, not a moderate, not a liberal, come out and say, the president is getting bad advice on this issue. They need to change tactics. And he's not the only one.

Jessica Mendoza (19:46)

Other Republicans speaking out include Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, a Trump ally who has called for a transparent investigation of Preddy's death. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana also called for a full investigation and wrote on X. The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing. The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake inside the Department of Homeland Security. Is everyone still on board with the administration's approach?

Host (20:13)

You know, I've had conversations with numerous current and former officials who work at ICE and across the Department of Homeland Security. At dhs, I would say people have almost adopted, like a siege mentality. They are in it. They truly believe in their mission. They think that it's, you know, that they're there to arrest people who are here in violation of our immigration laws. That trying to scale back on their operation now would basically amount to a capitulation to these left wing protesters is how they View it. And you would expect that from people. I mean, they believe in the mission. That's what they do all the time. At the same time, you have seen people get really frustrated at leadership and some of the choices that leadership has made. I think people have long felt uneasy about, particularly about Greg Bevino. He's the Border Patrol commander who led operations in LA and Chicago. He went to New Orleans and now his guys are in Minneapolis. And Border Patrol agents who report to Greg Bevino were the ones who shot and killed Alex Preddy. And so there's a lot of anger and frustration that he has been allowed to become the leader in the face of immigration enforcement and that that has sort of taken away from the mission.

Jessica Mendoza (21:37)

Greg Bevino said, quote, our operations are lawful, they're targeted, and they're focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community. Our colleague Josh Dawsey spoke to Trump last night in a five minute interview. And the President seem to say, you know, the administration is reviewing everything with regards to the Alex Peretti case. I mean, what do you, what do you make of that?

Host (22:02)

Trump is pretty attuned to public opinion and he even indicated that he would be considering pulling back from Minnesota. And just today we see that he's appointed Tom Homan to run operations in Minnesota. Tom Homan is Trump's sort of White House border czar. He's been sidelined for the past roughly six months or so. He hasn't had any direct authority over ICE or dhs. But even though Homan has this sort of gruff exterior, he actually favors that more old school, methodical approach to making arrests. And so to me, it seems like bringing him in to lead this operation in Minnesota suggests that Trump wants to really change tactics there and pull back.

Jessica Mendoza (22:52)

Today, President Trump and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke on the phone. Trump said it was a, quote, very good call. And Walz's office said Trump agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in his state. According to administration officials familiar with the matter. Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, will leave Minnesota imminently along with some of his agents. The White House also said today that The FBI and U.S. customs and Border Protection are conducting investigations into the fatal shooting. And it is really interesting because it seems like in this moment, the Trump administration has two options. Either double down on ICE going to these cities, or, as you said, pull back. What are the risks of each of those two strategies?

Host (23:41)

Yeah, we've heard over the last couple days that people inside the White House were looking for what they described as an off ramp to sort of diffuse tension in Minnesota. They are walking a really fine line because their core base, who's die hard Trump supporters, supports everything he does. Immigration is probably the most important issue to them, and any kind of retreat on what they're doing in Minneapolis will come as a severe disappointment to those people.

Jessica Mendoza (24:15)

Could this be a turning point for Trump's immigration enforcement efforts?

Host (24:19)

It's too soon to necessarily say it's a turning point, and doing a mass deportation is certainly still a core promise of his that he can't afford to back away from. But it could signal a shift in tactics and how they try to get there.

Jessica Mendoza (24:50)

That's all for today. Monday, January 26 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Joshua Chaffin, Josh Dawsey, Jack Morfett and Mariah Timms. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.